For many people, religion helps a lot in replenishing willpower. Although, what I observed, it's less about stopping procrastination, and more about not despairing in a difficult or depressing situation. I might even safely guess that for a lot of believers this is among the primary causes of their beliefs.
I know that religious beliefs on this site are significantly below the offline average, I didn't want to convince anyone of anything, I just pointed out that for many people it helps. Maybe by acknowledging this fact we might understand why.
Agree and my proposed mechanism of action is a stance shift (more in the sense of how Mark uses stance in folding, or Chapman does) that seems to be the difference between believing that things are/will basically turn out okay vs being random and largely not in our control. In much the same way that having a fake button that the person thinks will turn off the annoying noise lets them tolerate it longer, having a fake meaning button allows one to handle set backs outside of the locus of control from sapping motivation.
After a bit of brief research, I still have no idea how willpower depletion actually works, or if I'm mistaking depletion for distraction, etc., etc. I get the impression that there isn't much a consensus in the field on this subject.
What I'd like to know is this: what do you actually do to replenish willpower?
In other words, after working for several days in a row and being tired and not wanting to work on project x that has a large delay and little expectation (from the Procrastination Equation), how do you then work on project x? Do you eat something sugary, recite a mantra, meditate, sleep?
I've read (I can't remember where) that completing difficult tasks gives a boost to willpower, but then how do you convince yourself to start that difficult task? And what difficult task do you use?
Thanks.