HAPPINESS
Not so long ago, my post-work routine looked like this: After a particularly grueling day, I’d sit on the couch for hours, keeping company with a pint of ice cream. Even though I knew that eating ice cream and sitting for a long time were probably bad for me, I told myself that relaxation was my well-deserved reward for working so hard.
Psychological researchers have a name for this phenomenon: ego depletion. The theory is that willpower is connected to a limited reserve of mental energy, and once we run out of that energy, we’re more likely to lose self-control. This theory would seem to perfectly explain my after-work indulgences.
But recent studies suggest that the theory of ego depletion, first supported by researchers in the 1990s, may not be true. Even worse, holding on to the idea of ego depletion can actually be bad for us, making us more likely to lose control and act against our better judgment.
So what does explain the couch-and-ice-cream phenomenon? After all, isn’t it common knowledge that working hard drains our energy, and that refueling with indulgences makes us better able to carry on?
Recent research proposes a new explanation for why we run out of steam. A study conducted by the Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck and her colleagues concluded that signs of ego depletion were observed only in test subjects who believed willpower was a limited resource.
This suggests that ego depletion may be just another example of the way belief drives behavior. Thinking we’re spent makes us feel worse, while rewarding ourselves with an indulgence makes us feel better.
In other words, the ego-depletion hypothesis might make people less likely to actually accomplish their goals because it gives them a reason to quit when they could otherwise persist. It satisfies a need to justify why we sometimes do things we know we shouldn’t, such as slacking off at work when we should be finishing a project.
But rather than looking for a hidden willpower gas tank in our heads that doesn’t exist, perhaps we should accept that we are fragile, distractible beings and cut ourselves some slack. Perhaps our flagging energies and wandering minds are trying to tell us something.
Fundamentally, we give up on tasks that don’t engage us. We can power through tasks that we don’t enjoy for a while, but we’ll never be our best if we ignore what our feelings are telling us. By listening to our lack of willpower as we would an emotion — as a helpful decision-making assistant working in concert with our logical capabilities — we can find new paths that may not require us to do things we fundamentally don’t want to do.
Just as we should seek joy by engaging in enjoyable pursuits, we can receive the benefits of willpower indirectly, by removing the need to expend it in the first place.
