An interesting set of thoughts, coming up at exactly the right time as I start to chide myself about not following through with all my vast plans for music, for life …

Before I get into it, here’s the article:
The Willpower Paradox from Scientific American, July 2010

I might expand this later, but the operative ideas include:

1. the ‘before me’ would accomplish less by self-direction, more by exploration.
2. The negative of this was: things could end up half-assed, if I didn’t push to conclusion; and also, I took a lot of direction from exterior sources (especially insistent people and constructed, fantastical models (like, ‘rock star’)).
3. The ‘recent me’ has been trying the opposite — extensive planning, self-imposed deadlines, revisioning, etc. (which has been frustrating and disappointing, and leads to inner rebellions thru the cracks).
4. The ‘recent-recent me’ has been questioning this, and now (perhaps because I opened up myself to discovery) a flood of information and stimuli has swept in to help (like this article).

Now — the article isn’t conclusive. In fact, the experiment is a bit narrow, and some commenters point out some questions that I think are relevant…

But I still get fired up at the potential confirmation– and to wrap it up, I might talk about “Night Skiing” and how much we know by guessing.