A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran

Another great article on stick-to-it-iveness vs/ natural talent. This one gave me a giggle because I found a lot of my own personality quirks in it.

Yet another study finds that it is the person with the self discipline – and not the naturally gifted – who is most likely to succeed in life. The kid who works harder goes farther. The naturally talented are often the naturally lazy.

But let’s take things a step further and consider willpower as a kind of mental muscle. It is a muscle that needs to be built up gradually. You won’t suddenly develop it overnight, any more than you can wake up Monday with a six pac on your abs after years of guzzling beer and doughnuts. You have to work at it and it takes time.

Willpower, like a muscle, can also be overtaxed. Those who exercise too much willpower too fast in too many areas may not find themselves better off, they may find themselves breaking down from the strain of trying to be…well, full of willpower all the time.

While the original article to which this blog post linked is no longer online, I have changed the link to another article which discussed the same material.

Here are two more articles on the same subject at The New York Times and at Inner Idea. I’ve left the original quotes from The Australian below.

What, then, can we do about this unfortunate tendency of the moral muscle to become fatigued with use? One option is to build it up and make it strong. Evidence is starting to accumulate that the moral muscle, like its physical counterpart, can become taut and bulging from regular exercise. People asked by experimenters to be self-disciplined about their posture for two weeks were afterwards stronger willed when it came to a test of physical endurance, compared with other people allowed to slouch about in their usual comfortable way during the fortnight.

By regularly exercising self-restraint and virtue in all areas of life (moral muscle cross-training, we may call it), we will come to resist temptations with the same casual ease with which a world-class athlete sprints to catch a train. That, at least, is the idea.

Unfortunately, like any sensible, long-term strategy for self-improvement, this approach has limited appeal. For just as we want to fit into those trousers next Monday – not after eight tedious weeks of healthy eating and regular exercise – it is often the same for our more cerebral ambitions. Exam dates are set in stone, deadlines loom on the horizon, or may even mock us from the past. In other words, there simply may not be enough time to become a master of temperance and virtue before tackling our goal.

You notice that a lot of artist/creative types tend to be…well…physically unprepossessing. The strain of meeting deadlines and drawing for 12 hours a day may be offset by a physical discipline sensiblity in direct inverse proportion to the work discipline habits. Some people have a limit on their discipline reserves, and after sticking to the deadline grind, there’s no more discipline left. That’s just my theory, but I think a lot of creators cram in the sugar and carbs and caffeine to remain alert when they have to stay up for days on end to meet a deadline. They aren’t undisciplined, they are simply disciplined in some ways and not in others.

I’m one of those people who can do a limited amount of things very well at one time, but if anything else comes up to interrupt my focus, disaster follows. I can tell you about the Battle of Tripoli and the first American encounter with jihadis in 1792…just don’t ask me where my keys are. I’m so focused on my work and studies, I have no focus left for anything else.

I did , however, get so disgusted at my lack of physical fitness lately, especially after months on the pnuemonia sickbed, that I got myself a nifty little portable stairclimber in my studio that I use several times a day. I’m hoping that will help to keep me from reaching for a bag of jelly beans when I get a little run down.

I cut way back on little jobs, like doing my own mail order, simply because I could not give them my focus, and my focus on the remnants of the mail order is so precarious that I have trouble focusing on it enough to finish it off.

So, while exercising discipline, it’s a good idea to make the first exercise in self discipline the one that reminds you to be aware of your limitations.

I’m going to put that at the top of my to-do list!

c