Doing Tasks Depletes Willpower

Most of us have a finite supply of willpower.

HAMILTON, Ont. September 24, 2009—Have you ever sat down to work on a crossword puzzle only to find that afterwards you haven't the energy to exercise? Or have you come home from a rough day at the office with no energy to go for a run?

A new study, published today in Psychology and Health, reveals that if you use your willpower to do one task, it depletes you of the willpower to do an entirely different task.

Do some people not experience this depletion of willpower?

Regulating your emotions can deplete your willpower. So if someone is giving you a hard time and you are suppressing your desire to strangle them then you are depleting your will to exercise. Stay away from people who cause you to exert more effort regulating your emotions.

"Cognitive tasks, as well as emotional tasks such as regulating your emotions, can deplete your self-regulatory capacity to exercise," says Kathleen Martin Ginis, associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster University, and lead author of the study.

Martin Ginis and her colleague Steven Bray used a Stroop test to deplete the self-regulatory capacity of volunteers in the study. (A Stroop test consists of words associated with colours but printed in a different colour. For example, "red" is printed in blue ink.) Subjects were asked to say the colour on the screen, trying to resist the temptation to blurt out the printed word instead of the colour itself.

"After we used this cognitive task to deplete participants' self-regulatory capacity, they didn't exercise as hard as participants who had not performed the task. The more people "dogged it" after the cognitive task, the more likely they were to skip their exercise sessions over the next 8 weeks. "You only have so much willpower."

Avoid situations that deplete your willpower unnecessarily. What situations or tasks deplete your willpower? Introspect and see if you can identify what does it to you and which depleters you can avoid.

Source: http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006569.html

Interesting article!