The Science of Self-Help

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The Science of Making the Best of Your Very Worst Days

The Science of Self Help

The Diary of a No Good, Very Depleted Day

Yesterday was one of THOSE days. I woke up with absolutely nothing left in the tank.

I was at the edge of just taking the day off when I thought - why not make it an experiment?

Would using all my protocols help out, even on my worst day?

So I wrote down a plan of action and decided to break out my vintage, 1800s hand grip dynamometer. In a number of studies, hand grip was shown to correlate with self control. The intro of this study has a great break down of the history of using a dynamometer to do this (and its limits).

DATA

Here’s a chart of my data, with the X axis indicating grip strength. I took measurements before and after a round of work and before and after I engaged in willpower repletion protocols.

Here are my notes:

Starting Grip Strength: 40

Round 1

Grip Strength: 70

  • Drop set - 3 Pomodoros of 10 minutes, started with automatic actions [TINY BEHAVIOR, SEQUENCING]

  • Mini meditations of Kawaii, Faster EFT, and Mindfulness for 1 minute breaks [KAWAII, MINDFULNESS]

Grip Strength: 65

BREAK

  • Food outside [GLUCOSE]

  • 7 min row, slow pace

  • 7 min stretch

Grip Strength: 65

Round 2

Grip Strength: 71

  • Drop set - 3 Pomodoros of 10 minutes

  • Mini meditations of Kawaii, Faster EFT, and Mindfulness for 1 minute breaks

Grip Strength: 65

BREAK

Stepped outside for about 20 minutes

Round 3

  • Smiley face game [EXEMPLAR PRIMING]

  • Affirmation questions [EXEMPLAR PRIMING]

Grip strength: 80

  • 4 Pomodoros of 10 minutes

  • No breaks

Grip Strength: 50

WHAT WORKED

Creating an initial system using Curiosity (“could I replete willpower when starting with nothing?) and Metrics (the grip strength measurements) to test out Elements was the first strategy that worked well. It created a distancing effect that kept me from experiencing the exhaustion as much. It’s a technique similar to mindfulness, which has been shown to help with cravings and engage self control (here’s a video of Dr. Judson Brewer describing how mindfulness has been proven in clinical trials to break the addiction cycle).

I noticed that my exemplar priming exercises all really helped out quite a bit to boost self control, and this was reflected on the grip strength tests. It was also further evidence that exemplar priming works better for me when I’m depleted.

NaNoWriMo has an easily accessible list of pep talks that I could just randomly click on. Question based affirmations can work even better than statements according to one study, and they especially tend to work well to boost me in particular. And surprisingly, the McGill University smiley face game which I previously wrote about also actually works really well - though in this case I used a similar mobile app called Upbeat Mind.

I found myself gaining energy across the day, an effect I attribute to Momentum – gaining a series of wins.

I used a shotgun approach of meditation techniques for small breaks - mindfulness, cute pics of animals (listed as Kawaii in the Elements), and faster EFT, which seems to work really well for me (I still don’t quite know why it works).

You can read more about “microdosing on meditation” in a previous post.

I tried to incorporate movement for larger breaks. My rowing and stretching habits are both triggered after my first round of work, so this was naturally built in. My rowing habit is also still in its early stages, so it is not hard enough to exhaust me yet. I also tried to incorporate sunlight by standing on my balcony. It’s not quite Forest Bathing or going on a walk, but it felt like a similar, smaller version.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK

I got cocky towards the end. My grip strength increased significant later in the day, and I just kept blowing past all my planned breaks and continued on to do a full Pomodoro load instead of a smaller set. This caused me to become utterly depleted. My grip strength dropped by 30 points and I definitely felt it.

WHAT I CAN DO BETTER

There are definitely things I neglected to do. I didn’t drink my concoction of apple cider vinegar and matcha after lunch. I could’ve taken a walk, or even looked at pics of green landscapes. I could’ve done a gratitude exercise, or shifted to more creative, automated tasks when I saw my willpower was lower.

But the key problem was not having everything clearly planned out. When you get depleted, making decisions and trying to come up with new measures on the fly is almost impossible – you have to have it all pre-written to prevent decision fatigue.

CONCLUSIONS

In term of work output, this doesn’t seem like much. But when you factor in that this is Cal Newport-style “Deep Work” - no distractions, no emails, no social media, absolute concentration, then this is, for me, quite substantial. I didn’t include the work and exercises for my relatively intense meditation course or several errands. Nonetheless, if I had time, I would have definitely kept going.

Does hand grip strength accurately measure willpower? The science seems inconclusive, and there’s a lot of debate as to willpower in general. There are also many variations as to how studies conduct testing in order to negate natural strength. In my own testing I just took readings after keeping it squeezed for a few seconds without much effort and without psyching myself up. I also did not attempt to “spike” the measurement - I just wanted even, steady force.

However, this accurately correlated to my subjective experience of how depleted I was. And it’s something I really want to use for future measurements, though perhaps with the more updated versions of the hand dynamometer. I believe that it could be used to formulate a mathematical equation for productivity. I also think it could help test what repletion exercises have the most impact. It would be nice, for example, to know that exemplar priming tasks have more bang for the buck than looking at green landscapes, even if it only applies to me.

All of this seems further proof that engaging some sort of willpower muscle isn’t fully necessary for productivity. This was a clear case where the entire system “carried” me throughout the day. That was profound, because I realized that starting willpower - that feeling of mental focus at the beginning of the day - isn’t as important as it once was to me.

This is further evidence of a possible “Polymathic Engine” - a system that delivers massive amounts of self change using very little willpower.