Studies on ego depletion suggest that endurance is not a “virtue”, but rather a matter of having the right expectations.
If you expect something to be difficult, you are more likely to persist in the face of difficulty, than if you expect it to be easy.
More precisely, if you expect it should be difficult: i.e., if your Prospect Theory baseline is calibrated to a level that is at—or above—the actual level of difficulty.
The reason “no pain, no gain” is a slogan among bodybuilders is because it’s an exhortation to expect a high level of pain, as how things “should” be. That is, to treat it as a Prospect Theory baseline.
One book I’ve read (“The Tools” by Stutz and Michels) includes an exercise of saying things like “I love pain” or “Pain sets me free”, as an attempt to engage this mindset. It is different from merely thinking or “knowing” that a thing is going to be difficult, because one can still be feeling (in effect) that it shouldn’t be, or that being a smart or talented person means it should be easier for you.
Instead, the correct mindset is treating the pain as a signal that one is getting closer to the desired result… like the old joke about the optimistic child who, upon being placed in a room full of literal horse shit, immediately began digging to look for the pony.
I guess what I’m saying is, most of this article reads to me like random speculation without a gears-level model of endurance. My take on the gears-level model of endurance is just Prospect Theory: if the cost of something is greater than the level we take for granted it should, we count it double and rapidly lose motivation to continue. Conversely, if the cost is less than what we take for granted, then we experience neutral or positive affect, and carry on.
Paradoxically, this leads to people making lots of exhortations to treat pain, grit, endurance, willpower, and other things as positive attributes, in an attempt to get others to update their baselines!
But these exhortations to virtue never worked for me, personally, compared to just understanding this principle and deliberately adjusting my expectations so that “horse shit” means “I’m getting closer to the pony!”
That’s because, at least for me, most exhortations towards enduring pain sound like delusional virtue-signaling rather than inspiring advice. Understanding these exhortations as a crude attempt at teaching a mindset that reliably reduces the subjective experience of pain, frustration, and discouragement makes a big difference.
To put it another way, on the surface, “embrace pain” is a stupid statement, as pain is not the unit of effort. But with the added meta-level of “Embrace the mindset of embracing pain in order to experience less ego depletion, less subjective discomfort, and increased motivation”, it makes a heck of a lot more sense, and matches an actual gears-level model.
Studies on ego depletion suggest that endurance is not a “virtue”, but rather a matter of having the right expectations.
If you expect something to be difficult, you are more likely to persist in the face of difficulty, than if you expect it to be easy.
More precisely, if you expect it should be difficult: i.e., if your Prospect Theory baseline is calibrated to a level that is at—or above—the actual level of difficulty.
The reason “no pain, no gain” is a slogan among bodybuilders is because it’s an exhortation to expect a high level of pain, as how things “should” be. That is, to treat it as a Prospect Theory baseline.
One book I’ve read (“The Tools” by Stutz and Michels) includes an exercise of saying things like “I love pain” or “Pain sets me free”, as an attempt to engage this mindset. It is different from merely thinking or “knowing” that a thing is going to be difficult, because one can still be feeling (in effect) that it shouldn’t be, or that being a smart or talented person means it should be easier for you.
Instead, the correct mindset is treating the pain as a signal that one is getting closer to the desired result… like the old joke about the optimistic child who, upon being placed in a room full of literal horse shit, immediately began digging to look for the pony.
I guess what I’m saying is, most of this article reads to me like random speculation without a gears-level model of endurance. My take on the gears-level model of endurance is just Prospect Theory: if the cost of something is greater than the level we take for granted it should, we count it double and rapidly lose motivation to continue. Conversely, if the cost is less than what we take for granted, then we experience neutral or positive affect, and carry on.
Paradoxically, this leads to people making lots of exhortations to treat pain, grit, endurance, willpower, and other things as positive attributes, in an attempt to get others to update their baselines!
But these exhortations to virtue never worked for me, personally, compared to just understanding this principle and deliberately adjusting my expectations so that “horse shit” means “I’m getting closer to the pony!”
That’s because, at least for me, most exhortations towards enduring pain sound like delusional virtue-signaling rather than inspiring advice. Understanding these exhortations as a crude attempt at teaching a mindset that reliably reduces the subjective experience of pain, frustration, and discouragement makes a big difference.
To put it another way, on the surface, “embrace pain” is a stupid statement, as pain is not the unit of effort. But with the added meta-level of “Embrace the mindset of embracing pain in order to experience less ego depletion, less subjective discomfort, and increased motivation”, it makes a heck of a lot more sense, and matches an actual gears-level model.