I was recently wondering what is the current best knowledge about “willpower”. (Looking at what is in the water supply of the rationalist community, I got an impression that if you say “willpower depletion”, someone will immediately tell you that it was debunked; but if you say “limited spoons”, people will agree… and I am not really sure what exactly is the difference between those two concepts.)
This article suggests that agency is on a spectrum between “acting on pure instinct” and “procrastinating forever”; obviously, being stuck at either extreme is harmful. What we practice more, is what we are more likely to do in the future. And given that successfully civilized people usually practice inaction, the average person should deliberately practice action. You can’t do it always, because sometimes the decision to do it later is the right one; but that is precisely why you should regularly balance it by doing something else immediately.
Lack of practicing agency makes one unhappy, so if you do not practice agency, you get depressed, and sometimes a part of your brain tries to fix the balance by doing stupid things on impulse, such as buying expensive and useless things. (From certain perspective, the possibility and easiness of doing stupid things on impulse works as a safety valve for capitalism, or perhaps civilization in general. It is what people do after a frustrating day at job in order to preserve their sanity.) A problem with this fix is that a repeated stupid impulsive action gradually becomes a habit, so your now brain needs more stupid actions to feel agenty again.
This is good material for thought. I wonder about implications of what feels agenty...
This seems obviously related to the job/hobby distinction; how hobby becomes less fun when it becomes job. Some people say it is because the job inevitably also contains some boring parts. Which is true, but maybe more important is that job feels like something you have to do, while hobby feels like a small rebellion against the system; and by converting your hobby into job you lose the feeling of free choice. Similarly, it is dangerous if your projects are your only source of agency, because starting a new project feels more agenty than continuing an existing one, so you will feel the need to abandon existing projects and start new ones to keep the same feeling of freedom.
Also makes me think how micromanagement kills agency at work. Even if you have to work 8 hours for your boss, you can still find tiny pieces of freedom at choosing which task to do first, or which specific approach to try. That is, unless your manager carefully prioritizes all items in your sprint, makes you plan all details in advance, and then uses daily standups to check that you do not deviate from the predetermined path. (This is technically against the rules of Scrum, because the manager is not even supposed to be at your daily standup… not that it ever actually stopped anyone...)
I was recently wondering what is the current best knowledge about “willpower”. (Looking at what is in the water supply of the rationalist community, I got an impression that if you say “willpower depletion”, someone will immediately tell you that it was debunked; but if you say “limited spoons”, people will agree… and I am not really sure what exactly is the difference between those two concepts.)
This article suggests that agency is on a spectrum between “acting on pure instinct” and “procrastinating forever”; obviously, being stuck at either extreme is harmful. What we practice more, is what we are more likely to do in the future. And given that successfully civilized people usually practice inaction, the average person should deliberately practice action. You can’t do it always, because sometimes the decision to do it later is the right one; but that is precisely why you should regularly balance it by doing something else immediately.
Lack of practicing agency makes one unhappy, so if you do not practice agency, you get depressed, and sometimes a part of your brain tries to fix the balance by doing stupid things on impulse, such as buying expensive and useless things. (From certain perspective, the possibility and easiness of doing stupid things on impulse works as a safety valve for capitalism, or perhaps civilization in general. It is what people do after a frustrating day at job in order to preserve their sanity.) A problem with this fix is that a repeated stupid impulsive action gradually becomes a habit, so your now brain needs more stupid actions to feel agenty again.
This is good material for thought. I wonder about implications of what feels agenty...
This seems obviously related to the job/hobby distinction; how hobby becomes less fun when it becomes job. Some people say it is because the job inevitably also contains some boring parts. Which is true, but maybe more important is that job feels like something you have to do, while hobby feels like a small rebellion against the system; and by converting your hobby into job you lose the feeling of free choice. Similarly, it is dangerous if your projects are your only source of agency, because starting a new project feels more agenty than continuing an existing one, so you will feel the need to abandon existing projects and start new ones to keep the same feeling of freedom.
Also makes me think how micromanagement kills agency at work. Even if you have to work 8 hours for your boss, you can still find tiny pieces of freedom at choosing which task to do first, or which specific approach to try. That is, unless your manager carefully prioritizes all items in your sprint, makes you plan all details in advance, and then uses daily standups to check that you do not deviate from the predetermined path. (This is technically against the rules of Scrum, because the manager is not even supposed to be at your daily standup… not that it ever actually stopped anyone...)