Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” ― Robert Louis Stevenson
Our willpower is like a muscle in that it fatigues.
This is not good news in our astonishingly complex world because the rich environments that we live in are constantly depleting our willpower—sending our riders to sleep while we still need them. Use of willpower in one realm depletes it for all other realms. So if we’re trying to stick to a budget, making any calculation about money will tax our willpower. Simply having a bowl of candy (or anything that you are trying not to eat) in view can be a real willpower depleter. For many men, turning away from the incessant media images of seductive women expends energy needed to be present at home with their wife and kids. Anytime you are trying to impress somebody—at a job interview or on a date—you’ll deplete your willpower. Trying to fit into a social group or office culture that doesn’t really fit your values takes willpower, and therefore will deplete it. The same is true if you have to control your irritation with a bad team player, or if you have to control your desire to compete with people on your team at work. Constantly shielding our attention from a steady onslaught of emails, texts, calendar alerts, Facebook notifications, and tweets takes willpower.
But there’s some good news, too. Our rider is also like muscle in that it gets stronger with use. The weirdest thing about the research on willpower is the phenomena that when we start consciously working on one thing that takes self-discipline, we also tend to start improving our lives in other areas as well. For example, when researchers asked college students to pay attention to one area of their lives—trying to improve their posture throughout the day, or to attend to their finances for a few weeks—they frequently do other things that might end up on a New Year’s resolution list, too, like watching less TV, working out more, and improving their eating habits.
The important thing is to focus only on one thing at a time, but know that benefits are accruing. Even though you may be working on only one mini-habit, you’re building up the willpower you’ll need to take on more.
What to do now:
Examine your routine for occasions and situations that fatigue your willpower using the Day 10 Worksheet (.pdf file). Right click and choose “save link as” to download.
Contact Marielle, the class administrator, with questions.