Ten-year-old me had an objection to the idea of “willpower” on principle. Obviously, “Willpower” is the process by which people get themselves to do unpleasant things. I don’t want to do unpleasant things. Therefore, having as little Willpower as possible will minimize the unpleasant things I end up doing.
Another way I’ve found myself with a lack of ability to motivate myself seems related to the post’s original thesis. Up until I finally graduated college, my typical use of “willpower”-based motivation would be to do something I’d rather not have to do (usually homework) in order to avoid consequences that were supposed to be worse than doing the unpleasant thing. Unfortunately, this led to a bad feedback loop. My brain would predict that homework would be less fun than video games, I’d do it anyway, it would indeed be less fun than video games, and the lesson my brain would learn would be “pay less attention to that voice screaming that undone homework leads to doom” instead of “good, we successfully avoided the problem of undone homework”. Eventually, doing homework became so aversive that I actually did stop caring about what might happen if I stopped doing it...
What should happen is that you occasionally fail to do homework and instead play video games. Then there are worse negative consequences as predicted. And then your verbal planner gets more credit and so you have more willpower.
Yeah, except that sometimes I’m weirdly insensitive to punishments and other threats. For some reason, my brain often (mistakenly?) concludes that doing the thing that would let me avoid the punishment is impossible, and I just shut down completely instead of trying to comply.
As I once wrote before:
Guy with a gun: I’m going to shoot you if you haven’t changed the sheets on your bed by tomorrow.
Me: AAH I’M GOING TO DIE IT’S NO GOOD I MIGHT AS WELL SPEND THE DAY LYING IN BED PLAYING VIDEO GAMES BECAUSE I’M GOING TO GET SHOT TOMORROW SOMEONE CALL THE FUNERAL HOME AND MAKE PLANS TELL MY FAMILY I LOVE THEM
Guy with a gun: You know, you could always just… change the sheets?
ME: THE THOUGHT HAS OCCURRED TO ME BUT I’M TOO UPSET RIGHT NOW ABOUT THE FACT THAT I’M GOING TO DIE TOMORROW BECAUSE THE SHEETS WEREN’T CHANGED TO ACTUALLY GO AND CHANGE THEM
Also, the “worse consequences” were often projected to happen years in the future: you need good grades to get into a good college and then get a good job, etc. The fear of being homeless years in the future when your money runs out isn’t really all that great when the “good” future you can imagine for yourself doesn’t seem very appealing either—the idea of having a full-time job horrified ten-year-old me for various reasons, and I never really managed to get over that, to the point where I never did manage to get and keep a “real” job after college. There were years I lived with the constant worry that my parents might one day decide to stop supporting me financially and kick me out of their house...
(By the way, I seem to have a milder form of this. If the consequences are sufficiently bad or sufficiently near, like when there is deadline, I can make myself do the unpleasant thing. But things that have no external deadline… often just don’t happen, sometimes for years.)
Oh, I remember and liked that comment! But I didn’t remember your username. I have a bit more information about that now, but I’ll write it there.
From the model in this article, I think the way this should work in the high-willpower case is that your planner gets credit aka willpower for accurate short-term predictions and that gives it credit for long-term predictions like “if I get good grades then I will get into a good college and then I will get a good job and then I will get status, power, sex, children, etc”.
In your case it sounds like your planner was predicting “if I don’t get good grades then I will be homeless” and this prediction was wrong, because your parents supported you. Also it was predicting “if I get a good job then it will be horrifying”, which isn’t true for most people. Perhaps it was mis-calibrated and overly prone to predicting doom? You mention depression in the linked comment. From the model in this article, someone’s visceral processes will respond to a mis-calibrated planner by reducing its influence aka willpower.
I don’t mean to pry. The broader point is that improving the planner should increase willpower, with some lag while the planner gets credit for its improved plans. The details of how to do that will be different for each person.
I did have an “internship” right after college for a few months and was completely miserable during it. The other problem was that one thing I valued highly was free time, and regardless of how much money and status a 40 hour a week job gives you, that’s still 40 hours a week in which your time isn’t free! There are very few jobs in which, like an Uber driver, you have absolute freedom to choose when and how much to work and the only consequence of not working for a period of time is that you don’t get paid—you can’t “lose your job” for choosing not to show up. Unfortunately, most jobs that fit that description, such as Uber driver or fiction novel writer, usually pay very poorly.
Yet another problem is that I feel like applying for jobs will be futile. Spending time submitting resumes into a metaphorical black hole and never getting any interviews or even a form letter in response, even from grocery stores, has left me in despair and even starting to think about job hunting consistently and reliably makes me start to feel incredibly depressed.
one thing I valued highly was free time, and regardless of how much money and status a 40 hour a week job gives you, that’s still 40 hours a week in which your time isn’t free!
Yeah, the same here. The harder I work the more money I can get (though the relation is not linear; more like logarithmic), but at this point the thing I want it not money… it is free time!
I guess the official solution is to save money for early retirement. Which requires investing the money wisely, otherwise the inflation eats it.
By the way, perhaps you could have some people check your resume, maybe you are doing something wrong there.
Ten-year-old me had an objection to the idea of “willpower” on principle. Obviously, “Willpower” is the process by which people get themselves to do unpleasant things. I don’t want to do unpleasant things. Therefore, having as little Willpower as possible will minimize the unpleasant things I end up doing.
Another way I’ve found myself with a lack of ability to motivate myself seems related to the post’s original thesis. Up until I finally graduated college, my typical use of “willpower”-based motivation would be to do something I’d rather not have to do (usually homework) in order to avoid consequences that were supposed to be worse than doing the unpleasant thing. Unfortunately, this led to a bad feedback loop. My brain would predict that homework would be less fun than video games, I’d do it anyway, it would indeed be less fun than video games, and the lesson my brain would learn would be “pay less attention to that voice screaming that undone homework leads to doom” instead of “good, we successfully avoided the problem of undone homework”. Eventually, doing homework became so aversive that I actually did stop caring about what might happen if I stopped doing it...
What should happen is that you occasionally fail to do homework and instead play video games. Then there are worse negative consequences as predicted. And then your verbal planner gets more credit and so you have more willpower.
Yeah, except that sometimes I’m weirdly insensitive to punishments and other threats. For some reason, my brain often (mistakenly?) concludes that doing the thing that would let me avoid the punishment is impossible, and I just shut down completely instead of trying to comply.
As I once wrote before:
Also, the “worse consequences” were often projected to happen years in the future: you need good grades to get into a good college and then get a good job, etc. The fear of being homeless years in the future when your money runs out isn’t really all that great when the “good” future you can imagine for yourself doesn’t seem very appealing either—the idea of having a full-time job horrified ten-year-old me for various reasons, and I never really managed to get over that, to the point where I never did manage to get and keep a “real” job after college. There were years I lived with the constant worry that my parents might one day decide to stop supporting me financially and kick me out of their house...
Could possibly this be what they call ADHD?
(By the way, I seem to have a milder form of this. If the consequences are sufficiently bad or sufficiently near, like when there is deadline, I can make myself do the unpleasant thing. But things that have no external deadline… often just don’t happen, sometimes for years.)
Quite possibly. I did get an ADHD diagnosis as a kid...
Oh, I remember and liked that comment! But I didn’t remember your username. I have a bit more information about that now, but I’ll write it there.
From the model in this article, I think the way this should work in the high-willpower case is that your planner gets credit aka willpower for accurate short-term predictions and that gives it credit for long-term predictions like “if I get good grades then I will get into a good college and then I will get a good job and then I will get status, power, sex, children, etc”.
In your case it sounds like your planner was predicting “if I don’t get good grades then I will be homeless” and this prediction was wrong, because your parents supported you. Also it was predicting “if I get a good job then it will be horrifying”, which isn’t true for most people. Perhaps it was mis-calibrated and overly prone to predicting doom? You mention depression in the linked comment. From the model in this article, someone’s visceral processes will respond to a mis-calibrated planner by reducing its influence aka willpower.
I don’t mean to pry. The broader point is that improving the planner should increase willpower, with some lag while the planner gets credit for its improved plans. The details of how to do that will be different for each person.
I did have an “internship” right after college for a few months and was completely miserable during it. The other problem was that one thing I valued highly was free time, and regardless of how much money and status a 40 hour a week job gives you, that’s still 40 hours a week in which your time isn’t free! There are very few jobs in which, like an Uber driver, you have absolute freedom to choose when and how much to work and the only consequence of not working for a period of time is that you don’t get paid—you can’t “lose your job” for choosing not to show up. Unfortunately, most jobs that fit that description, such as Uber driver or fiction novel writer, usually pay very poorly.
Yet another problem is that I feel like applying for jobs will be futile. Spending time submitting resumes into a metaphorical black hole and never getting any interviews or even a form letter in response, even from grocery stores, has left me in despair and even starting to think about job hunting consistently and reliably makes me start to feel incredibly depressed.
Yeah, the same here. The harder I work the more money I can get (though the relation is not linear; more like logarithmic), but at this point the thing I want it not money… it is free time!
I guess the official solution is to save money for early retirement. Which requires investing the money wisely, otherwise the inflation eats it.
By the way, perhaps you could have some people check your resume, maybe you are doing something wrong there.