Over the course of a day, various issues and concerns compete for our attention.
Did you know that every one of us carries a limited amount of willpower each day, and that it can be strengthened, like a muscle? Willpower, by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney dives deeply into the psychology and neurology of willpower, and I didn’t have the will to put it down as I read.
This was definitely a text I’d refer back to often, so I distilled ten main points on the second read through. These points are sure to be valuable to anyone with a busy schedule!
1. For contentment, it pays to look at how far you’ve come. To stoke motivation and ambition, focus instead on the road ahead.
2. Emotional control typically relies on various subtle tricks, such as changing how one thinks about the problem at hand, or distracting oneself.
3. To strengthen willpower, concentrate on changing a habitual behaviour. (such as fixing posture. Use left hand.) A great complement to this book on this idea is Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit.
4. Hyperbolic discounting, a true test – We can ignore temptation when they’re not immediately available, but once they’re right in front of us we lose perspective and forget our distant goals.
5. Set “bright lines”. Make goals all or nothing. I will eat 4000 calories per day, not I will eat a moderate amount.
6. Success is conditional, but it’s within your reach as long as you have the discipline to try, try again.
7. After making some tough decisions, remember that your self control is going ot be weakened.
this is also partly the reason why things seem a lot worse in the evening, immediately after the event, than in the morning after, when you’re “replenished”.
8. when it is depleted, you tend to favor short term gains and ignore long term consequences.
get some food in your body, wait half an hour, and a decision won’t seem so overwhelming.
9. Parkinson’s law: work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
set a clear limit of amount of time to spend on a task, it will help with getting things done
10. Make a to-do list – a specific one.
You can find the author delving more into the nuances of self control and willpower here:
I highly recommend anyone seeking to develop a sense of self control and take charge of their daily routine to give it a read!
I do intend to keep most of my posts just my own thoughts. But I’m also planning deep dives into ideas from heavier books for some future posts (John Rawls’ ideas that set the foundation of the American legal system have been on my mind).
These I was going to restrict to paid subscribers (around $3-4/month). No compulsion though, this is for people interested in heavier ideas, and it’s motivation for me to write about those heavier ideas. Especially to engage opposition to my thoughts.
No worries if you prefer the lighter content, that will still be always free. ^BTW, the above is still ‘lighter content’.
In any case, if you found this useful, easy to read, enjoyable, etc. maybe you can trust me to replicate the experience in the next post :D. Subscribe to receive these straight to inbox!