Episode 136 - Decision Fatigue and My Total Lack of Willpower

It's only one croissant - what could go wrong?

The Thursday Thesis – 31/1/2019

Picture this: It’s 11pm and I’m in the local Co-op to pick up fresh milk for tomorrow’s morning coffee.

Will this end well?

Erm, you’ve got to be kidding!

11pm is the wrong end of the day for me to be anywhere near the following substances, which should be available only on prescription: chocolate, bread, cheese, cookies, peanut butter, mayonnaise and cake.

You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?

Any person who drifts into a shop which sells food that late in the evening is probably going to do something stupid. – again.

Especially if that person is me, and I’ve been on the go non-stop since stupid o’clock.
It’s not that I’m extraordinarily stupid (though some might dispute that it could be a factor), it’s just that 11pm is at the end of my working day, and that’s the very time when willpower and the ability to make good judgements is most under threat.

In their book Willpower, Roy Baumeister and John Tierney discuss Baumeister’s research into willpower (unsurprisingly) and what makes people make stupid decisions, even though they know full well that the decision they are about to make is stupid, dangerous, wrong-headed or self-destructive.

From political suicide to self-sabotage, drug use and dietary dysfunction, the book pulls in data from multiple studies for meta analysis alongside Baumeister’s work and collates the body of data into a theory of willpower and decision making.

The essence of their work can be summed up in a single sentence: Willpower is a finite resource which you can consciously manage, conserve or expend.

Now, this is deeply cool for anyone who occasionally pigs-out on a giant bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, has a few too many beers, or buys just one guitar too many.
We all do it - just occasionally, mind you - not all the time; well, not often, or hardly ever, not in a way that’s really worth mentioning...

You know how it goes, and if you don’t make awful spur-of-the-moment decisions you probably know someone who does.

But why do we make so many daft decisions; why do we do the very thing that we don’t want to do, or buy what we don’t want to buy?

We’re not stupid – far from it in many cases.

The problem is that we are depleted of will power; we have Decision Fatigue, according to Baumeister’s theory.

Roy thinks that we begin the day with a metaphorical full tank of willpower fuel: we’ve slept, reset our minds and our body’s energy stores are back up to full power. From the moment we rise we are starting to consume our willpower reserves, with every decision nibbling away at a tiny amount of what we have in the tank.

The funny thing is that everything counts; everything adds up – whether it’s your decision over which jacket to wear to the office or whether you should have a latte at Costa or Starbuck’s.

Deciding not to wreak physical violence on your moron colleague for driving you mental is a decision.

Everything is a decision and every decision is a call on your finite resources of willpower, and it’s all tied to your glucose levels. When your glucose levels are way down your body sends up a signal to go to the bloody Co-op to buy food: preferably food that will spike your glucose levels.

So, in the example of my own late-night trundles up to the Co-op, it’s no surprise to find tired and hungry me with a guilty bagful of bread, cheese and all the other crappy foods that make me feel like death warmed up the morning after I’ve binged on them.

And food hangovers are the worst – every bit as bad as the distant memories of too many mammoth hangovers in my younger days. Too much salt means I wake up with a ferocious thirst, and all that cheese has overdosed me on casomorphin, the addictive opioid that ensures baby cows return to the teat for nourishment.

But even worse than the food hangover’s physical symptoms is the inevitable conclusion that I’m a hopeless twat with no self-control and zero willpower. Fortunately, there’s usually a chunk of cheese and a hunk of crusty bread to chobble on while I wonder what went wrong...again.

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu says that the greatest victory is the battle that is not fought, meaning that the best generals win victory without setting foot on the field of battle. So the Co-op is my battleground, and to the outside observer it’s probably obvious what I should do: stop going to the bloody Co-op late at night.

Baumeister’s research screams “don’t make decisions when you are tired and hungry”, and Sun Tzu says “the Co-op – don’t go there!”

Kinda.

So what can we do to make better decisions?

1: Eliminate unnecessary decisions – wear only grey t-shirts and blue jeans on teaching days so that I never have to decide what to wear. No choice, no stress.

2: Avoid making decisions when you are tired, emotional or hungry - for some of us that’s all the time, so good luck with that one. Don’t go shopping when you are hungry.

3: Avoid places where temptation lurks – it’s not just the Co-op – avoid anywhere that sells your downfall foods, drinks or drug of choice. Ditto for any other temptations.
4: Automate your decisions – I use the same shopping list every time I go to the supermarket: it lists only “good” foods, fruit and veg etc and there’s a tick box for each item. There’s no cheese, bread, chocolate etc on the list, but that means I can have anything that is on the list.

There’s truckloads of research showing that shoppers who use a list are much better at regulating purchases of junk food and alcohol – they seem to have outsourced willpower to their shopping lists.

Will this give you amazing willpower?

No, but it will give you the same outcomes as someone with absolute, iron-clad self control and superhuman willpower, and I’d settle for that, wouldn’t you?
 

© Neil Cowmeadow 2019

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