NY Times: Willpower as depletable resource

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reinhard
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NY Times: Willpower as depletable resource

Post by reinhard » Mon Jan 09, 2012 7:47 pm

More validation of some basic everyday systems tenets:

From:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/sunda ... ref=health
Most people are not going to keep their resolutions all year long...

They’ll fail because they’ll eventually run out of willpower, which social scientists no longer regard as simply a metaphor. They’ve recently reported that willpower is a real form of mental energy, powered by glucose in the bloodstream, which is used up as you exert self-control.

The result is “ego depletion,†as this state of mental fatigue was named by Roy F. Baumeister, a social psychologist at Florida State University (and my co-author of a book on willpower). He and many of his colleagues have concluded that the way to keep a New Year’s resolution is to anticipate the limits of your willpower.
What surprises me is that the word habit doesn't come up once in the article. As we EDSers know, it's the ultimate prop/stretcher for willpower.

Reinhard

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gj
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Re: NY Times: Willpower as depletable resource

Post by gj » Thu Jan 19, 2012 8:25 am

reinhard wrote: What surprises me is that the word habit doesn't come up once in the article. As we EDSers know, it's the ultimate prop/stretcher for willpower.
I have read the book mentioned in the article and habits show up in a chapter where they are discussed as a strategy for managing willpower. The gist is that people that try to rely on raw willpower will ultimately fail; developing habits is one strategy to make the most of this depletable willpower resource.

I immediately thought of you Reinhard when I read the bits about habit, you've been preaching that for years.

I logged on here to draw your attention to the book but I see you'd already discovered the article. I thought the book was a fascinating read, especially the bits about the explorer Stanley; but you'd probably encounter many concepts that seem familiar.

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