Willpower according to ChatGPT

Willpower is a finite resource

There isn’t a day when I’m not trying to finish my tasks in the evening. Fighting to finish them. I want to start the next morning with a clean inbox and a clear plan, and that requires me to power on that last stretch.

The more I think about it, willpower feels like fuel. It runs out during the day, harder struggles cost more, and taking a break gives me a re-boost. But, how come some people have a lot and others have less? How come some have a larger fuel tank, so to speak?

Research shows that willpower, as soooooooo many other things with the human mind and body, is like a muscle. You use it or you lose it.

If you want to go all science, a part of the brain, the aMCC (anterior mid-cingulate cortex) is bigger in athletes, in dieters who actually succeed, in people who’ve been challenged and overcome it, and it stays large in those who live exceptionally long. What makes it grow is not effort but friction, frustration, and not giving in to the desire to quit¹. Simply said: we can train the willpower muscle.

At the same time, it is also about not wasting fuel. The old story was that willpower runs out because the brain runs out of glucose. The new, updated story² is that the brain does a background, operative-system-level calculation: is this still worth doing, compared to what else I could be doing right now? So, sure, we have limited fuel, but we also give in to distractions and alternatives.

The trick must be to use the fuel we have on what we want. No detours, or as a friend calls it, “no side-quests.” Throughout the day, you will be faced with numerous opportunities to waste energy, not to even mention social media or the news. Over the years, I have built a simple reminder to keep me from depleting the limited resource: Accept, Ignore, Fix.

As Epictetus said, “Some things are up to us, and some are not”, and therefore you must deliberately decide how to engage. Because you don’t need to engage. You don’t need to care. I read a story about a trader who just tuned out the news when Trump became president. He decided it wasn’t worth his attention and energy. He kept working (successfully), but didn’t read the news.

So, the easiest thing you can do is to “Ignore.” Just learn that the thing that you get irritated about isn’t for you to handle. So, you try hard to avoid it. Ignore it. Tune out. Naturally, this strategy isn’t elegant or valiant. I know it is wise, but I feel like a coward. This is how I treat most of the news, what Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and the US President are saying, as well as social media. The method is very much Charlie Munger’s “All I want to know is where I’m going to die so I’ll never go there.” I know what I will fail at, so I stay away.

The best thing is to “Accept.” That means to look at the situation at hand and bow to it. There are many, many things we need to accept. I can start close to home: I get triggered by complacency and inconsiderateness in others simply because I don’t allow myself to be either. (Instead of getting angry at others, I take responsibility for the flaw. I should be kinder to myself instead of requiring highest virtue from others.) I’ll be honest with you. Accepting isn’t a switch. I still struggle, but I have told myself that there are many things I have to accept, and just hearing that voice calms me down.

The final thing is “Fix.” It means where I focus my time and energy. It means where I want to do my best work.

It isn’t easy in any way. I still lose this fight most days. But I lose it slightly more gracefully now. Working to empty that inbox, I know I have limited fuel, I know fighting the fight will earn me more of that in the future, and finally, I know that the reason I’m here late at night is that I was distracted during the day.

That is the thing with knowledge, it puts things in another light.

The reason it has been silent from me for a while. I’ve been writing a book instead of writing here on the blog. It feels like the internet is filled with AI-generated content, and I’ve not wanted to contribute to the slop.

So, if this was useful and interesting, then sign up to follow my book launch: https://trajectorybook.com 💃

¹ Learn more: Andrew Huberman’s popularization of work by Joseph Kable.

² Learn more: Michael Inzlicht on the opportunity cost of effort.