…So you can, you know, write/succeed/finish-what-you-start!
Ego Depletion, Motivation and Attention: A New Model of Self-Control – by Sam McNerney
The human brain is fickle when it comes to commitments. Between 60 and 80 percent of people don’t use their gym memberships. Most diets work at first but backfire in the long run. According to a 2007 survey conducted by the British psychologist Richard Wiseman, about 88 percent of New Year’s resolutions end in failure.
Given how widespread our broken pledges are, it’s no surprise that psychologists study human willpower. Florida State University Professor of Psychology Roy Baumeister is one of the main figures in this area of study. His research on willpower began in the late 1990s with a few papers demonstrating that when people exert willpower, self-control, persistence and rationality founder. Willpower, he discovered, was a limited resource easily drained by everyday activity.
Keep reading and you’ll see that the idea here is that willpower is an exhaustible resource. With that knowledge, we can now happily decide not to waste that exhaustible resource on little things so we have it when we need it.
Buh-bye, diet. Ten coherent script pages await the day! (Although, we always did want to learn Ukrainian. Hmm…)
Hi Larry, I’ve been lurking for some time but this post finally motivated me to speak up.
If you read through the article a bit further, you’ll see that more recent research challenges the notion that willpower is a finite resource. If I were to speculate, I would say that willpower is does deplete over time, similar to your overall energy levels, but that with the right training and techniques (and a host of other stuff like motivation, mood, etc.) you can either slow down the depletion, boost the replenishment and or have some other happy-positive effect that counteracts the drain.
It’s still a useful model in many situations but I’d say it’s still a work in progress.
I really enjoy this website and the forums!
Hi, Mark,
Glad to hear from you. Welcome to TVWriter™ . Fun fact I’ve learned by managing to live as long as I have: Everything’s a work in progress. Which makes life frustrating…and exhilarating, both at the same time.
LYMI,
LB