Lesson 29: the myth of self-discipline

A now famous experiment in 1996 by Roy Baumeister and his Case Western Reserve University colleagues subjected participants to the aroma and presence of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Some of the participants were allowed to eat the cookies. Others were told they could not and were told to eat radishes instead (these participants were not happy).

Both sets of participants were then asked to go to another room for what seemed to be an unrelated challenge. There they were asked to solve a puzzle. What they didn’t know was that the puzzle was unsolvable.

The result?
The radish-eaters made fewer attempts and spent less than half the time attempting to solve the puzzle compared to the cookie-eaters or to the control group, who had faced neither cookies nor radishes.

The conclusion of this experiment is that self-discipline, self-control and willpower are exhaustible resources. The more you use them, the less you have available. The students who had used their willpower to abstain from chocolate chip cookies had less available to apply toward solving the puzzle.

In their book The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results, Gary Keller and Jay Papasan list the factors that can deplete your willpower. These are:

• Implementing new behaviors
• Filtering distractions
• Resisting temptation
• Suppressing impulses
• Taking tests
• Trying to impress others
• Coping with fear
• Doing something you don’t enjoy
• Selecting long over short-term rewards

This explains why you can’t resist that quart of ice cream or bag of chips after you’ve had a taxing day.

If you want to get better, focus what self-discipline you do have on developing a habit. If you can do this for about 10 weeks, it will become automatic. It will become harder NOT to do it than to do it.

You can apply this to spiritual disciplines, exercise, eating right and doing your most important work. So, don’t worry about how little willpower you have. Focus on how you can develop one important habit at a time. 
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As John Dryden wrote, “We first make our habits. Then our habits make us.”

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