Brought to you by your mother

The latest addition to our lending library is Willpower: Rediscovering the greatest human strength by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney. Drawing on cutting-edge research, the authors explain that willpower has a physical basis and operates like a muscle: it can be strengthened with practice and fatigued by overuse. Willpower is fueled by glucose, and it can be bolstered simply by replenishing the brain's store of fuel. As a result, proper nutrition and adequate sleep actually help people resist temptation. And while there are natural limits to our self-control, these boundaries can be manipulated, as this excerpt (p. 252) illustrates.

• "Another simple old-fashioned way to boost your willpower is to expend a little of it on neatness. As we described in chapter 7, people exert less self-control after seeing a messy desk than after seeing a clean desk, or when using a sloppy rather than a neat and well-organized Web site. You may not care about whether your bed is made and your desk is clean, but these environmental cues subtly influence your brain and your behavior, making it ultimately less of a strain to maintain self-discipline. Order seems to be contagious.
• "Watch out for other kinds of cues, too, that can influence your behavior one way or the other. Bad habits are strengthened by routine: The doughnut shop you pass on the way to work, the midafternoon cigarette break or chocolate binge, the after-work drink, the late-night bowl of ice cream while watching the same TV show in the same easy chair. Changing your routine makes it easier to break these habits. Take a different route to work. Go for a midafternoon stroll. Schedule a session at the gym after work. Eat ice cream only at the kitchen table, and switch to doing sit-ups during that TV show. Do your Web surfing on a different computer from the one where you work. To break a really entrenched bad habit like smoking, do it on vacation, when you're far away from the people and places and events you associate with cigarettes."

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