Contemporary research has turned ancient notions about willpower upside down. Our ability to stifle urges, restrain impulses, and self-regulate doesn’t just happen in the brain. It also happens in the blood. It turns out that glucose is essential to our ability to self-regulate (here is a good summary of these research findings from Psychology Today).
Of course, mental toughness is still important, but “toughing things out” can only carry you so far. To have the best chance of preserving and strengthening your willpower, it is important to heed the biological facts about self-control. And you’ll need to integrate these facts quickly, since willpower is in great demand in our always on, hyper-communicating world.
Here are five things you can do to replenish and optimize your precious—but finite—store of willpower.
1. Don’t get hungry. Studies clearly show that willpower is dangerously eroded when we are hungry, and is quickly replenished after eating. Keep sufficient glucose in your bloodstream by regularly eating low glycemic index foods when possible (e.g. most vegetables, nuts, many raw fruits, cheese, meat, fish, and good fats like olive oil and avocados) to get a slow, steady, and stable conversion of food to glucose. Reduce your consumption of high glycemic index foods like starchy carbohydrates and breakfast cereals, but above all, try not to go hungry.
2. Stop skimping on sleep. A good, full night’s sleep is important because it influences how efficiently your body processes glucose. The vast majority of people need 7.5 hours sleep, plus or minus 30 minutes. (Here is a book recommendation for learning more about good sleep practices: The Harvard Medical School Guide to a Good Night’s Sleep
3. Don’t stack important decisions. Have you ever felt so drained at the end of a long meeting that you would agree to almost anything just to make the meeting end? Well, that’s what willpower depletion feels like, and it sets you up to make bad decisions. Important decisions require willpower, so be careful not to make too many decisions in a row when you can avoid it because your later decisions might be substandard. When you slip into a depleted willpower state, your decision making reverts to something like a lazy autopilot, where you are far more likely to make decisions based on what’s the easiest solution, instead of what’s the best solution.
4. Be wary of making too many trivial decisions. Every choice you make draws on a bit of your willpower, and our digital environment is configured to demand countless mini-decisions. A great deal of our digital world, after all, is clickable, and every click counts against our finite store of willpower. Caveat clicker—let the clicker beware.
5. Resist online tangents. Virtual tangents—clicking away from what you need to be doing—consumes willpower because you must expend internal energy to pull yourself back to your original task. In a world filled with unlimited and very tantalizing bunny trails, be careful of hopping too far away from your main objective.
Next week, we will turn our attention to a very important matter, Valentine’s Day, and cover ways to boost the impact of your romantic communication on St. Valentine’s Day.