In the 70s, there was an experiment where they took a look at students and the assumption
was that there would be a positive correlation between the students turning in their assignments
on time and wearing clean socks.
But the results were absolutely the opposite.
Indeed, the psychologist jokingly said, "Apparently, the students could either get their homework
done or change their socks every day but not both."
There was another experiment that took place in Baumeister’s lab, where hungry students
walked in and some of them were allowed to eat freshly baked cookies but others were
only given radishes.
And of couse these students had to exercise a lot of self-control not to eat the cookies
especially as the researchers left the lab and observed the participants through a hidden
window.
So after successfully tortuing them, the researchers brought in these two sets of students and
gave them an impossible puzzle to solve.
And the results were quite fascinating...
The group who’d been allowed to eat the cookies, along with a control group of hungry
students who weren’t given any kind of food, went on to work on the puzzle for 20 minutes!
While the group who’d been assigned to eat the radishes and had already exercised their
willpower earlier went on to work on the puzzles for only 8 minutes.
And these sorts of expirements have been replicated over and over again.
Turns out if you walk into a mall and give people simple math problems to solve, the
ones who have been shopping for much longer will give up on the problems much faster.
So you might be sitting there thinking, “Ok, cool, these experiments are fascinating,”
or maybe you’re bored out of your mind, but understanding the implications of these
experiments can make you a lot more productive and completely change how you plan out your
day just like it did for me.
So what are the implications?
Well, one...
You have to understand that you have a finite amount of willpower and it gets depleted as
you use it.
And two...
You use the same stock of willpower for all tasks.
A lot of people say things like, “Well, I have enough willpower to do my work but
I never have enough willpower for exercising when I come home.”
Well, it’s not that you have a different stock of willpower for work and exercising.
It’s more likely that you’ve completely depleted your willpower at work and now you
don’t have enough to go exercise.
It’s the same thing if we look back at the sock experiment.
If you go to the laundry room for two hours and do your laundry, it’s a lot harder for
you to now get working on your assignment as opposed to a student who went straight
to the homework.
It’s the same thing if you wake up on a Saturday, and instead of doing your creative
work first, you go grocery shopping.
You have to make a decision for every little thing you buy and you’re probably familiar
with the exhaustion that comes from shopping for a long time.
Another person will wake up and start doing the creative work first and he’s going to
get a lot more accomplished.
So it’s extremely important to understand how willpower works.
The people who understand this are much more effective in life than the ones who don’t.
The author Neil Strauss for example has his meals automatically delivered to him every
day.
Now a person who doesn’t understand how willpower works might say, “Well, what a
waste of money.
You know what, that’s stupid.
I’m gonna cook my own meals...”
And save the $10 or whatever it is.
Except he’ll deplete his willpower and won’t be able to dedicate his time to writing as
much so in turn he’ll lose out on mastering writing and even if you were to look at it
purely financially, lose thousands and thousands of dollars in the end.
So my hope with creating this video is that next time you wake up and your intentions
for that day are to get things done, you won’t start your day off with opening up Facebook
the first thing in the morning and wasting willpower on whether you wanna click on britney’s
pictures first or the blog that’s gonna lie to you.
You won’t open up your email first thing in the morning and reply to every little thing
before you make time for your creative work.
You won’t wake up and spend thirty minutes thinking about what you want to have for breakfast
that day.
In fact, you’ll automate as much as you can even if it has to be food being delivered
to you like Neil Strauss so you can focus on what is actually important.
Because you realize that every unimportant thing you do depletes your willpower that
you could have dedicated to the one important thing that you most want in your life.
Again, most people do not understand how willpower works, are completely wasteful with it, and
are always unable to get things done.
You have that understanding.
Now all you need to do is take a look at your day and see if you’re honoring the science
of willpower.
Are you starting your day off by wasting time and willpower deciding what you’re going
to eat every morning?
Well, maybe it’s time you go back to the board and do some planning.
Are you saving your creative work for some time later in the day?
Well, maybe it’s time that you realize that it has to come first.
Are you focusing on accomplishing twenty different things?
Well, maybe it’s time that you realize that that’s realistically never going to happen
and it’s time to pick the one important thing and do it well.