Good Life Project - How Thinking Kills Willpower (and what to do about it)

Episode Date: March 4, 2016

There's a somewhat ironic relationship between willpower and thinking. They don't play nicely with each other.The more you tax your brain with what we'd call a "cognitive load," the more your ability to regulate your behaviors craters.So, if you're working on a complex problem under deadline or trying to innovate or create, there's a good chance that, while you're in that hyper-thinking, innovating, creating mode, you'll be more susceptible to temptation. Big time!And, interestingly, even the slightest increase in demand for thinking and working memory can shut down your willpower plant. As we'll talk about in today's GLP Riff, the difference between having to hold two or seven numbers in your memory can be the difference between making healthy choices or chowing down on cake!Most people deal with this by just trying to "be a better person" and "digging deeper" to resist the siren call of the cookie jar.But, there's another approach that is far more likely to keep you on the right track. It's about altering your environment. That's what we're talking about on today's short and sweet Good Life Project Riff. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die.

Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. If you're looking for flexible workouts, Peloton's got you covered. Summer runs or playoff season meditations, whatever your vibe, Peloton has thousands of classes built to push you. We know how life goes. New father, new routines, new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has

everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations,

iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Today, we're talking about willpower and cognitive load. What the heck does that mean? Well, I think it's kind of illustrated by a really cool experiment that was done a couple of years back. So, Stanford University, behavioral economist Babashev decides to run an experiment. And he gets a whole bunch of students involved, because that's what you do when you're at a university, you get to recruit undergrads and mess with them and create all sorts of fun experiments and see how they behave. So

he took the students and put them at the end of one long hallway. And one group of students was asked to memorize a two-digit number and hold it in their memory. So here's two digits. Remember this while you walk down the hall. Don't forget. Now the second group of students was given seven digits to actually remember while they're walking down the hall. So we got it. So one group, remember two digits while you walk down the hall. The other group, remember seven digit number while you walk down the hall. Now, both groups walk down the hall, and here's what happened at the end. And they didn't walk down simultaneously. It was one at a time, right? Student walking down the hall, remembering two numbers, walks down. And at the end end he gets presented with a choice. So you can either

have a piece of chocolate cake or a fruit salad, a little bowl of fruit salad. Now obviously what we're doing here is we're giving two options. We're given a choice. Are you going to choose the cake, which everyone kind of knows is not the healthier option, right? Or are you going to choose a fruit? So in our mind, are we choosing the thing that we know to be healthier or are we choosing the cake? And the thought is that for most people, choosing the fruit is going to require more self-regulation or more commonly said willpower.

There is a bit of difference in there, but let's just kind of like roll it into one for now. So will you choose cake or will you choose fruit? Will you exercise self-control or will you lose to the chocolate cake? Here's what happened. The people who were tasked with remembering seven digits instead of two, chose the cake far more often than the people who actually had to remember the two digits. In fact, they were almost twice as likely to choose the cake. They lost their self-control at an astonishingly higher rate by just having to remember five extra numbers. So if having to remember five extra numbers. So if having to remember five extra numbers

craters your self-control on that level, imagine what having to work fiercely and keep tons of data or information or bits of knowledge in your head that pile in there and stack in there all day long, imagine what that does to your self-control, to your self-regulation, to your willpower. Well, that's the Herculean battle that we all roll with on pretty much a daily basis

these days, including me. And in fact, I like to think, you know, I'm a grown up. I have a practice, meditation practice, movement practice. I'm pretty self-aware. You know, I like to think I'm in control of myself. Oh, no, not in the least. For the most part, I am. But like the students in this experiment, we behave the way we behave because we're wired to behave that way. The higher my cognitive load gets,

the higher the demands are for things like working memory, problem-solving,, decision making, creativity, the more my willpower tank, the more my self-control tank starts to run dry. And my ability to actually make good decisions starts to go lower and lower and lower. So how does this manifest in my own life? And maybe how does it manifest in yours? I'll give you an example. You guys know that I was recently working on a book.

When I have to hit a book deadline, when I'm building a project, when we're on deadline, we do launches for our company. When we're on deadline, all hands on deck, like everyone is hyper-focused. We're working fiendishly, keeping massive amounts of data in short-term memory, solving complex problems, putting out fires, having multiple conversations going on simultaneously, the cognitive load, the load on the part of the brain that is responsible for all that stuff is massive.

And it depletes its ability to tamp down the sort of like mad control impulse engine pretty quickly. So that if you wake up with a full self-regulation tank and you dive into a scenario like this, then by mid-afternoon, there's a good chance that if you walk by a vending machine or a shop or you go out for your afternoon coffee or tea and sitting there on the counter,

there's a little plastic container of fruit or protein or healthy, something healthy, a quick little healthy nosh, or there's a little round cylinder of like chocolate-covered almonds, you're going to choose the chocolate-covered almonds. Now, I am not against chocolate-covered almonds. In fact, I'm a massive fan. Give me, of course, organic dark chocolate, and I will be your friend for life. But what I'm saying is we lose the ability to actually make really good self-controlled decisions when cognitive load goes up. So I fought this for a really long time, And I'm coming around now to a realization. When I am engaged in a fairly substantial project where I know I'm going to have to

keep a lot of stuff in my head, I'm going to have to be solving problems on a nonstop basis. I'm going to be creating all sorts of stuff, all sorts of somethings from nothings. I'm going to be having conversations and my mind is going to be filled and tasked on a pretty fierce level from the time I open my eyes to the time I go to bed. At some point, I'm going to not be really good at keeping my hands out of the cookie jar. Now, I could beat myself up over this. I could say, what kind of an idiot am I? I'm a grownup. How can I not have this level of self-regulation? Or I can just own it and do

something else. And that's what I'm starting to do right now. Because this year is lining up with some astonishing new projects that you guys are about to see as the year unfolds. I can't wait actually to share what's been in the wings behind for a while. It's going to happen soon, but it's requiring a huge amount of effort from me, from my whole team. And what I realized is that my self-control over my nutrition has really become an issue. So I could fight it. I could try and like really will myself to be better, which by the way, willing myself to have more self-regulation

is also going to take a certain amount of firepower away from my cognitive and creative abilities. Now, I don't want to do that. So what's the answer? The answer is change your environment. Clean that sucker out. So you see this, you know, in like all the diet books and the diet programs are like, okay, first stop, let's clean out your kitchen.

Let's clean out the house. And everybody, you know, like you make fun of that. Oh, that's for like grownups who don't have any self-control. It's not for me. The truth is it's for anybody who lives a complex life where you have to solve a lot of problems, do a lot of things simultaneously, and be hyper-creative.

By the time you get home, your ability to resist and your ability to make really good choices that require a lot of self-control has cratered. So the better option, change your environment. And that's what I'm in the process of doing right now. So what I do is first I integrate all the behaviors that I do want to do and that I

hold really important. You guys already know I take most of my meetings walking. I do most of my phone calls walking. I'm in the middle of the winter right now. So how can I change that? Well, I have a standing desk, an adjustable desk, and a little stepper, mini stepper. And if you happen to catch me on Skype or have a meeting with me, you'll probably hear me a little bit breathless and I will be bouncing in and out of the frame. More importantly, as the day goes and my cognitive load ramps and my

self-control plummets, instead of having noshes and snacks that aren't great for me, I'm going to have things like bags of pre-sliced and chopped red and orange and yellow peppers or carrots. Instead of bowls of pretzels or cookies or M&Ms, I'm going to have things that are healthy for me, things that are good for me. And when I get home at night, instead of cupboards and a refrigerator full of all sorts of stuff I shouldn't be consuming, I'm going to clean that out. Because if my environment does not offer the opportunity to make bad choices, then I'm only left with one thing. My environment forces the choice rather than me having to rely on non-existent self-control, right? It's not a judgment thing. It's not a thing where like you're weak. It's neurology and it's chemistry. When you reach a certain part of the day, when your brain is functioning in a certain way, it's basic science. So rather than fight the science, change your environment,

and you will see some pretty astonishing changes in your ability to behave in a way that you want to behave and to build routines and habits in a way that are constructive rather than destructive. Hope that's helpful. As always, I'm largely thinking out loud with these Good Life Project Riffs and reflecting the sometimes awakening, sometimes struggles that are going on in my own process and my

own life. If you have ideas and that you'd love me to speak to, you're always free to email us and ask your questions because I love responding to questions as well. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you found something valuable, entertaining, engaging, or just plain fun, I'd be so appreciative if you take a couple extra seconds and share it. Maybe you want to email it to a friend. Maybe you want to share it around social media.

Or even be awesome if you'd head over to iTunes and just give us a rating. Every little bit helps get the word out, and it helps more people get in touch with the message. I'm Jonathan Fields going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him.

We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch

getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations iPhone XS or later required charge time and actual results will vary.