Day 742 & More Delayed Onset Endurance/Willpower Drain

March 08, 2016 by The Science of Self Help

Day 742 Record Keeping
Day 714 Fixed Meditation
Day 588 Writing
Day 128 Rowing (Skipped)
Day 16 Early Wakeup (37) (Skipped)
Horrible sleep, rough wakeup. Did not automatically get up - again, must set down protocol. Really emotional day, got very depressed. Spent most of the day working on a writing assignment. Incredibly low willpower. Did not row today.

More Delayed Onset Endurance/Willpower Drain

My theory: yesterday I expended more on pushing skills. Wrote for longer, meditated sitting on cushion instead of in a chair like I’ve been doing (cross legged sitting forces me to work on my feet going uncomfortably numb) working out hard. The expenditure resulted in lowered Endurance/Willpower today. This seems to happen a lot when I excel on one day other days of the week take a hit, what I talked about before as Delayed Endurance Drain.

This doesn’t explain in detail the relationship between Willpower and Endurance, nor when exactly the delay would happen. But it’s an emerging pattern I’d like to keep my eye on for later testing.

Delayed Onset Willpower/Endurance Drain

July 16, 2015 by The Science of Self Help

In the post entitled “Why Do Depletion Days Happen?” I asked the question - why do I have some low willpower/endurance days?

There must be a reason. And in the post entitled “Right on Schedule: Emotional Breakdowns a Week into New Habits” I talk about noticing a trend in emotional fluctuations (normally combined with low willpower/endurance) when exerting discipline to start a new habit.

Lydia has noticed that this also occurs the second week of really pushing a habit. In fact, a lot of my recent questions has to the efficacy of the entirety of the project could be laid at this door. After all, I had been roughly a week into the DiSSS protocol for writing when I essentially had a melt down.

But with my recent travel I’ve also noticed that in the past I’d often have the wherewithal to perform habits while traveling but would be exhausted the day or two after even when I had plenty of time to do them.

I’ll call this Delayed Endurance Drain. What is this? The theory is that if we use the engine metaphor, where forward momentum equals habits, and mastery, drag is caused by higher degrees of Endurance that overwork the system’s threshold. Too much, and drag forces (ego depletion, endurance depletion, negative emotions) come into play.

In this case the endurance load takes a while to settle. For a new habit, it may be week two, as it seems to be the case for pushing a new skill towards mastery. For travel, it’s the day after that the load settles, causing setbacks.

What’s this mean? Protocols should be enabled during these breaking points - lowered thresholds, or even a strategic planned “weekend” for those days to conserve strength.