This is Optimal Living Daily.

This is what most people get wrong about willpower by Neerayal of near and far.com,

and I'm Justomalic, your narrator and host, reading you articles with a bit of my own commentary at the end.

Without further ado, let's get right to it as we optimize your life.

This is what most people get wrong about willpower by near a-all of near and far.com.

You come home after a long day of work and you immediately curl yourself up on the couch

and binge the latest Netflix craze for hours while you scroll

and scroll through your social media feeds and snack on potato chips even though you're on a diet.

You look around and see that garbage needs to be taken out, laundry needs to be folded,

and your child's toys are strewn across the living room floor.

The list of productive things you could be doing seem endless,

yet you can't seem to find the willpower to peel yourself off of the couch to do them.

Is this a regular occurrence for you? Do you realize that you are in this rut but can't seem

to find the willpower to overcome it? You're definitely not alone in this situation.

This is called ego depletion. Ego depletion is a theory that willpower is connected

to a limited reserve of mental energy, and once you run out of that energy, you're more likely to lose self-control.

This theory would seem to explain your post-work defeat. But new studies suggest that we've been thinking about willpower all wrong and that the theory

of ego depletion isn't true. Even worse, holding on to the idea that willpower is a limited

resource can actually be bad for you, making you more likely to lose control and act against

your better judgment. The real nature of willpower. In a study conducted by Stanford psychologist Carol Deweck and her colleagues, published in the

proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Duet concluded that signs of ego depletion were

observed only in those test subjects who believed willpower was a limited resource.

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