Willpower

But most people, even chronic procrastinators, can avoid that fate by learning to play offense. So far in this book, we’ve discussed hundreds of self-control experiments and strategies. Now let’s review them and put them to use.

Willpower 101, First Lesson: Know Your Limits
    No matter what you want to achieve, playing offense begins by recognizing the two basic lessons from chapter 1: Your supply of willpower is limited, and you use the same resource for many different things. Each day may start off with your stock of willpower fresh and renewed, at least if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and a healthy breakfast. But then all day things chip and nibble away at it. The complexity of modern life makes it difficult to keep in mind that all these seemingly unrelated chores and demands draw on the same account inside of you.
    Consider some of the things that happen in a typical day. You pull yourself out of bed even though your body wants more sleep. You put up with traffic frustrations. You hold your tongue when your boss or spouse angers you, or when a store clerk says “Just one second” and takes six minutes to get back to you. You try to maintain an interested, alert expression on your face while a colleague drones on during a boring meeting. You postpone going to the bathroom. You make yourself take the first steps on a difficult project. You want to eat all the French fries on your lunch plate but you leave half of them there, or (after negotiating with yourself) almost half. You push yourself to go jogging, and while you jog you make yourself keep running until you finish your workout. The willpower you expended on each of these unrelated events depletes how much you have left for the others.
    This depletion isn’t intuitively obvious, especially when it comes to appreciating the impact of making decisions. Virtually no one has a gut-level sense of just how tiring it is to decide. Choosing what to have for dinner, where to go on vacation, whom to hire, how much to spend—these all take willpower. Even hypothetical decisions deplete energy. After making some tough decisions, remember that your self-control is going to be weakened.
    Remember, too, that what matters is the exertion, not the outcome. If you struggle with temptation and then give in, you’re still depleted because you struggled. Giving in does not replenish the willpower you have already expended. All it does is save you from expending any more. You may have spent the day succumbing to a series of temptations and impulses, but you could nonetheless have used up quite a bit of energy by resisting each one for a while. You can even use up willpower by partaking in indulgences that don’t appeal to you. Forcing yourself to do something you don’t really want to do at the moment—chug tequila, have sex, smoke a cigar—will leave you with less willpower. Similarly, the most tiring decisions are the ones that seem tough to you even though they may seem obvious to others. Your rational self might be fully convinced that you should rent the affordable apartment with the extra room, but it can still deplete you to pass up the impractical one with the spectacular view.

Watch for Symptoms
    There’s no obvious “feeling” of depletion. Hence you need to watch yourself for subtle, easily misinterpreted signs. Do things seem to bother you more than they should? Has the volume somehow been turned up on your life so that things are felt more strongly than usual? Is it suddenly hard to make up your mind about even simple things? Are you more than usually reluctant to make a decision or exert yourself mentally or physically? If you notice such feelings, then reflect on the last few hours and see if it seems likely that you have depleted your willpower. If so, try to conserve what’s left while anticipating the effects on your behavior.
    While you’re depleted, frustrations will bother you more than usual. You’ll be more prone to say something you’ll regret. Impulses to eat, drink, spend, or do other things will be harder than usual to resist. As we said earlier, the best way to reduce stress in your life is to stop screwing up, but when you’re depleted you’re liable to make mistakes that will leave you with more bills to pay, more relationship damage to repair, more pounds to lose. Beware of making binding decisions when your energy is down, because you’ll tend to favor options with short-term gains and delayed costs. Try to compensate