One of my biggest takeaways from the book Willpower, by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, is the idea of ego depletion. Ego depletion says that we have limited willpower. Whenever we use cognitive resources to solve a problem or resist an impulse, we use willpower.
When we run out of willpower, our ability to problem solve and make good decisions falls significantly. We become highly emotional. Our ability to regulate our emotions plummets. We can’t process complex information. Imagine the blue screen of death or the browser loading icon—that’s what happens to our brains when our willpower has been depleted.
Casinos prey on depleted willpower. If you’re tired at 3am and trying to win back your losses for the evening, it will be much harder to cut your losses and walk away then as opposed to if you just woke up, ate breakfast, and played a few hands of blackjack. The tired, frustrated gambler is more likely to continue playing than a fresh, well-energized gambler.
Poker players call this going on tilt. It happens when you’ve lost a big pot that you were favored to win. You’re tired and angry and want to keep playing to make back your losses. But your weakened state of willpower substantially impacts your ability to make sound, rational decisions. I made over $60k playing online poker as a freshman in college, but I lost $8k on my worst night of tilt.
The best thing to do when our ego is depleted at the poker table is to stop playing. But that’s exactly when our impulse to make back our loss is the strongest. It’s also when our emotional regulation is the weakest: we have little to no energy left to resist our impulses. This idea is the seed of the obsessive gamer’s “one more game” mentality that leads to an entire sleepless night of gaming.
The best way to avoid ego depletion is to invest your willpower into habits that will preserve or increase your willpower. Investing willpower provides compounding returns. Research showed that people with the most self-control exerted willpower the least. Their day-to-day habits were crafted through careful willpower investments to minimize the risk of willpower bankruptcy. High self-control people were extremely profitable willpower investors.
