An Unorthodox Way to Increase Productivity and Become Wiser
In his bestselling book ‘Thinking, fast and slow,’ Kahneman discusses a fascinating study conducted by Roy Baumeister (Social Psychologist) on Ego Depletion. So what exactly is “Ego Depletion?”
Ego-Depletion
Each individual is gifted with a limited supply of willpower every day. This willpower is used up throughout the day to perform tasks and achieve goals.
People are susceptible to responding recklessly and impulsively on simple tasks following an intellectually, emotionally, or physically demanding activity. Such impulsive behaviour is attributed to the exhaustion of willpower. This phenomenon is called “Ego Depletion.”
Some Unconventional Examples of Demanding (or Ego-Depleting) activities include:
- Avoiding the thought of white bears
- Trying to impress others
- Inhibiting emotional response to a stirring movie
All these activities rely on the set of shared resources in the brain, of which we have finite reserves in the wakeful hours. The consequence of ego depletion is that people favour easy and lucrative decisions (read instant gratification) once they reach this state.
As a result, they succumb to being more erratic in their behaviour, indulge in chocolate and cookies, binge-watch Netflix or shop impulsively.
Coming back to the Scientific Study by Roy Baumeister …
Baumeister hypothesized that the brain consumes a lot of glucose during demanding tasks, which leads to people making impulsive decisions later on.
To empirically test the hypothesis in the real-world scenario, Baumeister and his colleagues asked a group of participants to watch a short film of a woman being interviewed. While performing the task, a series of characters were flashed randomly on the screen that the participants were asked to ignore specifically. This task required participants to exhibit a lot of self-control.
Once the short film was over, the researchers provided lemonade to all the participants. However, lemonade was sweetened with glucose for half of them, while the others had a placebo sweetener. The participants were then asked to engage their mental capacities in a cognitively demanding test. Researchers observed that those who had glucose performed significantly better than those who did not.
It thus became evident that it is unwise to make decisions when you are ego-depleted.
If the word of caution is still unclear, I italicise the same with a well-known study to sound more authentic.
You should never shop when you are hungry. [Article]
So, Will Consuming Excessive Glucose make you “The Smartest Person Ever”?
No. For that, you might have to take NZT-48 from the movie Limitless (if any such thing exists).
Just kidding! 🙂
The point of consuming food (containing glucose) is to rejuvenate and replenish your glucose level so that you can make thoughtful and informed decisions. It goes without saying that you would only be making better decisions than your “ego-depleted” self, not everyone else in the universe. But then again, you should never compare yourself with others.
So, have something to eat after a cognitively, emotionally, or physically demanding activity. It will make you wiser. Or just get some sleep 😴
