Willpower: Rediscovering our Greatest Strength by Roy F Baumeister and John Tierney

There are thousands of books on self-help, but I am averse to the kind of unsubstantiated mantras about thinking yourself into success that so many of them espouse. Baumeister and Teirney's book is different, it is completely evidence based. It cites results that have confounded experimenters and forced them to rethink their current ways of thinking about willpower and self regulation, and so to find new clarity. It speaks about the genetic basis of willpower but also the ways in which we can help ourselves find the ability not to succumb to temptation, be it spending, overeating, or sloth.

The book begins with looking at the Victorian notion of willpower and self denial, and contrasting our current social mores and extremely temptation full modern world. It then moves through experimental evidence about to-do lists, how our willpower is sapped, and, most importantly, how we can conserve it, use it best and what power it has when we instil it in our children (and how to do that!)

Like all really good non-fiction texts, it slotted in with some of what I already understood about my own willpower and those around me, while challenging me, putting a mirror up to some uncomfortable truths and giving me ways to help myself. I have always been strongly self directed, content to be alone.  I am wilful to the point of stubbornness, and I do get up off my butt and get on with stuff, I'm currently doing at least half an hour of exercise 5 days a week to become stronger for walking in the Austrian Alps in the summer.  I work from home, I have a data set that I have to keep up to date with and commitments to my boss, but no externally set deadlines.  I regulate my own workflow, and do have a saying in my head if I don't want to do something: 'if it's worth doing it's worth doing well'.  It is better to get through a task and get it done than to fudge it or to rush through it, 'less haste more speed', I make mistakes if I rush and if I leave things undone I feel, in Baumister and Tierney's term, the monkey on my back.  The monkey is that hopping attention that I am so familiar with, that agitation when I'm trying to get lots done at once.  The mindfulness helps and this book helped me put the jigsaw together.  By making a list the monkey doesn't chatter so much, yesterday I calmly worked through all the stuff on my desk that was there to remind me to do stuff, and am so much calmer.  The book speaks of having a mind like a pool of water rather than the chattering monkey, so just as a pool reacts to a pebble falling in it so the mind can be, reacting completely in proportion to the disturbance then returning to calm.  Yesterday I exhausted my willpower working and when my daughter came home and was whiney about doing her homework my patience snapped and I got angry.  On reflection, it became clear what had gone wrong and that I need to do something, probably meditate, an hour before she comes home from school.  Mediation, or religion if you are so inclined, is important because it allows me to act in a situation rather than react, to see my emotions and feelings as a river that I am sitting on the bank of, to clearly see and understand the patterns of my anxieties and fears and let them pass, not fighting them, just letting them come and go.