Willpower Isn’t Finite
The secret to unlimited motivation lies in how you view it
I’ve used up all my willpower today, so I’m going to eat some mint chocolate chip ice cream in my underwear in front of some mindless reality television.
We’ve all been there. And we have been conditioned to believe that when we have used up our daily allotment of self-control, we should just throw in the towel and start anew the next day.
The idea that we have a finite amount of willpower has become well-known in the self-improvement community. I mean, Steve Jobs wore black turtlenecks all the time so he could save some of his mental resources for creating those iPhones, right?
Yet when we look at research, we find that willpower is potentially infinite.
Willpower in a nutshell
In his book Indistractable, Nir Eyal details an experiment that followed flight attendants who were addicted to smoking cigarettes on flights of different lengths. Inevitably, no matter how long the flight, their cravings would be at their peak right before the end of the journey.
The aging idea that we use up our finite available stores of willpower with every good decision is called “ego depletion.” Eyal states this beautifully in an article in Inc Magazine.
