Excellent idea! I’ve tried various anti-procrastination schemes but not this.
On another note, one thing I’ve noticed of myself is that at the moment that I have an important insight or get something really working I’m inclined to get up from my desk and grab a drink or go talk to a friend or something similar. It always involves getting up and walking away from my desk, and I never actually need the drink or have a good reason to chat. I often don’t realise that I’m going it until I’m a couple of paces away. Anybody else experienced this?
I experience a similar compulsion that doesn’t involve walking away, but generally launching a browser, and I don’t realize what I’m doing until some site like Facebook or LessWrong is already loading.
Sometimes I catch myself before the site actually loads, close the browser, and continue working.
I believe it is possible to increase one’s willpower reserve. I follow a simple technique to that effect. Every time my willpower to do something is over, I stretch myself to do that activity a little longer. Next time, I find myself stretching it beyond that and so on until I have a sufficient reserve of willpower for that activity.
So… when your willpower is all gone, you continue doing the activity with… what?
Although, I have no desire to do it, I force myself to do it. So it can be argued that it is till your willpower to do it. But this willpower is not for the activity but for the sheer reason of doing a little more of an activity. Thus, this willpower is orthogonal to the willpower of doing the activity.
An article in the NY times is an interesting read, mentions something close to my technique.
Not to be confrontational, but it sounds much more likely to me that you’re not really out of willpower when you first think to yourself that you are, but are instead experiencing one of the common self-reporting biases.
I could certainly be wrong, though—have you been keeping records, and if so, has your technique resulted in a measurable increase in willpower?
I think it is possible that pushing oneself close to the limit of one’s willpower reserves could cause increase overall reserves in the future.
Consider the case of over-eating, in which pushing oneself close to the limit of stomach capacity causes the stomach to stretch and hence increase in capacity for the future.
That’s not to say it actually does, just that it could.
More importantly, though, the “willpower reserve” is a fairly coarse model, not a detailed map of actual brain functioning (though if anyone knows of detailed empirical investigation of this phenomenon then I’d be very interested). I don’t think it’s productive to probe in such detail—it’s like trying to discern houses from a low-resolution map of the entire Earth.
“As a final practical maxim, relative to these habits of the will, we may, then, offer something like this: Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or 2 something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.
Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin.”
--William James, The Principles of Psychology 1890, Chapter IV
Excellent idea! I’ve tried various anti-procrastination schemes but not this.
On another note, one thing I’ve noticed of myself is that at the moment that I have an important insight or get something really working I’m inclined to get up from my desk and grab a drink or go talk to a friend or something similar. It always involves getting up and walking away from my desk, and I never actually need the drink or have a good reason to chat. I often don’t realise that I’m going it until I’m a couple of paces away. Anybody else experienced this?
I experience a similar compulsion that doesn’t involve walking away, but generally launching a browser, and I don’t realize what I’m doing until some site like Facebook or LessWrong is already loading.
Sometimes I catch myself before the site actually loads, close the browser, and continue working.
I believe it is possible to increase one’s willpower reserve. I follow a simple technique to that effect. Every time my willpower to do something is over, I stretch myself to do that activity a little longer. Next time, I find myself stretching it beyond that and so on until I have a sufficient reserve of willpower for that activity.
So… when your willpower is all gone, you continue doing the activity with… what?
Although, I have no desire to do it, I force myself to do it. So it can be argued that it is till your willpower to do it. But this willpower is not for the activity but for the sheer reason of doing a little more of an activity. Thus, this willpower is orthogonal to the willpower of doing the activity.
An article in the NY times is an interesting read, mentions something close to my technique.
Translation: when it feels like my willpower is gone—that is, when my “main supply” of willpower is gone—I tap into the “backup reserves” for a while.
[Edit: I said something stupid here. Removed.]
Not to be confrontational, but it sounds much more likely to me that you’re not really out of willpower when you first think to yourself that you are, but are instead experiencing one of the common self-reporting biases.
I could certainly be wrong, though—have you been keeping records, and if so, has your technique resulted in a measurable increase in willpower?
I think it is possible that pushing oneself close to the limit of one’s willpower reserves could cause increase overall reserves in the future.
Consider the case of over-eating, in which pushing oneself close to the limit of stomach capacity causes the stomach to stretch and hence increase in capacity for the future.
That’s not to say it actually does, just that it could.
More importantly, though, the “willpower reserve” is a fairly coarse model, not a detailed map of actual brain functioning (though if anyone knows of detailed empirical investigation of this phenomenon then I’d be very interested). I don’t think it’s productive to probe in such detail—it’s like trying to discern houses from a low-resolution map of the entire Earth.
--William James, The Principles of Psychology 1890, Chapter IV
The intended meaning was not obvious to me, either. Please try not to commit the Mind Projection Fallacy.