Ego Depletion

• A 2011 survey found that 27 % of respondents identified a lack of willpower as the primary factor keeping them from reaching their goals. 
• One study found that students who exhibited greater self-discipline had better grades, higher test scores, and were more likely to be admitted to a competitive academic program. 
• The study also found that when it came to academic success, self-control was a more important factor than IQ scores.
• A health study found that people who were rated as having high levels of self-control during childhood continued to have high levels of physical and mental health in adulthood.
• Research has found that self-control is a limited resource. In the long-term, exercising self-control tends to strengthen it. 
  

A lack of willpower is not the only factor that affects goal attainment.

• There needs to be a clear goal and the motivation to change. Having an unclear or overly general goal and insufficient motivation can lead to failure.
• You need to monitor your actions daily towards the achievement of the goal.
• You need to have willpower.

Having a self-defeating state of mind makes one believe that he or she is not able to achieve certain goals, by providing a logical reason to give up.

According to the psychology professor Michael Inzlicht, the individual is able to control his or her willpower, taking into account current feelings and events. 

This is perceived as a decision-making tool that enables its owner to have full disposal of the mental energy and, therefore, to accomplish even the most challenging tasks.

Successful dieters usually declare certain foods to be completely out of bounds, or allowed only during occasional designated cheat meals, rather than expecting themselves to eat everything in moderation.

Working well is not about maximizing every waking moment of the day, in order to get more done. And the focus on maximizing time may actually diminish our creativity.

Instead, try identifying and focusing on the few hours of the day you are most productive.

To achieve sustainable productivity habits, it’s best to build up with easily achievable tasks.

Small chunks of accomplishment will amount to something big eventually.

If you imagine lying on a peaceful beach, your body will respond by relaxing. If you imagine being late for an important meeting, your body will tense in response. Use this to your advantage in building willpower.

In practice, adding too many suggestions for living well will create a conflict with each other. 

Suggestions are almost always given on their own, without including a wider context. You can read about why exercise, reading or meditating are good on their own, but rarely find information about how they trade-off against each other.

There are two different types of feeling tired.

1. The feeling you have as you're about to start an activity. Once you actually do it, your mood changes and you find you're glad you did it.
2. The second kind persists throughout the activity itself. You find you struggle with pushing through more than five minutes of it. If you feel like this for weeks at a time, your habits are probably unsustainable.

Studies have shown that people that are really good at achieving their goals are not the ones that put more effort into exerting self-control in the face of temptations, but the ones that experience fewer temptations to start with.

• They actually enjoy the activities some of us resist (eating healthy, studying, exercising)
• They have better decision-making habits
• Some people just experience fewer temptations
• It’s easier to have self-control when you’re wealthy - when you’re poor, the future is less certain.

As losing resources is more likely to cause burnout than gaining resources is to mitigate it, dealing with the negative aspects is more beneficial than using positive “band-aid” fixes. You want to drive down uncertainty and inefficiency to ensure that you aren’t doing unnecessary tasks and minimize your emotional exhaustion. To do that:

1. Create a chart and place your major goal at its top, followed by layers of very specific subgoals needed to attain the major goal.
2. Find and fix the inefficiencies in your goal hierarchy.
3. Determine the attainability of each goal.

• Chronic fatigue
• Insomnia
• Impaired concentration/ forgetfulness
• Loss of appetite
• Anxiety
• Increased illness
• Physical symptoms
• Chest pain
• Shortness of breath
• Dizziness
• Gastrointestinal pain
• Depression
• Interpersonal problems.

People who have high self-control aren’t missing out on enjoyment. Not being able to resist temptation and enjoying life are not the same things.

They tend to eat in a healthily way, exercise more, sleep better, drink less alcohol, smoke fewer cigarettes, achieve higher grades at university, have more peaceful relationships, and are more financially secure.

Research showed that self-control is ultimately limited by our biology. We can’t exercise effortful self-control indefinitely – the brain has to do regular maintenance to remain functional.