Willpower described as a tank that empties, where the research now calls the effect unsettled

Weaker than written — a claim stands, but we would now qualify it.

Several of these pages describe willpower as a limited resource that runs down over the day — the "ego depletion" model — as settled fact. It is not settled, in either direction. Two large preregistered replication efforts (23 labs in 2016, 36 labs in 2021) found effects indistinguishable from zero; the larger project's own exploratory analysis found a small significant one; a meta-analytic re-appraisal found the original evidence overstated, and the most recent review calls the evidence inconclusive. The practical advice on these pages (rest, plan ahead, don't rely on willpower alone) stands on other grounds; the mechanism sentence does not. Each page is being rewritten to say "contested" — neither "willpower is a tank that empties" nor "depletion is a myth" — with the replication literature cited, as the daily chain reaches it.

Details

Defect f002 · registered 23 August 2026 · amended 23 August 2026

Affects 22 companion pages. 1 corrected.

Affected pages last measured 23 August 2026.

Affected companions

• The Broken Window
• Willpower’s Limit
• Desk Drawer Audit
• The Grocery Store
• The Checkout Lane
• The Bread Basket
• The Gatekeeper
• The Happy Hour
• The Self-Trust Issue
• The Realist

12 more…

• The Willpower Depletion
• The Conference
• The Consistency Problem
• The Fatigue Factor
• The Last-Minute Dinner — corrected
• The Kitchen Timer
• The Office Celebration
• The Menu Preview
• The Cooking Fatigue
• The Selective Eater
• The Default Meals
• The Decision Fatigue

All known defects