I am aware of ego depletion. What am I not convinced of is that general work, in any area, will increase the time it takes prior to ego depletion. Could you perhaps point me in the direction of any appropriate research?
Furthermore, if this were true, why would it only apply to what you termed ‘productive’ and not ‘consumptive’ work? Would studying for a class not apply to this rationale? If not, why not? If so, wouldn’t reading Less Wrong also help extend the ‘time to ego-depletion’?
This is a clever idea, but could you provide more information? I see how it would make sense intuitively, but is there any evidence suggesting that doing any work, regardless of what it is, for a certain amount of time can improve performance/focus on a very specific task?
If I ‘work’ for forty hours next week on reading LW, it will have a direct improvement on other areas, say on how much school work I would be comfortable doing?