psychology
Brain researcher reveals: This habit weakens your willpower
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Leading a self-determined life and making smart decisions – who wouldn’t want that? Unfortunately, a habit that most of us engage in every day gets in the way.
Willpower is a great thing. Thanks to her, we can, for example, save our money for a nice holiday instead of constantly throwing it out the window with both hands for short-term happiness. We can convince ourselves to eat mostly vegetables, whole grains and healthy sources of fat instead of chocolate and cheesecake three times a day. And we can be faithful with the power of our will, even if that hot person at the bar is making us a definite offer with his eyes.
In short: Our willpower helps us control ourselves and be (or become) the person we want to be. Too bad we weaken our willpower with a habit that is an integral part of everyday life for most of us: multitasking!
Multitasking costs us willpower
As the brain researcher Prof. Dr. Martin Korte in his book “brain whisper” explains, multitasking or trying to do so tires the so-called frontal lobe in our head (in short). Our “favorite habit” knocks out the very part of our brain that is responsible for conscious decisions and our willpower, among other things.
So the more we juggle tasks and switch from one to-do to the next and back again every few seconds, the lower our resistance to temptation and the worse decisions we make – because we simply have no more power, different options in the world Playing through your head and thinking about the consequences.
Minimize multitasking triggers
In order to avoid this and not to run around like mindless figures at some point, Korte advises organizing our everyday life as best as possible so that we are surrounded by as few distracting influences as possible during an activity. So e.g. For example, turn off your cell phone and put it away instead of lying openly on the table. Or have closed Outlook and only open it at certain intervals (e.g. once an hour) to read e-mails instead of interrupting what we are doing at the moment with each incoming one.
Besides allowing us to reduce multitasking through such habits, this way we avoid having to expend willpower on unnecessary decisions like “I’ll ignore Mom’s WhatsApp now and focus on my job” -since they are also caused by constant, unnecessary stress is weakened, a double win for the quality of our decisions.
Admittedly, in an era of open-plan offices, high-speed communication via umpteen channels, a wealth of information and 24/7 universal availability, it would be illusory to ban multitasking from everyday life. But observing one’s own life and critically reflecting on what we can do to be at least a little less all over the place would probably be a wise decision for many.