ORID_3

Objective

Read Think, Fast and Slow
write daily thoughts and notes from reading
Sleep well

Results

Not sure If I slept well but the other two were definitely finished.

Interpretation

“Baumeister’s group has repeatedly found that an effort of will or self-control is tiring; if you have had to force yourself to do something, you are less willing or less able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes around. The phenomenon has been named ego depletion.”

Excerpt From: Daniel Kahneman. “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” iBooks.

It makes sense that if you are doing something that is challenging, then next time you doing something else(that is also challenging). You will likely to give up due to ego depletion. In other words, the exertion of self-control will make a person less rational. Also make him/her not be able to keep up with goal.

But researchers find out the mental work draws glucose from blood. So if you can ingest glucose, you can undone the depletion happened to you. Here is the quotes from the book:

“The most surprising discovery made by Baumeister’s group shows, as he puts it, that the idea of mental energy is more than a mere metaphor. The nervous system consumes more glucose than most other parts of the body, and effortful mental activity appears to be especially expensive in the currency of glucose. When you are actively involved in difficult cognitive reasoning or engaged in a task that requires self-control, your blood glucose level drops. The effect is analogous to a runner who draws down glucose stored in her muscles during a sprint. The bold implication of this idea is that the effects of ego depletion could be undone by ingesting glucose, and Baumeister and his colleagues have confirmed this hypothesis in several experiments.”

So what I learned from this paragraph is that I need to schedule break between work. If I find out I have been working on something more than an hour, I should eat some fruit(blueberry for example). Then back to work. Otherwise I might depleted myself before I really accomplish something.

Decision

Today's Audiobook leads me to rethink about this paragraph. I think audiobook is a great way to refresh my mind about the stuff I have read. I will continue to use it to refresh what I have read in Think, Fast and Slow