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Interesting idea. Maybe I'll try it. I fear, though, that it'll just end with me lying in bed for an extra twenty minutes every day, not wanting to get up and f
by hugh3 15y ago
Interesting idea. Maybe I'll try it. I fear, though, that it'll just end with me lying in bed for an extra twenty minutes every day, not wanting to get up and face the cold shower.
Some say that willpower is like a muscle, and that the more you use it the more you develop it. On the other hand, maybe willpower is more like... a muscle, and if you use it too much on any given day then it just gets worn out. Will a cold shower before breakfast be followed by donuts for lunch?
- wccrawford 15y agoI have to agree. I have a nice morning routine that starts my day off right. If I tried to add intentional pain to that routine, it would not be a good thing. This might be something to do on the weekends, or afternoons, or something... But not my mornings.
- jasonshen 15y agoI taught a course on the Psychology of Personal Change in college and there are papers that suggest that willpower resembles a muscle - in that it can degrade over time. But there are also other studies that suggest it can also be built up over time - like a muscle. Would you say that doing pushups in the morning is a bad thing? Yes, you're more tired later in the day, but if you keep doing it, you'll get stronger and stronger.
- hugh3 15y agoYep. Of course there's no particular reason to think that the muscle analogy needs to be accurate either way, though.
- jasonshen 15y agoWell, actually there is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion
- jamesaguilar 15y agoHmm, it seems like the research is pretty thin at present. I'm going to file this under "slightly more likely to be true than not" until I see more information.
- rprospero 15y agoI am not a psychologist, but I've seen some interesting articles on how self-control is a semi-finite resource. The article linked to below was particularly interesting, as it even had a mechanism. Specifically, the participants' self-control was lowered when their glucose level was low and their glucose level dropped when they used their self-control http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/92/2/325/ http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/92/2/325/ Thus, the cold shower might not just be followed with donuts for lunch, but the lunch donuts may be necessary to skip having heroin for dinner. To re-iterate, I'm not a psychologist, so take all of this with a grain of salt.