August 31, 2011 - 5:40 pm
At least, that’s what a new book by social psychologist Roy F. Baumeister & journalist John Tierney entitled Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength says. According to the authors, the average person spends four hours or more each day resisting temptation: Temptation to slack off at work and check facebook, to eat unhealthy foods, or even to engage in sex or other activities.
Does surfing the web to look for blog-fodder count as temptation? What if blogging is your job? Does it count as willpower then?
What temptations have you resisted lately, and which ones have you given in to?
“Is Blogging a Job or a Temptation?”
Yes.
Once again, I find I’m above average.
In other news, less than 0.01% of the population has the time and/or inclination to count how many hours per day they spend fighting temptation.
Others might call fighting temptation acting responsibly. For example, I resist the temptation to chuck it all in and live on an island somewhere every time I go to work.
Oh dear. I spend at least 6 hours losing to temptation.
I deal with the guilt in my dreams, while I’m asleep. No time otherwise!
I do believe that “people, on average, spend…” . What would it really mean to be The Average Person?
Always strive to be above average.
That figure seems a little high. It’s more like 4 minutes a day for me, fighting the temptation to go to the freezer and grab a Haagen Daz right after supper. And that’s about it. Meh.
Really? That’s what I spend sleeping; every other hour is Temptation Central.
Does that mean the average person spends twenty hours a day yielding to temptation?
Just imagine how productive we could all be with 4 more hours if we just gave in to temptation.
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.
I can resist everything but temptation.
Oh, there’s the usual stuff:
1. Being grumpy with my family when I’m hungry and it’s still a half hour before we can eat dinner;
2. Staying up until far too late enjoying that peaceful quiet time after the kids go to bed, with the result of having not enough sleep because I still have to wake up early the next morning;
3. Having to remind myself, while at the beach on vacation, not to crane my neck to take unnecessary second glances when a bikini-clad young flatbelly goes by;
That kind of thing.
But I think my main problem is the temptation to spend too much time responding to other people’s blog-posts on the Internet.
It’s just like the XKCD comic says: “I can’t come to bed; someone is WRONG on the Internet.”
Yep, I’ve been in many a flame war on comment and forum threads!
And I also run a team blog, plus there’s another group blog that I contribute to. In my case, it’s “Oh, I found one more thing I just gotta BLOG about, even though I already put up 13 blog posts…is that too many blog posts for one day?…and oh, waitaminute, one of my blog team members just sent me some more stuff I gotta put up … it’s 4am and tomorrow’s work shift starts at 11, I still have a little bit of time…”
“Does surfing the web to look for blog-fodder count as temptation?”
No, it’s a calling …
Cheers
It’s what I do when I get too tired to put up any more blog posts!!!