Will power?

[Becca Mills]

I read this interesting article about will power: qz.com/1019928/i-went-from-sedentary-academic-to-100-mile-marathon-runner-thanks-to-the-science-of-self-control/?utm_source=atlfb

Key idea: People may be born with differing capacities/tendencies to delay gratification, but the process of doing so breaks down into three components, so it can be practiced, and practice yields improvement ... which is important because people who can delay gratification are more successful.

I don't know what to think of this. Convincing? If so, how much does it affect writers?

Interesting aside: I have seven-year-old fraternal twin girls. When I read this article, I asked them, "If I offered you one marshmallow now or two marshmallows in ten minutes, which would you take?" One promptly said, "Two in ten minutes," and the other said, "One right away." The former is the one who gets her homework done early, cleans stuff up when asked, etc.

[Victoria]

That was interesting! I definitely feel as though I'm "training" with my writing and becoming more disciplined. I've been writing for an audience since I was a fanfic writer in my teens, but I seriously underestimated how much I'd have to kick up my self-control to make a career out of it. I started out thinking "writing is something I do for fun, so I'll have no trouble getting myself motivated to do it". But there's a HUGE difference between what I was doing back then (knocking out a 2000-word chapter as and when I felt like it, and regularly switching between/abandoning stories on a whim) and what I need to do now (reliably complete projects in a predictable amount of time).

I say that the book I published in March took me 3 years to write, but I think what I was really doing was taking a (self-directed and poorly-planned) course in disciplined writing. I managed to stay focused on the same book that whole time, which is impressive for me, and I'm proud that I didn't abandon it. But I went in a LOT of wrong directions and ended up writing probably 50k or even more words that I couldn't use because of poor planning. And that's probably nothing compared to the amount of time I wasted trying NOT to have to waste those words, by bending myself into a pretzel trying to smush them back into the story.

My current project is (fingers crossed) going a million times better. I learned from my mistakes and put together a comprehensive plan before writing ANYTHING, and was quick to go back to it and make some changes when things weren't working, before writing lots more words I'd have to waste. But I'm also writing way faster now, and that's changed my perspective on "wasting" words. I used to feel okay if I'd written 1000 words in a day and great if I'd written 2000. And I wasn't writing every day, so losing 50k was losing months of work. But, writing with my plan, I was getting over 3k a day without too much strain and even up to 4 or 5 some days. I wrote 50k in less than a month, which I always thought was impossible. (I know that's NaNoWriMo and tons of people do it every year, but the idea always overwhelmed me.) So, now I'm not afraid to throw out a scene that's not working, because it's probably quicker to rewrite it from scratch than to try and rework it. I'm super-excited to have got this fast, and I want to get even faster. So I feel like I'm talking about it the way people talk about running. (Caveat: I do not run, and embarrass myself terribly if I try.)

The three factors the author mentions make a lot of sense to me. I've definitely upped my "standards" for productivity, since 2k is no longer a "good writing day" for me. And recording it has been essential for morale (and for pushing me forward - I don't want to record a bad day, so I push to make it a good one). I'm not really sure about strength, but I guess my stamina has increased? I get distracted very easily and frequently, but it takes a lot more for me to walk away from the computer and become engaged in something totally different, like watching TV.

As for being born with different capacities for it... I don't know. I certainly imagine that, as a child, I'd have waited the 10 minutes for an extra marshmallow, but I don't know for sure! I was very high-achieving at school but just average at university - in part because I felt a lot less pressure there, so I think there are mixed messages there about my natural capacity for self-control!

Thanks for sharing the article

[Daniel]

Fascinating. And convincing.

For the purpose of discussion, I think we need to share the three factors of self-control from the article:

Factors for developing will power/self-control

• Standards are the reference points you use to determine whether a given action is appropriate or desirable—whether you should order a third drink, for example, or wake up at 5 am every day. Our standards originate from our cultural surroundings, what people teach us, and our personal beliefs.
• Monitoring is the second part of self-control. If you want to control your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, you have to keep track of them.
• Strength refers to how much energy you have to control your impulses. Your strength waxes and wanes as the day goes on, usually peaking in the morning and plunging at night. You can also build up strength through practicing self-control.

I have no doubt that the factors DeWall talks about have potential for writers. I notice that the factors can be tied to most of the goal-achievement advice I've seen. However, he incorporates the idea of developing willpower and self-control as part of the process, which is a new spin for me. There's a saying, "The less you do, the less you want to do." If that's true, then it makes sense that the reverse could also be true.

In my life, my most productive and energetic times have been when I had a specific project to complete or goal to accomplish. But "standards" come into play there. You have to think the result is "appropriate or desirable," or to look at it another way, "worth the effort."

I think writers can benefit from DeWall's factors, but that first one can be tricky. It drives motivation. If your motivation is to earn money from your writing, is it worthwhile to write a book that you aren't convinced will sell? Maybe. It might sell. It might do nothing. That uncertainty can be death to motivation and willpower. It's arguably easier to complete a book if your purpose is to tell a particular story regardless of whether or not it will sell.

I have a crisis of willpower when it comes to marketing. In my experience, marketing is hard, and it's a roll of the dice (with less than 50% chance of success) as to whether or not the results will be worth the effort. That makes it hard to get motivated. If you can't define a standard worth achieving, it's going to be hard to muster the strength to resist distraction. Meanwhile, if things aren't going as you want, monitoring becomes a source of depressing information rather than a positive feedback loop. I guess those "factors" can work in reverse as well.

[Becca Mills]

she, I see myself in a very similar position as a writer. I have a lot of motivation to write when things are going well, but when I hit challenges, my motivation evaporates. No one likes feeling like they're sucking at something, and wrestling with a challenge feels like sucking *unless* you have confidence -- based on experience, perhaps -- that you will be able to overcome the challenge in the end. (With confidence, perhaps wrestling with the challenge becomes more fun than frustrating.) I'm writing from a plan now too, and I do find it *so* much easier. That said, I'm a long way from being able to write 4-5K/day.

Daniel, I agree that motivation is a complicating factor. Our motivations overlap. Mine right now probably include: affection for characters and other elements of just enjoying the work; desire to replace teaching with writing as an income source; the boost to my identity of feeling I can do this; the desire not to appear to be slacking when my husband is very kindly supporting me for a year; etc., etc. I mean, it's complicated! Get one layer in there that's sort of ambivalent/working against the others, and the whole edifice might fail.

[Becca Mills]

BTW, the more "empowered" widget got all the way up to fifty marshmallows in a month vs. one right now. When I asked about fifty bags of marshmallows in a year vs. one right now, she caved. As would I ... I mean, what the heck would you do with fifty bags of marshmallows? Yuck.

[ameliasmith]

This is an issue I've been spending some time thinking about lately, after half a lifetime of not thinking about it at all (or hardly at all). I'm not convinced that people have an innate talent levels for self control, but I am convinced it can be learned, and that it was something that just wasn't emphasized in my upbringing, which has been a handicap in my adult life. 

My most recent experiment with self-control has been yet another weight loss diet, a pretty mild one, and not all that successful yet. Still, I made some progress and my back-sliding has been minor (so far). Through it I learned that it's actually okay to feel hungry for a couple of hours -- no harm done. Americans in general are really into snacking and there's a common belief rolling around in healthy-eating talk that it's healthier to eat lots of small meals in a day rather than a few large ones. I don't buy that anymore.

I think that the self-control I've gained in this diet has contributed to my recent (still small and not well-established) success in early morning writing, which is going better than it has in the past. Starting one's writing session with chocolate, as I've done for years, is hazardous.

Jul 5, 2017 11:54:59 GMT -5 Daniel said:

If you can't define a standard worth achieving, it's going to be hard to muster the strength to resist distraction. Meanwhile, if things aren't going as you want, monitoring becomes a source of depressing information rather than a positive feedback loop. I guess those "factors" can work in reverse as well.

Yes. It really, really helps to believe, with good reason, that what you're doing is worthwhile. A lot of the time that's missing.

[Victoria]

Jul 5, 2017 13:01:33 GMT -5 Becca Mills said:

she, I see myself in a very similar position as a writer. I have a lot of motivation to write when things are going well, but when I hit challenges, my motivation evaporates. No one likes feeling like they're sucking at something, and wrestling with a challenge feels like sucking *unless* you have confidence -- based on experience, perhaps -- that you will be able to overcome the challenge in the end. (With confidence, perhaps wrestling with the challenge becomes more fun than frustrating.) I'm writing from a plan now too, and I do find it *so* much easier. That said, I'm a long way from being able to write 4-5K/day.

Yes, this is exactly it! Especially with the first book, it was so easily to start spiralling whenever I got stuck because I had no evidence that I was actually capable of finishing a project like that. I'm finding that I can overcome a LOT with this one by just saying to myself "Okay, but didn't you feel this way a lot with the last book? And didn't you finish that in the end?" Of course, now I have a new hangup: what if this book ends up way suckier than the last one because I haven't agonised over it to the same extent? Maybe three years of self-torture are the only reason that one's any good! I guess I know that's probably not true, because most of the agonising I did last time was extremely unproductive. But still...

I don't want to oversell the 4-5k/day thing. I was only doing it by typing [blah] or [should probably do some research about this] and skipping ahead whenever I got stuck, so it's far from final draft stuff, and I've left myself a lot of tedious clean-up work to do. But I'm prone to spending a long time picking over a sentence that was fine to begin with, or that later gets cut, so forcing myself to go for speed is a good thing for me, productivity-wise. I don't think it should necessarily be a number-one priority for everyone.

I also agree with Daniel's points about motivation, especially that monitoring can be unhelpful if things are going badly. And some things are outside your direct control - like having to deal with priorities other than writing, or discouraging sales, or a piece of criticism that hits home a little too hard. So, to extrapolate from that, it might be harmful to believe that this stuff is 100% about self-control (and thus that failure is always a failure to control yourself). So maybe this should all be used with caution, but I still think it's useful.

[Victoria]

Jul 5, 2017 13:45:26 GMT -5 ameliasmith said:

This is an issue I've been spending some time thinking about lately, after half a lifetime of not thinking about it at all (or hardly at all). I'm not convinced that people have an innate talent levels for self control, but I am convinced it can be learned, and that it was something that just wasn't emphasized in my upbringing, which has been a handicap in my adult life. 

My most recent experiment with self-control has been yet another weight loss diet, a pretty mild one, and not all that successful yet. Still, I made some progress and my back-sliding has been minor (so far). Through it I learned that it's actually okay to feel hungry for a couple of hours -- no harm done. Americans in general are really into snacking and there's a common belief rolling around in healthy-eating talk that it's healthier to eat lots of small meals in a day rather than a few large ones. I don't buy that anymore.

I think that the self-control I've gained in this diet has contributed to my recent (still small and not well-established) success in early morning writing, which is going better than it has in the past. Starting one's writing session with chocolate, as I've done for years, is hazardous.

Jul 5, 2017 11:54:59 GMT -5 Daniel said:

If you can't define a standard worth achieving, it's going to be hard to muster the strength to resist distraction. Meanwhile, if things aren't going as you want, monitoring becomes a source of depressing information rather than a positive feedback loop. I guess those "factors" can work in reverse as well.

Yes. It really, really helps to believe, with good reason, that what you're doing is worthwhile. A lot of the time that's missing.

I don't want to derail the thread too much, but dieting is where the question of self-control gets complex for me. I've been studiously avoiding anything remotely diet-like for years now, because I discovered in my teens and while at university that they awaken something really weird in me. Basically, I go too far, trying to restrict what I eat much more than is necessary, and constantly trying to impose new restrictions, eat less than yesterday etc. It's either that or I just eat whatever I want - I can't diet just a little. Ironically, I lose control over the amount of self-control I use! I think it's a form of self-competitiveness (and I'm actually hardly ever competitive with other people) that usually drives me to do better, but takes a really weird form where food is concerned.

But then, diets are what a lot of people associate with "self-control", because that's where (IMO) people are most pressured to use it and most shamed for appearing to fail. So I find it really interesting that you feel you've improved the skill in that way and are now applying it elsewhere!

[ameliasmith]

Jul 5, 2017 14:11:54 GMT -5 Victoria said:

I don't want to derail the thread too much, but dieting is where the question of self-control gets complex for me. I've been studiously avoiding anything remotely diet-like for years now, because I discovered in my teens and while at university that they awaken something really weird in me. Basically, I go too far, trying to restrict what I eat much more than is necessary, and constantly trying to impose new restrictions, eat less than yesterday etc. It's either that or I just eat whatever I want - I can't diet just a little. Ironically, I lose control over the amount of self-control I use! I think it's a form of self-competitiveness (and I'm actually hardly ever competitive with other people) that usually drives me to do better, but takes a really weird form where food is concerned.

But then, diets are what a lot of people associate with "self-control", because that's where (IMO) people are most pressured to use it and most shamed for appearing to fail. So I find it really interesting that you feel you've improved the skill in that way and are now applying it elsewhere!

Jumping in on the derail, I think this is where it helps to have really appropriate, specific standards and to be careful about what you pick. For my diet I'm simply: 

• Not snacking (except for maybe a once-a-week ice cream with the kids)
• Not having desert except about once a week
• Avoiding alcohol

In addition to that I'm trying to walk and exercise more, which is where I can go off the rails (except that I don't really have time to over-exercise). My goals with it are twofold: I'd like to get back to my pre-2nd-child weight, and I'd like to have fewer migraines, which seem to be triggered by sugar/alcohol some of the time. So there's a definite payoff and it doesn't make me too anti-social and it's something I'm doing as a 40-something year old. I've definitely known some bulimic women/girls, so I've seen dieting go bad, but they were mostly younger. 

The picking correct and realistic standards thing is important in writing, too. With all these book-a-month people bragging about their productivity I think it prompts some people to set unrealistic goals for themselves, so they might hit amazing word counts for a day or two but be completely off the mark for their bigger goals (like creating a legacy or just making a living at this, analogous to the big goal of dieting as health, rather than weight loss for its own sake).

[scdaffron]

Jul 4, 2017 16:58:33 GMT -5 Becca Mills said:

I don't know what to think of this. Convincing? If so, how much does it affect writers?

I found this interesting from the standpoint that the ONLY way I have gotten better as a writer is to do it consistently. I know this is old news and every writing book recommends it, but I'm the world's best (or worst) procrastinator. For a long time, I produced email newsletters and that weekly deadline helped me learn to write when I don't want to, which is really quite a lot of the time

That discipline carried over to my book/novel writing and I find that if I don't write my 1000 words/day, it gets more and more difficult to muster to write. (Not that I always get in 1000 words, but I try, just like the runner tries to get in his certain number of miles, even though sometimes it doesn't happen or it really sucks.)

I think this "writing self-control" is why so many reporters end up becoming prolific writers. They've had a tremendous amount of practice forcing themselves to write because of daily deadlines.

[Becca Mills]

Jul 5, 2017 15:54:52 GMT -5 scdaffron said:

I think this "writing self-control" is why so many reporters end up becoming prolific writers. They've had a tremendous amount of practice forcing themselves to write because of daily deadlines.

Occurs to me that Amanda Lee was a reporter ...

I wonder if these ideas about will power intersect with stuff I've read about the importance of forming (positive) habits.

[scdaffron]

Jul 5, 2017 20:39:27 GMT -5 Becca Mills said:

Occurs to me that Amanda Lee was a reporter ...

I read an interview with her where she more or less said writing books was easier. Heh. (Not to mention a heck of a lot more lucrative, in her case.)

[Becca Mills]

Jul 6, 2017 10:50:25 GMT -5 scdaffron said:

Jul 5, 2017 20:39:27 GMT -5 Becca Mills said:

Occurs to me that Amanda Lee was a reporter ...

I read an interview with her where she more or less said writing books was easier. Heh. (Not to mention a heck of a lot more lucrative, in her case.)

i'm not surprised. Being a journalist in this day and age is pretty rough!

[elephantsbookshelf]

Boy, that was an interesting article for me on so many levels. I generally have fairly strong self-control. The trick right now is not having too many projects to focus on (which I suppose might undermine my previous statement about self-control). But I've definitely seen that when I set fewer goals -- and focus on a day's goals, while recognizing long-term goals as well -- I accomplish more and feel better about myself.

[ameliasmith]

I also do better with fewer goals. I put the day's checklist on a regular-sized post-it note. It's best when it's only 3-5 things, though I often squeeze in more than that.