Willpower: Rediscovering The Greatest Human Strength (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
This book is kind of a data dump: short discussions of (apparently) dozens of studies related to willpower, plus bits and pieces of less useful material.Some of the most interesting concepts:*"Ego depletion"- the idea that you have a finite supply of willpower during the day, and that repeated attempts to restrain yourself from temptation will leave you more vulnerable at the end of the day. (It seems to me that this contradicts the authors' later suggestion that otherwise useless rituals, such as music lessons, can somehow build self-control rather than leading to ego depletion).*The idea that inadequate eating (whether from being hungry or being tired from the "wrong kind" of foods) makes it harder to make restrained decisions.*"Lofty" thoughts (such as religious thoughts or of some broader cause) support self-control. (But actually exercising self-control is best done through small, step-by-step focusing on goals).*Weight control is not at all well correlated with other types of self-control, because bodies react badly to crash diets.I can't evaluate the science behind these assertions, not having read the underlying studies. I can say that this book was readable and interesting, though some chapters were a bit too antecdote-laden than others and the conclusion doesn't really "pull it all together" very well. The introduction was a quick tour through the history of "willpower", and was engagingly written. It definitely got me interested in reading the rest of the book."Desire turned out to be the norm, not the exception. About half the time, people were feeling some desire at the moment their beepers went off, and another quarter said a desire had just been felt in the past few minutes. Many of these desires were ones they were trying to resist. The researchers concluded that people spend about a quarter of their waking hours resisting desires - at least four hours per day." ... The most commonly resisted desire in the beeper study was the urge to eat, followed by the urge to sleep, and then by the urge for leisure, ... Sexual urges were next on the list of most-resisted desires, a little ahead of urges for other kinds of interactions, like checking e-mail and social-networking sites, surfing the web, listening to music, or watching television." (Page 3)"People sought to increase their store of [willpower] by following the exhortations of the Englishman Samuel Smiles in Self-Help, one of the most popular books of the nineteenth century on both sides of the Atlantic." (Page 5)Chapter 1 summary: Willpower exists, it is finite, and there is only one store of it. If it is used for one thing, then there is less available for use in other areas. Or as the author stated it:"You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it.""You use the same stock of willpower for all manner of tasks." (Page 35)"... one bit of guidance based on the ego-depletion studies... Focus on one project at a time." (Page 38)"Above all, don't make a list of New Year's resolutions. ... No one has enough willpower for that list." (Page 38)Chapter 2 summary: Glucose is the power source that is essential to willpower. Exercising willpower uses it up & then you don't have willpower (unless the supply is replenished.) It is also given as the explanation for PMS. Later on, the book talks about techniques that strengthen willpower (other than adding glucose to the blood). Some popular strategies turn out to be ineffective. Dieting turns out to be a particularly problematic area because unlike many things that a person might try to resist, one can't just swear off of eating for the rest of their life. The book goes into some things that do and don't work here also."Similarly, recent studies of diabetic children have found multiple benefits of parental supervision. ... Although type 1 diabetes comes on early in life and maybe mainly a result of genes, the adolescents with high trait self-control and high parental supervision have lower blood sugar levels (thus, less severe diabetic problems) than others. In fact, having a mother or father who keeps track of a child's activities, friends, and spending habits can even compensate to some degree for lower levels of self control, in terms of reducing the severity of diabetes." (Page 210)I have changed my behavior (just a little bit) because of reading this book.
What do You think about Willpower: Rediscovering The Greatest Human Strength (2011)?
Engaging, informative and inspiring in a very practical way. Found myself highlighting frequently.
—joejoe
lots of knowledge based on research;really liked the overall structure;
—Safia
Very interesting book about self control with lots of case studies.
—gjm
