There isn’t anything particularly new in the “Ego Depletion” entry at You Are Not So Smart — not for anyone who knows how to spell “Tierney” — but these are early days in the Cognitive Revolution, and it’s going to take a while for the gyre of tests and studies to gel into a popular program, or at any rate a program popular among literate folk. And David McRaney wraps up the entry on a lyrical note that captures the affect as well as the effects of will-power exhaustion.

Modern life requires more self control than ever. Just knowing Reddit is out there beckoning your browser, or your iPad is waiting for your caress, or your smart phone is full of status updates, requires a level of impulse control unique to the human mind. Each abstained vagary strengthens the pull of the next. Remember too that you can dampen your executive functions in many ways, like by staying up all night for a few days, or downing a few alcoholic beverages, or holding your tongue at a family gathering, or resisting the pleas of a child for the umpteenth time. Having an important job can lead to decision fatigue which may lead to ego depletion simply because big decisions require lots of energy, literally, and when you slump you go passive. A long day of dealing with bullshit often leads to an evening of no-decision television in which you don’t even feel like switching the channel to get Kim Kardashian’s face out of your television, or sitting and watching a censored Jurassic Park between commercials even though you own a copy of the movie five feet away.

This passage is embedded in a paragraph that begins and ends with admonishments to plan ahead. I think that that’s what I’ve been trying to do since my time on Fire Island last summer, and that that’s why life has felt so different and, paradoxically (?), so fatiguing ever since. Planning ahead means understanding your life in very fine detail — your routines, your environment, and so on — so that you can manipulate your course through them. Acquiring this understanding demands an entirely new set of demands upon your attention, and a new range of decisions, all of which are depleting. (Is this why it’s so hard to make serious changes? Does this explain “force of habit”?) It’s only when you’ve made the set of correct decisions about reorganizing your life that you can proceed to live that reorganized life — if you still have any energy.

This came to me this morning when, before getting up, I mulled over the title of yesterday’s entry, which I never changed even though I also never got round to giving it a raison d’être in the entry. What was on my mind, early yesterday morning, was that it has been a very long time since I popped out of bed, eager for the new day. (For breakfast, at a minimum.) I’ve attributed this lack of zip to age, and to the fatigue that increases with age (for some people), and of course to drinking too much wine, even though I now go to bed, night after night, with a perfectly clear head. This morning, it occurred to me that there might be something else at work. Out on Fire Island last summer, I had a “torso of Apollo” moment, in which I not only knew that I must change my life but saw the direction in which I must change it. And that is what I have been doing ever since, day after day — either changing my life or collapsing from the task. All the while, of course, I’ve been living my regular life — writing here, reading endless feeds, keeping house, washing up after dinner, and to some extent looking after Kathleen. You’ll say: well, what changed? All those things. I do almost everything a little bit differently, and the changes were all made with a view to conserving my will power. Whatever could be turned into an easy, unthinking habit, was. That’s probably not what Rilke had in mind, but he wasn’t living in the Cognitive Revolution. Changing your life nowadays is a matter of coding. 

***

When we were young, we Boomers, we were told that we could be anything, do anything. Our opportunities were said to be boundless. I suspect that the more affluent among us — those who grew up to assume an inordinate number of positions of power — heard the message incessantly. Of course, it was wrong; we were misinformed. We were brought up on bad information. It’s no wonder that we thought that we had all the time in the world, or that we would be allowed to slough off the consequences of our mistakes and start again. That we saw the error in this outlook is attested by the tendency that we and succeeding generations have followed toward overprogramming the lives of our children.   

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 3rd, 2012 at 9:13 am.