You Don’t ‘Run Out’ of Willpower
Willpower is not a depletable resource if you know how to use it wisely
It’s common to hear people complain about feeling “burned out” or “spent” these days. However, these terms conjure a completely incorrect view of willpower.
As I discussed at length in my book, Indistractable, and in previous articles, willpower is not a depletable resource.
Plenty of new research has found that willpower is not “used up” like gas in a gas tank or charge in a battery.
This raises the question, “If willpower is not a finite resource, then what is it?”
More practically speaking, “How do we motivate ourselves to do things when we feel we lack willpower?”
Michael Inzlicht, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and the principal investigator at the Toronto Laboratory for Social Neuroscience, offers a forward-thinking understanding of willpower that dispels the myths.
Inzlicht believes that willpower is not a finite resource; instead, it’s more like an emotion.
Just as we don’t “run out” of joy or anger, willpower ebbs and flows based on what’s happening to us and how we feel.
