No change without cookies

If you’ve ever wondered why it’s hard to initiate social change (or any kind of change, for that matter), perhaps this psychological study at The Fast Company may interest you.

Say two groups of participants are given an impossible task to solve. Beforehand, one group is allowed to eat from a bowl of delicious cookies. The other group is asked not to, though the cookies are placed in a bowl on the table in front of them. (That group gets to eat radishes instead.)

Studies find that the first group persisted more than twice as long at the impossible task than those who had been denied the cookies.

This finding implies that the act of self-control—focused self-reflection or attention to something—is an exhaustible resource. Which means that we have limited amounts of energy with which to change the world.

Now one question might be: how do you decide where to spend your energy? What will you do with that resource?

A tip: go eat some cookies, then browse through the amazing projects on betterplace.org! Make change!