self-control decision making is like a muscle

Page 30 self-control decision making is like a muscle. It temporarily weakens after an exertion, a phenomenon called eagle depletion, and replenishes with rest. Although experiments on the ego depletion of produced and consistent results it does seem that exercising willpower contemporary lead deplete the mental energy needed for self-control on other tasks. President Obama explains to a writer that you'll see I wear only gray or blue suits. I'm trying to pair down decisions. I don't want to make decisions about what I'm eating or wearing because I have too many other decisions to make.

— from Fuel (Energy)

In the book

As you ruminate and catastrophize, you are pulled into a mental loop that quietly drains your vitality faster than almost anything else. And even ordinary deciding costs more than we think — self-control and judgment run on a kind of muscle that tires with use, a depletion that makes every later decision worse; the sheer mental energy and stress of deciding what to do, all day long, is a real and rarely-counted cost. The exhaustion of effortful work is not weakness or imagination; it is real, and it is the gauge telling you the truth. — Fuel (Energy)

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