Why you should conserve your willpower

Willpower is your ability to say “no” to your impulses. It is not something you either have or don’t have, but it actually increases and drops during the course of the day.

This is important to know because in order to actualise your goals, you have to be able to delay gratification and utilise your willpower to do so. What you may also not realise is that you are using your willpower all day and every day, without even knowing it. In fact, you use your willpower in every decision you make, from deciding whether to laugh at a joke you just heard to deciding what you choose to wear today.

Some people believe they have less willpower than others but this is simply not true. We all have willpower, but circumstances have a major impact on our willpower. These circumstances include how tired you are and what you have eaten today.

What has also recently been uncovered in research about willpower is that your willpower is a limited resource and the more you use it in a day, the less you may have left at the end of it. Just like any muscle, the more you exercise your willpower the stronger it becomes, but overuse will leave it fatigued. While you may think not having a strong willpower is a behavioural problem, it is more likely to be a situational problem where your willpower is low because of a difficult day.

Another way of understanding this is by calling it (as doctors now do) decision fatigue, which is labelled as one of the most common reasons people lose momentum when trying to build new habits.

A recent study published by the National Academy of Sciences showed that the factors that impact whether or not a judge grants parole to a criminal have little to do with laws broken or crimes committed. The biggest impactors on these decisions were in fact the time of day and whether or not the judge had eaten. At the beginning of the day, a judge was likely to give a favourable ruling about 65% of the time. Later in the morning, as the judge became drained, this number dropped to zero. Then after taking a lunch break and eating a meal, the number would jump back up to 65% only to fall back to zero again by the end of the day. It did not matter what the crime was, but there was a consistent link between the time of the day and the judge’s ruling.

This is decision fatigue, and it demonstrates that the more decisions you make over the course of a day, the worse your decision-making becomes. Decision fatigue happens every day of your life. If you have a particularly decision-heavy day at work, you come home feeling drained. What often happens is that even though you want to go to the gym, your brain defaults to the easy decision of sitting on the couch.

It is estimated that by the time the average person goes to bed they would have made 35,000 decisions on that day. This includes everything from what we eat to how we handle situations. All these decisions take time and energy, and can make us feel tired.

Decision fatigue is cumulative and this is why we feel more tired about making decisions as the day progresses.

However, there is a difference between decision fatigue and indecisiveness. Decision fatigue sets in after making decisions all day, while indecisiveness usually stems from a low selfesteem, according to experts. Someone who is habitually indecisive often fears making the wrong decision. Both of these conditions can be fixed, but decision fatigue usually autocorrects after a few hours of rest, whereas indecisiveness takes time and more effort to overcome.

Here are some steps we can take to deal with our decision fatigue:

1. MAKE BIG DECISIONS IN THE MORNING

Research shows we make our best and most thoughtful decisions in the morning. The afternoon is when we hit a plateau and by the evening our decisions tend to be automated and impulsive.

If you have to make an important decision later in the day, eat something first. It is no coincidence that the judges became better decision makers after eating.

2. EAT AND SLEEP WELL

Getting enough sleep and eating a nutritious meal has been shown to do wonders for our decision-making. Make sure you have good snacks during the day and stay hydrated. Taking regular work breaks to replenish your brain is also a great help.

3. COMMIT TO SCHEDULES INSTEAD OF DECISIONS

Schedule those elements that you can control. For example, have a set time for lunch and schedule your exercise routine, thereby leaving less room for relying on your willpower to make the decision to do something.

Willpower is like a muscle – we all have it, but it needs exercise to fully develop. You can maximise your willpower with a few changes, but understanding decision fatigue will help you to make the best decisions for your life.

And remember that being tired or hungry is the enemy of good decisions. As Walter Reisch said, “Tired minds don’t plan well. Sleep first, then plan later.”

Kirsty Watermeyer