Laying the Foundation for Your Morning Routine75Decisions
If long- term change starts with our daily decisions, how do we
make those thousands of good decisions each day?
We have to start well. Our first decisions need to be good
ones. Better yet, the longer we can delay decision- making, the
more likely we are to make more good decisions throughout
the day. What do I mean?
Decision- making is exhausting. It requires willpower,
which, as research has shown, is a limited resource. In 1998,
Roy Baumeister and colleagues did a study, commonly known
as the “Chocolate and Radish Study,” in which they invited
participants into a room where chocolate- chip cookies had
just been baked. Researchers assigned the participants to eat
from either the plate of cookies or from a bowl of radishes.
After eating from their assigned dish, participants were then
given a puzzle that, unbeknownst to them, was unsolvable.
Those who were assigned to eat from the radish bowl and had
to exercise willpower to avoid the cookies consequently gave
up on the puzzle twice as fast as the cookie group and the con-
trol group (which had no snack).^1 The finding from this study,
and subsequent related ones, was that our willpower is like a
muscle, and it can be depleted.
So if we can start our days with a series of good habits,
we can save all that willpower for other choices later in the
day when we are tired. You see, habits don’t require thought.
I’ll explain more about habits in detail later on, but the key
is to understand that as we develop a habit, we build neural
pathways in our brains and strengthen them with every repe-
tition of that action until it’s almost second nature. Habits,