When I was busy with different things around growing my YouTube channel about mobile-game monetization, my diet went downhill. Now I’m pretty loaded with my main job and developing two or three projects in parallel — and I simply don’t have the energy to get back to actively studying Hungarian. There’s one thing I understand intuitively, and it’s backed by what people like to call “science”: willpower and focus consume mental resources, no matter what you spend them on.
Kahneman gives an example of a person who can walk and solve a quadratic equation in their head at the same time — it’s doable. But make that person run and give them the same equation, and suddenly it becomes much harder, because their resources are being spent on keeping the body going: top-top-top-top, at a much higher pace.
If I remember the piece of neurobiology correctly, when we “use willpower,” our prefrontal cortex is basically holding the limbic system on a leash — meaning the part of the brain that makes us human is trying to keep in check the part that makes us distant cousins of lizards. And really, Rodin’s Thinker is holding his forehead for a reason!
Over the weekend I heard a nicely phrased idea: willpower should not be spent on actions — it should be spent on building routines. If you force yourself to go to the gym every single time, then after three workouts a week your brain will start hating the gym. Instead, you need a routine that lets you get there without friction: pack your gym bag in the evening, go to bed on time, things like that. Following the same logic, I put a Hungarian book on the coffee table next to the couch — so I can pick it up anytime I have ten free minutes. And by that same rule, without even knowing it, I once got my weight down to the 60 kilos I wanted — I simply started buying a ridiculous amount of fruit. Suddenly, instead of chocolate bars and gummy worms (okay, not instead, but you get it), I had pomelos, plums, grapes, and bananas lying around. Yes, it’s still carbs and sugar — but you can’t really binge on them the same way.
So the next time it feels like you don’t have the energy for something, try to think about how to shorten the path toward the action — and how to put obstacles on the way to the alternative.