Is there a limit to our will power?

Day 80 / 365

Every new year almost everyone makes new resolutions. Whether it’s about saving money or eating healthier, or going to the gym. We all truly believe that this time we won’t break our resolutions. Yet, almost everyone fails to keep it up for more than a month. It’s come to a point now that there are many people I know who don’t even bother setting such goals.

The obvious conclusion would be that we don’t have an unlimited supply of will power. “Try and try, until you succeed” — might be too good to be true. If that’s the case then that would mean that we are bound to give up on our goals, it’s just a matter of when we do it.

Will Power is like a muscle, and it can get fatigued

In a related study, some subjects were brought in a room where a bowl of freshly baked cookies was kept. The smell of the cookies was tempting, but only half of the group was allowed to eat them. The rest were told to resist the urge to eat the cookies and eat some radishes instead. They stayed in this room eating for 30 minutes.

After this, the subjects were given a difficult mathematics puzzle to solve. They could give up at any time they want. What they observed was that the people who got to eat the cookies spent 19 minutes on average trying to solve the problem. The other group who just got the radishes gave up within 8 minutes. They had spent up a lot of their will power on not eating the cookies, they couldn’t be bothered with a maths puzzle now.

So does that mean we shouldn’t bother setting goals?

Absolutely not. We should use this fact as a reason to not be so hard on ourselves.

Instead of not setting any goals at all, set smaller goals for yourselves. And don’t get demotivated if you fail every once in a while, it’s only human to do so.

If Will Power can get fatigued like a muscle, then surely it can be made stronger as well!

This story is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — Where did the moon come from?