The Erosion of Willpower

I read an article once that pointed out that the reason people frequently fail at their goals is trying to do too many things at once--in specific, too many things that they have to force themselves to do. The article claimed that people have a finite amount of willpower, which is one reason why stress makes it so difficult to accomplish things.

My finite amount of willpower was used up this week.

It seems that I don't have quite enough willpower to exercise 5 days a week, eat healthy, go to class 2 days, do homework every day, concentrate steadily on work every day, and drastically reduce my spending. Because by the time all of that is done in a day, not have I run out of time to do anything fun to recharge myself, but it's generally about 2 hours later than I planned on getting to sleep.

I'm trying very hard to get ahead in my classes (class ends the same week as my lease is up, so I'm going to need to be ahead of the game on everything if I expect to make it through without taking a good part of the week off), so I'm hoping that if I succeed my homework load will go down soon. Also, it will be several more weeks before I have a week when I have to attend both my classes. I'm hoping those two things will help! Because I'm not ready to give up on any of my goals, but at this rate I'm not likely to achieve them.

Evidence: Thursday was the first day this week that I had the entire evening to myself. I intended to get a huge amount of homework done, do a workout video, and celebrate by watching the new episode of Once Upon a Time with Steamboard Willie. What really happened: I did read two short chapters of homework, but I spent the rest of the evening on the couch watching TV, and then I went to bed early.

Hopefully I figure something out, or I'm afraid I'll be recording some disappointing results for some of my January (and February, March and April!) goals.