Good news for the slightly-less-than-exceedingly-brilliant among us: It turns out that self-discipline, not talent, determines our successes in life. Psychologists have discovered that the ability to delay gratification is a much better predictor of children's success in school than IQ. Okay, okay, I know, "studies show," all of that, we should be skeptical. But hang with me for a minute.
Cordelia Fine reports in The Australian that self-discipline, willpower, or what some call our "moral muscle"
powers all of the difficult and taxing mental tasks that you set yourself. It is the moral muscle that is flexing and straining as you keep attention focused on a dry academic article, bite back an angry retort to your boss, or decline a helping of your favourite dessert. And herein lies the problem: these acts of restraint all drain the same pool of mental reserves.
Yep, "studies show" that our moral muscle can get pooped out:
[I]f you draw on your reserves to achieve one unappealing goal - going for a jog, say - your moral muscle will be ineffective when you then call on it to help you switch off the television and start essay-writing.
...If you are about to embark on a big project you court disaster if at the same time your life is cluttered and demanding, or you also commit to draining attempts at self-enhancement. The would-be novelist whose taxing day job exhausts her moral muscle will find it harder to apply the seat of her trousers to the seat of her chair. The dieting philosopher will struggle to keep his attention on a tricky passage of Friedrich Nietzsche.
Fine suggests the best solution is to choose one thing to be really self-disciplined about and let most other things slide. For Sabbatical Girl I guess this means I should not plan to run a marathon, complete a scholarly book, finish writing a mystery story, stay off caffeine, and eat freakishly healthy meals all at the same time. Nice to have permission to cut myself some slack, but the article never tells me what to do with all the guilt and deep feelings of unworthiness that will surely result from lowering my expectations for myself. And don't tell me just to "let it go." I'm Scandinavian. That ain't an option.
It must be noted that while I was obsessing over your list, I was really obsessing over this entry, because I think it works in an eerily horoscope-like fashion to explain my summer, half of which was devoted to mad revising, and the other half to mad running. And it's not even that I *want* to be better at one when focusing on the other, which is to say that even my self-talk is in line with these studies. Weird.
Posted by: dhawhee | 04 August 2006 at 04:26 PM
Let's see...Americans work an average of 60 hours a week, take less vacation than their Asian and European counterparts, take work home most nights, and then we work on self improvement. Which in Minnesota means curling up in front of the fire with a 20 year old sipping Scotch and a book (in January). The summer version is sweating it out on the patio with a Corona and Lime while identifying the birds at your feeder. Now that's self improvement!
Unfortunately, the only self improvement really available to me is finding faster routes to various hockey arenas around the Twin Citiies.
Posted by: Jim Finnegan | 07 August 2006 at 05:28 PM