What is 'Ego Depletion'?
7/29/10: Have you ever wondered why you can make good choices for your health throughout most of the day only to crash and burn later by skipping the gym and having a second dessert? Or why you might be able to control your emotions and how you communicate them earlier in the day, but later feel more out of control or unable to express things as smoothly? It is more than just being tired. Enter ego depletion.
Ego depletion is the term being used for how our ability to make good decisions and self-regulate (manage thoughts and feelings) wears out over time, and the research supporting this is becoming quite strong. The theory is that we have a finite pool of resources (energy) that allows us to navigate life, regulate emotions, make choices (called 'decision fatigue'), and control our behavior, and that like a muscle being used, it wears out. So if your bicep was your ability to self-regulate (make good decisions, keep your cool, etc), and you did a set of curls, the 12th curl would be more difficult than the first. Just like the first time passing up a cupcake is more difficult than the 12th in one day (if it would even take that long before you would just eat one).
To make the picture even more bleak, there are a few things that start us off with even less ability, including amount of sleep in the preceding nights, experiencing fatigue, being hungry, having some kind of negative emotions (anger, sadness, jealousy, etc), or just not being very motivated.
Implications
This has major implications for our lives. First, it offers a great explanation for why some things may be difficult to do later in the day than earlier. For example, many of the couples I work with end up having their biggest fights at the end of the day. One explanation is that it is the only time they see each other, but it is often much more than that. Having a conflict later in the day means that each partner is likely in a state of ego depletion (they have made countless decisions over the day, may be fatigued, and are then experiencing negative emotions), making the chance of anything going well very small.
Second, it explains why sustaining efforts to make changes in our lives is difficult. When the task we are doing requires more effort, our resources are used up quicker. For example, if you are trying to make a very difficult and large change, it is like picking up a heavier weight to do your bicep curls. At your best you could do a few before you wore out.
What Can We Do?
There are a few things we can do to help minimize the experience of ego depletion.
1. Get enough sleep. If you are starting off with less ability to self-regulate because you aren't sleeping enough, then this can be the best place to start.
2. Understand how it works in your life: Take a look at how ego depletion may occur with you and get a feel for how you can notice when you are experiencing it.
3. Prepare: If you are able to know that there are certain times of the day that you will need to be on your game, or that you will be entering a period of time of increased stress, then make a mental note of that ahead of time. This helps us "conserve" some of our resources.
4. HALT: This concept is nothing new to people involved in 12-step programs. For years, the acronym HALT (hungry, angry, lonely, tired) has been used to indicate being at risk for relapse. Stopping what you are doing when you recognize that you are about to make a poor decision takes some energy, but scraping some resources together at those moments can really help you avoid some big consequences.
5. Be Compassionate to Yourself: We sometimes have a tendency to compound our emotional strain when we become disappointed and angry with ourselves for falling into the ego depletion trap. If this is effective in getting you back on track then great, but for most of us it just makes us feel worse and makes it even harder. Try letting yourself off the hook once if this happens, you are human after all, and this is just a fact of normal human life.
For more on making positive change, check out my post on "The Secrets of Changing".
Ego depletion is the term being used for how our ability to make good decisions and self-regulate (manage thoughts and feelings) wears out over time, and the research supporting this is becoming quite strong. The theory is that we have a finite pool of resources (energy) that allows us to navigate life, regulate emotions, make choices (called 'decision fatigue'), and control our behavior, and that like a muscle being used, it wears out. So if your bicep was your ability to self-regulate (make good decisions, keep your cool, etc), and you did a set of curls, the 12th curl would be more difficult than the first. Just like the first time passing up a cupcake is more difficult than the 12th in one day (if it would even take that long before you would just eat one).
To make the picture even more bleak, there are a few things that start us off with even less ability, including amount of sleep in the preceding nights, experiencing fatigue, being hungry, having some kind of negative emotions (anger, sadness, jealousy, etc), or just not being very motivated.
Implications
This has major implications for our lives. First, it offers a great explanation for why some things may be difficult to do later in the day than earlier. For example, many of the couples I work with end up having their biggest fights at the end of the day. One explanation is that it is the only time they see each other, but it is often much more than that. Having a conflict later in the day means that each partner is likely in a state of ego depletion (they have made countless decisions over the day, may be fatigued, and are then experiencing negative emotions), making the chance of anything going well very small.
Second, it explains why sustaining efforts to make changes in our lives is difficult. When the task we are doing requires more effort, our resources are used up quicker. For example, if you are trying to make a very difficult and large change, it is like picking up a heavier weight to do your bicep curls. At your best you could do a few before you wore out.
What Can We Do?
There are a few things we can do to help minimize the experience of ego depletion.
1. Get enough sleep. If you are starting off with less ability to self-regulate because you aren't sleeping enough, then this can be the best place to start.
2. Understand how it works in your life: Take a look at how ego depletion may occur with you and get a feel for how you can notice when you are experiencing it.
3. Prepare: If you are able to know that there are certain times of the day that you will need to be on your game, or that you will be entering a period of time of increased stress, then make a mental note of that ahead of time. This helps us "conserve" some of our resources.
4. HALT: This concept is nothing new to people involved in 12-step programs. For years, the acronym HALT (hungry, angry, lonely, tired) has been used to indicate being at risk for relapse. Stopping what you are doing when you recognize that you are about to make a poor decision takes some energy, but scraping some resources together at those moments can really help you avoid some big consequences.
5. Be Compassionate to Yourself: We sometimes have a tendency to compound our emotional strain when we become disappointed and angry with ourselves for falling into the ego depletion trap. If this is effective in getting you back on track then great, but for most of us it just makes us feel worse and makes it even harder. Try letting yourself off the hook once if this happens, you are human after all, and this is just a fact of normal human life.
For more on making positive change, check out my post on "The Secrets of Changing".
