Research

There’s a horror story that has circulated online for years, known as “The Russian Sleep Experiment” or “The Soviet Sleep Experiment.” The story goes like this: In the 1940s, Soviet researchers sealed five political prisoners in a chamber and used an experimental gas to keep them awake for 15 days straight. By day five, the subjects became paranoid and stopped talking to each other. By day nine, they were screaming. By day 15, they had mutilated themselves and were begging the researchers not to let them sleep. ...

I was reading a psychology paper that promised to change how I thought about willpower. The study claimed that ego depletion-the idea that willpower is a limited resource that gets exhausted-had been proven through rigorous experiments. Hundreds of studies supported it. It was taught in psychology courses. It was in textbooks. I built my productivity system around this concept. I scheduled important decisions for the morning. I avoided making choices when I was tired. I believed willpower worked like a muscle that could be depleted. ...