On Friday I re-blogged Daniel Reeves article Ego Depletion Depletion from the Beeminder blog
My view about willpower has always been that it is a struggle between one’s short-term and long-term wishes, and that all else being equal the short-term wishes will win out. One can put up a struggle against this for a while but sooner or later (usually sooner) the struggle will be too much for us.
Consistent action to follow one’s long-term goals can only be carried out by constructing a scenario in which it’s easier to do the right thing than the wrong thing.
My contention is that no-list systems are better at doing this than catch-all systems. Over the next few days I want to explore the reasons why this is so.