How do you grow willpower? | Hacker News Reader

How do you grow willpower?

scottberkun.com

29 pointsrantfoil33 comments

"I refuse to grant credibility to anyone using a study to support an argument without a reference. If the study was published I can read it myself and see what it actually says."

Red Herring. There are widely-known tools to look up research articles, and it's not conventional to cite such articles in newspapers because the journals are not easily accessible to the general public.

I wonder how many other things he refuses to believe in because he's never read the papers?

Ugh. Then he follows his straw man with an over-generalization and appeal to ridicule:

"anyone with above average willpower has a busy enough life not to have time to participate in psychological surveys"

and an appeal to personal belief (which also happens to be biased, and begs the original question):

"I think I possess above average powers of will, but I would never test them against things I thought were pointless."

Finally, he closes by quoting a section of the original article out of context, and misinterpreting the meaning:

"there are tons of higher level masters of teaching willpower, but since they don’t have neuroscience degrees, this article neglects to give them a voice....Why use 10% of the article on a guess, when a phone call could bring an expert with data."

(the original Times article explains that the theory of glucose-induced willpower was tested in specific experiments, and found to have some merit.)

For a guy who wants to take a science reporter to task for sloppy reporting, he sure does play fast-and-loose with the logical fallacies....

That first point has merit. Studies and surveys in general always pretend to be dealing with random samples, but that's never the case.

You're committing to the same fallacy. I don't care what "studies in general" do -- I care what this study did.

Same goes for your use of the words "always" and "never" -- given that sample bias is a well-known scientific phenomenon, you're going to have to provide extraordinary evidence to convince me that studies "always" make the mistake...that's a rather extraordinary claim.

C'mon. If I say, "Okay, here's my random sample", and it's a self-selected group, you know immediately it's not a random sample. Whether or not this matters has much to do with whether we are testing physiological or pyschological criteria.

C'mon nothing:

A) I don't know if the study authors claimed that they used a "random sample" (not all experiments require it).

B) Even if it wasn't a "random sample", unless the selection bias was correlated with the trait under study, it's highly unlikely to matter.

C) All of this is window dressing. The point is, Berkun's argument was overly general ("Anyone with..."), and based on ridicule of the experiment, without actually knowing anything about the experiment (by his own admission!)

If Berkun knew the details of the experiment, and was pointing out a methodological flaw, he'd be making an argument. Instead, he's speaking from the comfort of ignorance, attacking a study based on second-hand information and his own personal biases.

fwiw, in my experience, when i read the papers, they suck. (have not read the article, not defending the guy, just commenting on papers)

For all I know, it's the worst paper in the world; that's not the point.

This guy rejected the credibility of the newspaper article (and hence, the reporter), because s/he didn't cite a research paper.

I didn't say that was the point, nor say anything to indicate I didn't get the point (so no need to repeat it).

Do you know why people take things personally just because they are the parent post, even if the content doesn't criticize them?

I didn't take anything you said personally.

You didn't? Then why'd you say how you took it?

Grow willpower? It's not a sprint, the harder thing is sustaining willpower.

The trick is balance.

Force yourself to take breaks and give yourself rewards. I finished a big piece of code on Tuesday and went for a bike ride to the Persidio. Exercise is also a great way to deal with stress.

Eat well, splurge a little and make sure you are eating foods high in Omega-3. Your brain will thank you.

Talk to your friends about your ideas. It is energizing evangelizing your ideas and getting people passionate. Doing so over a pint at the Toronado is a bonus.

And finally have fun! We have one life to live, do something that you deeply care about.

If a short-term motivational boost like attending a conference/event (Startup Weekend) is like "fast food" (sugar rush, temporary infusion of can-do'ism enters your system quickly and exits just as quickly, no real long-term benefit (unless of course, you apply will-power...)

Then applying will-power to a challenge is like "Fibercon" - not the most pleasant to subject yourself, something you have to intend yourself to do regularly/everyday..and better for you in the long-run.

I'd like to share with you one of my favorite essays that I've read - it's about Salsa dancing but it's really on 'willpower' and the importance of effort over time: http://www.unlikelysalsero.com/2007/08/magic-of-time-last-on...

Growing willpower is pretty much impossible for me--I'm smart enough to reason my way out of anything, even if it's something that will benefit me in the end (ie: exercise). The key is to not think about it. If I start to think about not wanting to go to the gym, I won't go. I realized that I was doing this, and decided to use my incredibly stubborn nature to defeat it.

I just say, "No."

Cliche, yes, but it works. It works so well, in fact, that none of my friends will discuss anything with me if I'm in a jovial mood, as when the argument begins to look up for them, and I no longer feel like defending my own point of view, I will simply contradict whatever they say.

I'm sure they also hate that I'll start arguing fine points that really have no relevance to the topic at hand, but...haha.

Willpower is exactly that, the strength of your will. The person with a strong will will do exactly as he decides fit, regardless of arguments presented by any camp, including his own.

Some call it will power, some call it determination. Even others call it perseverance. But in the end, it is pure OBSTINANCE.

"As a baseline, anyone with above average willpower has a busy enough life not to have time to participate in psychological surveys."

I wonder if that's true. Aren't a lot of psych experiments done with college students? I think I know a lot of people with above average willpower that did psych experiments in college because they were kind of fun and paid pretty well.

>The real problem here is that it’s hard to respect any article that mentions a study without providing references. I refuse to grant credibility to anyone using a study to support an argument without a reference. If the study was published I can read it myself and see what it actually says.

Unfortunately, most research today is behind a pay-wall, leaving little opportunity for an average Joe to check it.

>The real problem here is that it’s hard to respect any article that mentions a study without providing references.

This guy wrote two books and doesn't know how to use Google?

1) seek what you aim for

2) work on interestring problems; toil hard and achieve them

3) remind yourseves first two things whenever you are alone

"Willpower" is a word to describe a non-issue.

"What, you don't beat your children? What willpower!"

"You'd rather miss a meal than rob a bank? What willpower!"

"You don't murder your enemies? What willpower!"

Funny how easy life gets when you stop thinking about "willpower" and start doing the right thing.

'Willpower' may be a vague term, but it describes a real issue. It describes the difficulty of people who have long term goals that get subsumed by short term urges.

We all have drives, say for example the drive to mate and the drive to eat, and these drives compete: can't mate if we don't stay thin, can't be thin if we eat those cookies. In the long term someone may want to lose weight, but the short term impulse to eat can override that goal, even if intellectually we know what we'd prefer. I suspect that human action is as much driven by our chemical drives as our intellectual choices.

Willpower refers to the ability to use the rational element of our psyche to repress the baser elements rather than having the baser elements override the rational. The more willpower someone has, the more he acts based on reason rather than instinct.

You're only saying that b/c you've never been in a situation where you were compelled to do the "wrong" thing. :-)

My probation officer would beg to disagree.

</sarcasm>

They actually have a lot of the pieces out there but unconnected. I will answer the question.

Willpower is an equilibrium between two distinct drives, one of which is a drive to act, and one of which is an inhibitory drive. The first step to growing willpower is to make sure your lack of willpower isn't caused by a biological problem or a mental health problem. Before struggling too long to grow willpower, have a physical, have your thyroid level checked, and get a mental health evaluation.

The reason you can build willpower is that it is an equilibrium between the parts of your brain that produce fear and anxiety and the parts of your brain that produce good feelings. Your right prefrontal cortex produces negative emotions, and your left prefrontal cortex produces positive emotions. This circuitry is linked up to the circuitry that primes your body to move. Assuming no mental or physical illness, willpower is simply a measure of the relation between these systems.

We know that monks who meditate for 10,000 hours have much greater gamma ray function. Gamma rays underlie large scale brain synchronization. These monks also had a different relationship between the left and right prefrontal cortexs (corti?). In monks, the positive emotion producing left prefrontal cortex was much more active than the right. Also, they were much more primed to move.

Meditation, particularly certain kinds from Zen Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism, are scientifically proven to work on this, to such a degree that neuroscientists haven't seen some of those neurological states in normal people. From studying these monks, we know what to do.

It's scientifically proven that you can grow willpower by getting a physical, and a mental health eval, and then meditating. It's the best, most efficient way. Everything the nyt article lists as a way of increasing willpower is an example of an activity where you must be continually bringing your attention into the present. I don't want to sound like some stupid hippy, but meditation can be the most concentrated way to practice this focusing of attention, and directing your focus in certain Tibetan buddhist ways hits all the main parts of increasing motivation.

I consulted http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma8/monkstudy.html to refresh my memory on the monk neurology study.

I think exercising the mind is the hardest thing to do because it's so easy to take the path of least resistance.

What are your thoughts on the (1) Marathon Monks of Japan and (2) the Lung-Gom-Pa's (near mythical if not mystical) of Tibet?

(1) http://www.millennium-tv.com/Monks.htm (2) http://www.planetultramarathon.com/lunggomparunners.htm

Great links, thanks.

Here's a video for anyone who's interested: http://youtube.com/watch?v=S06oMxdt40A

Exercising anything is hard to do because it's much easier to do nothing.

[...] the left and right prefrontal cortexs (corti?) [...]

Cortices.

Very interesting comment! I find it slightly paradoxical that I associate Buddhist meditation with a passive attitude of just accepting the present and suppressing earthly desire, yet according to what you say, that activity actually improves one's ability to persist in the active pursuit of one's desires. Not a true contradiction, of course: both are instances of suppressing immediate desires in favor of more significant, delayed ones.

Besides any long term neurological benefits, I read once or twice that meditation and relaxation have an immediate effect of helping relieve the stress that lies at the root of most cases of procrastination.

"Besides any long term neurological benefits, I read once or twice that meditation and relaxation have an immediate effect of helping relieve the stress that lies at the root of most cases of procrastination."

You are right. This is because when you exhale, it calms the amygdala, which manages fear. The pattern of breathing in meditation over time causes a cumulative effect, and you end up with less stress, and less inhibition. At the same time, if doing a meditation where you direct focus, you are priming parts of your brain involved in focus and attention. Like I said before, motivation is an equilibrium involving inhibition (potentially caused by fear). Meditation is great for motivation.

I wouldn't go as far as to say most cases of procrastination would be fixed by meditation, though. Procrastination can have multiple causes. I'd say a failure to have clearly thought something through or unconscious psychological resistance would be more likely factors in procrastination, and meditation would not remove that stress as readily as logic or psychotherapy would, respectively.

Sorry, I meant anxiety rather than stress. Anyway, I was wrong in saying that either thing lies at the root; you can go deeper and find the causes of anxiety and stress in order to fix them. Lack of preparation and psychological fears sound like usual suspects.

(Just reordering my own thoughts here; I'm no expert.)

As neat as being being able to produce gamma rays with my brain would be, (see: 'I can kill you with my brain.') I think you meant gamma waves.

You mean you never heard of the Lotus Bloom Gamma Death Ray Compassion Flower Monks of tibet?

You are right, thanks.

Don't try.

Instead, find a way to want the thing. Really want it. No tricks; they don't work.

You can't pretend passion (and sustain it).

Even if you want the thing, some of the stuff you need to do to get the thing may be less immediately rewarding than other stuff you could be doing instead. Even if you consciously know it's worth it in the end, there are subconscious forces within us that are not as far seeing.

So you need willpower to get past some local lows. Without it, you'd have to restrict yourself to goals that can be accomplished with only constant enjoyment along the way. That leaves out many worthy goals, and most opportunities to create value.

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