[honzzz]

Could you please clarify this for me? I assume that I did not understand the concept of ego depletion before but how is this related to the banal observation of real-life things... like when I do not have the willpower to follow my exercise routine after a really hard day at work or feel unable to focus when I am tired... this would not be "ego depletion" or "cognitive fatigue"? To be honest, those things seemed so obvious and "common knowledge" to me that I did not understand why even invent special terms - what am I missing?

[losteric]

Endurance is not disputed. We understand the bottlenecks of physical endurance, but mental bottlenecks are is still poorly understood. That study rejected the ego depletion hypothesis for mental fatigue.

[honzzz]

I have chosen a poor example and formulated my question in a misleading way. I do not work physically and I am more likely to lack willpower when I am mentally tired even when it is related to other things than physical exercise - for example I am trying to reduce my sugar intake and I am more likely to just give up eat some chocolate after a tiring (mentally) day. That is what I thought was the kind of obvious thing - that when people are mentally tired they tend to just watch a movie instead of originally planned language learning. This is what's disputed?

I am asking because either I do not understand the ego depletion concept or something that seemed really obvious to me is disputed, which would surprise me.

[dnissley]

Just speculating, but could it be that your mind is grasping for an explanation, came up with the ego depletion idea, subjected it to a reasonable amount of questioning to ensure that it wasn't completely flimsy, and then you went with it? Kind of a "thinker thinks and prover proves" type mechanism?