Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength

I am already forcing a couple of friends into reading this book lol

I listened to this on audible. Overall pretty good, but one aspect was so maddening I felt compelled to comment about it here--every time a quote occurs in the text, the voice actor puts on an accent to try to match the person the quote is attributed to. Maybe some people don't mind, but I found it ridiculous and annoying.

I have been contemplating on the subject of willpower for a while and was very excited to get this book when it came out. While there is a good amount of interesting material here on the science of self-control, overall, I would say this title didn't quite live up to my expectations.As one of the reviewers pointed out, there is a multitude of different pop sci books out there. Some are written by the researchers themselves and others by journalists who digest and interpret the information second-hand. In my experience, there is a clear distinction in style between someone who is a primary subject matter expert and someone who is just synthesizing secondary information. The researcher-authors tend to focus more on the actual experiments, strike a decent balance between pop and hard science, do a much better job explaining the meaning of the findings, and are usually pretty cautious about overly extrapolating the results. Journalist-authors tend to err much more on the side of watering down the science (perhaps because they have an incomplete understanding themselves) and generally strike a "let me explain this to an idiot" type of tone.Unfortunately, despite the fact that this book is co-authored with the primary researcher, it really falls into the "journalist-author" bucket. I get a distinct impression that John Tierny was responsible for most of the writing, where Roy Baumeister is cited as an author only because the book is mostly based on his research. I think Tierny tries way too hard to oversimplify the science and calls on very extensive celebrity examples to illustrate some of the findings. I don't have a problem with "case studies", but I really don't need to read through pages upon pages about Drew Carey's disorganized personal life and how some fellow who claims to be a personal organizer guru helped Carey get his life back on track. Additionally, I didn't need extensive biography of Eric Clapton to explain self-control in case of alcoholism and the lengthy example of Oprah to illustrate the limitations of willpower when it comes to weight loss. I and probably 99% of the educated public understand the applications and implications of the research findings without having it explained in great detail through the lives of celebrities. At best, this tactic is a space filler and at worst, an insult to the reader's intelligence.Despite these major flaws, the book does contain a lot of interesting research. Probably the most important finding is that willpower behaves similarly to a muscle, in that it can be exhausted with overuse and trained with various exercises. The authors establish a clear case for a link between high self-control and improved life outcomes and discuss in detail the research behind the success of various techniques to boost willpower as well as the types of adverse events that can result from willpower depletion.Overall, I would still recommend this book to those who are interested in the subject of self-control and its implications. As I mentioned, there is a lot of good research described, I just wish the book didn't contain as much space filler regarding the "case studies" from lives of celebrities and generally adhered to a more intellectual prose rather than reading like a "science column" in a popular newspaper.

"However you define success - a happy family, good friends, a satisfying career, robust health, financial security, the freedom to pursue your passions - it tends to be accompanied by a couple of qualities. When psychologists isolate the personal qualities that predict "positive outcomes" in life, they consistently find two traits: intelligence and self-control. So far researchers still haven't learned how to permanently increase intelligence. But they have discovered, or at least rediscovered, how to improve self-control. Hence this book.""The first step in self-control is to set a goal, so we should tell you ours for this book. We hope to combine the best of modern social science with some of the practical wisdom of the Victorians. We want to tell how willpower - or the lack thereof - has affected the lives of the great and the not-so-great. We'll explain why corporate leaders pay $20,000 a day to learn the secrets of the to-do list from a former karate instructor, and why Silicon Valley's entrepreneurs are creating digital tools to promote nineteenth-century values. We'll see how a British nanny tamed a team of howling triplets in Missouri, and how performers like Amanda Palmer, Drew Carey, Eric Clapton, and Oprah Winfrey applied willpower in their own lives. We'll look at how David Blaine fasted for forty-four days and how the explorer Henry Morton Stanley survived for years in the African wilderness. We want to tell the story of scientists' rediscovery of self-control and its implications outside the laboratory."Now, I hope these two quotes from the Introduction give a sense of what this book is about - it's one-half psychology and one-half self-help. It's a great read and I would think everyone would have something to gain because the subject matter is universally applicable - learning tricks to strengthen our willpower and recognizing the warning signs that our willpower is being exhausted. Here are some other practical quotes: "Ego depletion thus creates a double whammy: Your willpower is diminished and your cravings feel stronger than ever." "What stress really does, though, is deplete willpower, which diminishes your ability to control those emotions." "You could sum up a large new body of research literature with a simple rule: The best way to reduce stress in your life is to stop screwing up. That means setting up your life so that you have a realistic chance to succeed. Successful people don't use their willpower as a last-ditch defense to stop themselves from disaster, at least not as a regular strategy...people with strong self-control spent less time resisting desires than other people did."In sum, this is a very helpful book. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the psychology of human motivation, or someone looking for a practical self-help book. I would say that either Peck's book,  The Road Less Traveled, 25th Anniversary Edition : A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth , or Ellis's book,  A New Guide to Rational Living , would make a fine follow-up of to this book.

I am really struggling to complete this book, finally reached the conclusion with 20 pages remaining and don't know if I can (clearly hasn't helped me with willpower, if anything it has been a hindrance). Well written but very verbose! There is very little advice on building and maintaining willpower. Instead the writer talks in GREAT DETAIL about dozens of papers that briefly touch on the topic, details on the samples and methods, a brief look at the findings and perhaps a small suggestion you can use. There are wordy discussions on the habits of academic college students, to a long section on 19th century world travellers that colonised Africa, to Asian parenting, to David Blaine, to alcoholism, more parenting and then dieting. In trying to include everything the researcher has actually provided little advice on the goal at hand! I regret the purchase and will not recommend. The conclusion does attempt to address the lack of guidance on developing willpower but again, the author re-summarises the endless amount of research he details in the earlier chapters!

A collaboration between the scientist (Baumeister) and a journalist (Tierney) has produced an excellent book - readable science. A Guardian review was rather dismissive, suggesting that 'we've always known this stuff.' Yes; and we always also knew that our flat Earth was created in 7 days to be the centre of the universe, until science took a second look at the theories. It's very interesting to know that the action of willpower can be observed in action in the brain; that, like a muscle, it can be strengthened or deplete by energy input; that it can be exhausted by pointless trials of strength, but its stamina can be strengthened through 'exercise'.

This was an interesting book. According to lead author Baumeister, an academic psychologist, willpower has gotten a bad name since Victorian times. But he builds a convincing case that willpower is something like a muscle that needs go be fed (with glucose) and rested. With many examples from the world of psychological research, including the famous marshmallow test, and with examples ranging from Eric Clapton to David Blaine, and a particularly interesting chapter about Henry Morton Stanley. Recommended.

Compared to Kelly McGonigal's book on Willpower, Baumeister serves up a rather dry affair, where he spends most of his time highlighting all the studies that he and his many grad students have done.It's pretty academic and sparse in terms of actionable knowledge which is easily accessible.Finished it barely and felt pretty bored.Buy McGonigal's book instead for easy access covering similiar points.

I just finished reading this book and, seeing myself in the behaviour of so many of the experimental subjects, ended up laughing out loud at times.Its primary conclusion is that we have a finite amount of willpower, and if aware of this, can make better decisions and effectively conserve it for the important "stuff" and recognise when we have depleted our reserves and take need to take action to charge up again. It also provides research observations and evidence which you are likely to find explain some of the behaviours you have engaged in from time to time but never understood, which is generally my test of whether a book like this is worth reading.It is a well researched book but written in a very readable style which comes us up with some surprising evidence and conclusions, at the same time as giving straightforward advice on how to conserve/effectively use willpower while not beating yourself up because you can't be supremely efficient all the time.One of the things I do like about it is that it doesn't pretend to offer a "silver bullet". I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who wants to get a little bit more done with a little less stress.