(via Flickr; Ruby Beach at sunset)
I’ve been ruminating a lot lately on my willpower. How to get myself to do what I should and not what I shouldn’t (I am NOT talking about this in a spiritual sense; I’m talking daily todo lists, telling myself no when I want the second handful of chocolate cookies, going to the gym, replying to emails, etc.)
I found a book (I always find a book) that was reviewed nicely in Elle magazine by journalist Rachael Combe. Two books—Willpower, by social psychologist Roy F. Baumeister and NYT reporter John Tierney and The Willpower Instinct, by Stanford University psychologist Kelly McGonigal. I am reading Baumeister and Tierney’s book first and finding some helpful insights.
Tests prove that a rush of decision making early in the day renders us less able to make similar decisions later in the day. This is true for women especially—we make 80% of the buying, scheduling, lifestyle decisions in our households. We are where the buck stops, usually. I don’t think this is a bad thing. I think it means that women (ME) need to be more careful with how they mete out their decision-making skills (their willpower).
I tend to batch like tasks, which according to male-based thinking, helps me to power through quickly. Emails, reading, writing, chores, errands.
But lately, I’ve been realizing that my brain doesn’t stay focused for a long period of time to batch as many tasks as I’d like. And Baumeister and Tierney reason that it is because a women’s todo list often reads “grocery shopping” but our unwritten list includes “menu planning” and “compiling a grocery list,” thus, when we put “grocery shopping” down, our willpower is accessed more than it looks like (it should be easy to just grocery shop, right?) and our brains are wiped out before we even get to the grocery store.
Baumeister and Tierney recommend David Allen’s Getting Things Done for this phenomenon, because Allen recommends breaking a task apart into pieces. So “grocery shopping” wouldn’t be on our “next actions” list; “menu planning” would be, or for me, writing down on a piece of paper the meals I need to buy for and planning out what I want to eat at those meals. That should be on my todo list and then when that is done, I would write a grocery list (and ask hubby what else I should get, because he sometimes doesn’t put what he needs on the grocery list; guys are busy too!), and then schedule a time to get to the grocery store.
In a perfect world. Usually, we’re out of eggs, so I just do all of this super fast and dash to the store and then forget half the things we were out of. 
Ha!
I highly recommend Baumeister and Tierney’s Willpower. I have enough new ideas just from that one that I may not need McGonigal’s The Willpower Instinct.
Anyone else got notes on that one?
{ 2 comments }
I haven’t read Baumeister’s new book but I’ve read some of his original research papers on willpower (which is also referred to in terms of self-control and ego depletion). I think I’d like to read his book to see if it’s consistent with his older books.
Hi, Mark,
Yes, I think it runs closely with his older material. He talks of self-control and ego depletion in this book. It’s good stuff (not just for women!) for everyone struggling with time management and long todo lists!
I’d love to hear what you think.
Trish
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