As always, I may not be the intended audience, so please excuse my questions that might be patently obvious to the intended audience.
Am I right in understanding a very simplified version of this model is that if you use willpower too much without deriving any net benefits, eventually you’ll suffer ‘burnout’ which really is just a mistrust of using willpower ever, which may have negative effects on other aspects of your life even where willpower is needed like, say, cleaning your house?
Willpower, as I understand it is another word for ‘patience’ or ‘discipline’, variously described as the ability to choose to endure pain (physical or emotional). Whether willpower actually exists is a question I won’t get into here, let’s assume for the sake of this model it does, and fits the description of the ability to choose to endure pain.
For me this sentence I find especially alien to me:
your psyche’s conscious verbal planner “earns” willpower (earns trust with the rest of your psyche) by choosing actions that nourish your fundamental, bottom-up processes in the long run.
what is the “psyche’s conscious verbal planner”? I don’t know what this is or what part of my mind, person, identity, totality as a organism or anything really that I can equate this label to. Also without examples of what actions are that nourish (again, would cleaning the house, cooking healthy meals be examples?), that are fundamental and those that aren’t, it’s even harder to pin down what this is and why you attribute willpower to it.
It appears to have the ability to force one’s-self to go on a date, which really makes the “verbal” descriptor confusing since a lot of the processes that are involved in going on a date don’t feel like they are verbal, lexical, or take the form of the speaker’s native language written or spoken. At least in my experience, a lot of the thoughts, feelings, and motivations behind going on a date are not innately verbal for me and if you asked me “why did you agree to see this person?”—even if I felt no fear of embarrassment explaining my reasons—I’d have a hard time putting that into words. Or the words I’d use would be so impossibly vague (“they seem cool”) as to suggest that there was a nonverbal reasoning or motivation.
Would this ‘conscious verbal planner’ also be the part of my mind and body that searches an online store a week later to see if those shoes I want are on special? Or would you attribute that to a different entity?
Is there an unconscious verbal planner?
When I am thinking very carefully about what I’m saying, but not so minutely that I’m thinking about the correct grammatical use, would the grammar I use be my unconscious verbal planner, while the content of my speech be the conscious verbal planner?
A lot of example, for me, of willpower often are nonverbal and come from guilt. Guilt felt as a somatic or bodily thing. I can’t verbalize why I feel guilty, although it verbally equates to the words “should” “must” and even “ought” when used as imperatives, not as modals.
Our conscious thought processes are all the ones we are conscious of. Some of them are verbal, in words, eg thinking about what you want to say before saying it. Some of them are nonverbal, like a conscious awareness of guilt.
Most people have some form of inner monologue, aka self-talk, but not all. It sounds like you may be one of those with limited or no self-talk. Whereas I might think, in words, “I should get up or I’ll be late for work”, perhaps you experience a rising sense of guilt.
To benefit from this article you’ll need to translate it to fit your brain patterns.
I have given you the wrong impression, I assure you I have a very verbal, very longwinged inner monologue which uses a lot of words and sentences. However I wouldn’t consider it the sole or perhaps even the chief source of my planning, although sometimes it is involved in how I plan. So when the author says “verbal conscious planner” are there other ‘planners’ I should be excluding from my personal translation? How would I know?
I’m just wondering if there’s a specific reason that the author has referred to it as a VERBAL conscious planner, and if willpower is therefore only applicable to what is verbal? Because as I understand it, especially in the dual-theory of memory which divides memory into Declarative/Explicit Memory and Non-Declarative/Implicit Memory (to which it is easy to draw an analogy between System 1 and 2, or the Elaboration Likelyhood model of attitudinal change) - the verbal is explicit, the non-verbal is vague in this dichotomy.
Why refer to it as a “verbal conscious planner”—why not just say “conscious planner”? Surely the difference isn’t haphazard?
“Our conscious thought processes are all the ones we are conscious of.”
Could you rephrase this less tautologically? - because now I’m wondering a lot of perhaps irrelevant things such as: is it necessary to be conscious of the content of a thought, or only that a thought is currently being held? What micro-macro level of abstraction is necessary? For example, if I’m deliberating if I should check if a pair of shoes are available on an online store still discounted am I conscious of the thought if I think “shoes on online store” or must I refer to “that pair of red converses on ASOS”?
I just worry that this is perhaps a logocentric view of willpower.
Thanks for the extra information. Like you, my plans and my planning can be verbal, non-verbal, or a mix.
Why refer to it as a “verbal conscious planner”—why not just say “conscious planner”? Surely the difference isn’t haphazard?
I can’t speak for the author, but thinking of times where I’ve “lacked willpower” to follow a plan, or noticed that it’s “draining willpower” to follow a plan, it’s normally verbal plans and planning. Where “willpower” here is the ability to delay gratification rather than to withstand physical pain. My model here is that verbal plans are shareable and verbal planning is more transparent, so it’s more vulnerable to hostile telepaths and so to self-deception and misalignment. A verbal plan is more likely to be optimized to signal virtue.
Suppose I’m playing chess and I plan out a mate in five, thinking visually. My opponent plays a move that lets me capture their queen but forgoes the mate. I don’t experience “temptation” to take the queen, or have to use “willpower” to press ahead with the mate. Whereas a verbal plan like “I’m still a bit sick, I’ll go to bed early” is more likely to be derailed by temptation. This could of course be confounded by the different situations.
I think you raise a great question, and the more I think about it the less certain I am. This model predicts that people who mostly think visually have greater willpower than those who think verbally. Which I instinctively doubt, it doesn’t sound right. But then I read about the power of visualization and maybe I shouldn’t? Eg Trigger-Action Planning specifically calls out rehearsed visualization as helping to install TAPs.
As always, I may not be the intended audience, so please excuse my questions that might be patently obvious to the intended audience.
Am I right in understanding a very simplified version of this model is that if you use willpower too much without deriving any net benefits, eventually you’ll suffer ‘burnout’ which really is just a mistrust of using willpower ever, which may have negative effects on other aspects of your life even where willpower is needed like, say, cleaning your house?
Willpower, as I understand it is another word for ‘patience’ or ‘discipline’, variously described as the ability to choose to endure pain (physical or emotional). Whether willpower actually exists is a question I won’t get into here, let’s assume for the sake of this model it does, and fits the description of the ability to choose to endure pain.
For me this sentence I find especially alien to me:
what is the “psyche’s conscious verbal planner”? I don’t know what this is or what part of my mind, person, identity, totality as a organism or anything really that I can equate this label to. Also without examples of what actions are that nourish (again, would cleaning the house, cooking healthy meals be examples?), that are fundamental and those that aren’t, it’s even harder to pin down what this is and why you attribute willpower to it.
It appears to have the ability to force one’s-self to go on a date, which really makes the “verbal” descriptor confusing since a lot of the processes that are involved in going on a date don’t feel like they are verbal, lexical, or take the form of the speaker’s native language written or spoken. At least in my experience, a lot of the thoughts, feelings, and motivations behind going on a date are not innately verbal for me and if you asked me “why did you agree to see this person?”—even if I felt no fear of embarrassment explaining my reasons—I’d have a hard time putting that into words. Or the words I’d use would be so impossibly vague (“they seem cool”) as to suggest that there was a nonverbal reasoning or motivation.
Would this ‘conscious verbal planner’ also be the part of my mind and body that searches an online store a week later to see if those shoes I want are on special? Or would you attribute that to a different entity?
Is there an unconscious verbal planner?
When I am thinking very carefully about what I’m saying, but not so minutely that I’m thinking about the correct grammatical use, would the grammar I use be my unconscious verbal planner, while the content of my speech be the conscious verbal planner?
A lot of example, for me, of willpower often are nonverbal and come from guilt. Guilt felt as a somatic or bodily thing. I can’t verbalize why I feel guilty, although it verbally equates to the words “should” “must” and even “ought” when used as imperatives, not as modals.
Our conscious thought processes are all the ones we are conscious of. Some of them are verbal, in words, eg thinking about what you want to say before saying it. Some of them are nonverbal, like a conscious awareness of guilt.
Most people have some form of inner monologue, aka self-talk, but not all. It sounds like you may be one of those with limited or no self-talk. Whereas I might think, in words, “I should get up or I’ll be late for work”, perhaps you experience a rising sense of guilt.
To benefit from this article you’ll need to translate it to fit your brain patterns.
I have given you the wrong impression, I assure you I have a very verbal, very longwinged inner monologue which uses a lot of words and sentences. However I wouldn’t consider it the sole or perhaps even the chief source of my planning, although sometimes it is involved in how I plan. So when the author says “verbal conscious planner” are there other ‘planners’ I should be excluding from my personal translation? How would I know?
I’m just wondering if there’s a specific reason that the author has referred to it as a VERBAL conscious planner, and if willpower is therefore only applicable to what is verbal? Because as I understand it, especially in the dual-theory of memory which divides memory into Declarative/Explicit Memory and Non-Declarative/Implicit Memory (to which it is easy to draw an analogy between System 1 and 2, or the Elaboration Likelyhood model of attitudinal change) - the verbal is explicit, the non-verbal is vague in this dichotomy.
Why refer to it as a “verbal conscious planner”—why not just say “conscious planner”? Surely the difference isn’t haphazard?
Could you rephrase this less tautologically? - because now I’m wondering a lot of perhaps irrelevant things such as: is it necessary to be conscious of the content of a thought, or only that a thought is currently being held? What micro-macro level of abstraction is necessary? For example, if I’m deliberating if I should check if a pair of shoes are available on an online store still discounted am I conscious of the thought if I think “shoes on online store” or must I refer to “that pair of red converses on ASOS”?
I just worry that this is perhaps a logocentric view of willpower.
Thanks for the extra information. Like you, my plans and my planning can be verbal, non-verbal, or a mix.
I can’t speak for the author, but thinking of times where I’ve “lacked willpower” to follow a plan, or noticed that it’s “draining willpower” to follow a plan, it’s normally verbal plans and planning. Where “willpower” here is the ability to delay gratification rather than to withstand physical pain. My model here is that verbal plans are shareable and verbal planning is more transparent, so it’s more vulnerable to hostile telepaths and so to self-deception and misalignment. A verbal plan is more likely to be optimized to signal virtue.
Suppose I’m playing chess and I plan out a mate in five, thinking visually. My opponent plays a move that lets me capture their queen but forgoes the mate. I don’t experience “temptation” to take the queen, or have to use “willpower” to press ahead with the mate. Whereas a verbal plan like “I’m still a bit sick, I’ll go to bed early” is more likely to be derailed by temptation. This could of course be confounded by the different situations.
I think you raise a great question, and the more I think about it the less certain I am. This model predicts that people who mostly think visually have greater willpower than those who think verbally. Which I instinctively doubt, it doesn’t sound right. But then I read about the power of visualization and maybe I shouldn’t? Eg Trigger-Action Planning specifically calls out rehearsed visualization as helping to install TAPs.