Why is it so challenging to make the right
decisions? I know I want to eat healthy food, but chocolate is so good! I know I need to get
that work done, but what if I just take a tiny look at my iPad? Oh, the difficulties of making
the correct choices, you know those quotes that say that life is a matter of choices?
That's pretty much it! Every day, every hour, and every minute we need to make
choices that will directly impact our lives, but how do we make the right ones? In this
video, I'm going to talk about something called Willpower fatigue and how that can
affect our decision-making. I'm also going to share some ways that you can set yourself
up for making the correct choices. Let's go! According to most psychological scientists,
willpower can be defined as "The ability to delay gratification, resisting short-term
temptations in order to meet long-term goals." "The capacity to override an unwanted thought,
feeling or impulse." "The ability to employ a "cool" cognitive system of behavior rather than
a "hot" emotional system." "Conscious effortful regulation of the self by the self." "A limited
resource capable of being depleted" Did you hear that last definition? "A limited resource capable
of being depleted" that's what we're going to talk about. In a research study published by the
National Academy of Sciences, psychologists analyzed the causes that impact whether or
not a judge approves a criminal for parole, and the results were very interesting. One of the
things that most impacted the judge's decision was the time of the day. At the beginning of the day,
a judge was likely to give a favorable judgment about 65% of the time. On the other hand, by the
end of the day, as the judge became drained from making a ton of decisions, the likelihood of a
criminal getting a favorable judgment steadily dropped to zero. Another interesting finding was
that after taking a lunch break the judge would return feeling refreshed and the likelihood of a
favorable judgment would jump back to 65% and as the time went by the percentage of favorable
judgments would fall back to zero. Therefore, this enables us to comprehend that our willpower
is not a fixed quantity. As Peter Hollins says, using your willpower will deplete it just the same
as lifting weights would fatigue your muscles. The brain of a person who resists a cookie once is
different from the brain of someone who has had to resist a cookie 10 times. Our willpower is a
limited quantity, and we have to be careful not to drain it and let that affect our decision-making
if you spend your day having to make many choices by night, you will be more likely to just sit on
the couch and eat some pizza instead of going to the gym and eating healthily. But let me tell you
something, we are not doomed to live a life with almost zero willpower. There are definitely some
things you can do to overcome willpower fatigue and set yourself up for good decision-making,
let's take a look at some of them. Now that we have comprehended that our willpower
can simply fade away, how about creating an environment in which you need to make as few
decisions as possible? How about optimizing your environment to offer you the least number
of temptations? So your willpower can be stored for important situations? A small change in what
you are able to see can definitely impact your subsequent behavior. We can conserve our willpower
by choosing what surrounds us strategically. If you are like me and want to shift your eating
behaviors by quitting eating unhealthy snacks, for example, why buy them in the first place? That
will only lead us to open the refrigerator and eat the snacks after a long day of work. So instead of
buying the snacks and having to decide whether to eat them or not every single day, we just need
to manage our willpower for a little amount of time when we are at the supermarket and not buy
the snacks in the first place. If you want to do your homework, study, or work, try cleaning up
your desk and leaving only the items that you truly need. Get rid of the things that can steal
your attention. Put your phone in another room or in a place where you cannot see it. Just for you
to understand how important our environment is in defining our attitudes, let me tell you about
something I read in the book Atomic Habits. Anne Thorndike, a doctor at Massachusetts General
Hospital, decided to make some changes in the hospital's cafeteria to motivate patients to eat
a healthier diet. Originally, the refrigerators in the cafeteria would only contain soda, so Anne and
her colleagues decided to add more water bottles to these refrigerators. They also added more
baskets with water all around the cafeteria, and the result? The number of soft drink sales
fell by 11.4% while water sales increased by 25.8% therefore, we can see how our environment
definitely affects our decision-making. We can get rid of a significant number of
decisions just by already planning them or making their decision process automatic. Have you
heard about how Ulysses told his crew to tie him to the mast so that he wouldn't be captivated by
the mermaids? He was already planning in advance. Take some time to understand the important
tasks that you need to do during your day, create a routine. Research shows that a new
habit can be created in approximately 66 days, so understand what you need to do, start doing
it, and create a routine from that. By building a routine, you won't have to exercise your willpower
because you won't have to decide to do something, you will just do it because it has become
a fixed part of your day. I have an example of my own. I planned that Tuesday would be
the day on which I would write the scripts for my YouTube videos and even though I
don't like the act of writing very much, I do it every Tuesday because that's part of my
plan. Every Tuesday morning I don't have to decide whether or not to write because writing scripts
on Tuesday has already become a habit of mine. You can also plan your daily decisions the night
before. For example, what are you going to wear to work or if you are going to the gym the next
day. I know these seem like ordinary decisions, but if you stop to think our day is
already full of these ordinary decisions, how about reducing them and saving your
willpower for more important decisions? I know you guys have been skipping some meals,
huh, I've got my eyes on you. Did you know that our brains represent 1/50 of our body mass,
but they consume 1/5 of the calories we burn to obtain energy? An article published in 2007 in
the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology pointed out nine independent studies on the
impacts of diet on willpower. In one study, researchers assigned tasks that required
or did not require the use of willpower, and then they measured the participants' blood
sugar levels before and after each one of the tasks. The participants who had exercised
their willpower showed a significant drop in blood glucose levels. In another study, between
one task and another that demanded willpower, some participants would get lemonade sweetened
with sugar and some would get lemonade sweetened artificially. On the following task, those
who drank the artificially sweetened lemonade committed twice as many mistakes as those who
had lemonade with sugar. What we can understand from those studies is that our willpower needs to
be refueled, we need to feed our mind in order to make good decisions. Foods that contain complex
carbohydrates are great for supplying the energy our minds need. By eating healthily, you will not
only be taking care of your physical body, but also setting yourself up for good decision-making.
Willpower is like a muscle. It can get fatigued, but just like a muscle, it can also be
strengthened. We can change our attitudes and live a life in which our decisions get better and
better every day. By using your willpower wisely, you will be able to make the most of your
decisions and make consistent progress on the things that are important to you. Thank
you so much for watching this video. I hope it inspired you in some way, please consider
liking the video and subscribing because that will help me a lot. I'll see you in the
next video. Have a lovely day or night. bye
