In November, we’ll look into one of my personal favorite topics.

We’ll explore the incredible power of our mindset and perception.

This is an area that, to me, holds some of the greatest potential in any form of self-optimization.

I’m Nicolas, and I help ambitious professionals master their mental energy so they can excel at work and enjoy life.

Let’s get to it. 

🧠 Mindset belief can affect our capacity for sustained focus

Believing that willpower is abundant helps people maintain concentration longer, while seeing it as limited leads to quicker mental fatigue.

💯 Mindset can easily be changed

Just a few simple statements were enough to shift participants’ beliefs, which shows how quickly perception can be reshaped.

Today’s main study is cleverly designed, and tests how mindset influences sustained concentration.

And maybe even more importantly, it shows how individuals can very easily be conditioned into a specific mindset about mental energy.

In the study, 56 college students were randomly divided into two groups.

Each group was conditioned into a specific mindset about what I would call mental energy, but what the authors refer to as “limited” or “non-limited willpower.”

All participants rated their agreement with a particular set of statements such as:

“Working on a strenuous mental task can make you feel tired, such that you need a break before accomplishing a new task.” or “Sometimes, it is energizing to be fully absorbed in a demanding task”, depending on the group they were in.

In that way, participants were nudged into either a “willpower is limited” or a “willpower is non-limited” mindset.

Afterwards, all participants completed a 20-minute task, that measured sustained concentration.

They were shown an “X” appearing in different locations on a screen and had to press a specific key on the keyboard corresponding to the position of the “X.”

The results clearly showed that, initially, there was no difference between the groups.

Both gradually improved their performance as they became familiar with the task. But halfway through, a clear difference emerged.

The group that had been conditioned to the “willpower is non-limited” belief continued improving almost until the end of the 20 minutes, while the results in the “willpower is limited” group showed that performance declined halfway through.

What I really like about this study is that it very clearly and simply shows how mindset and perception can have a super practical and useful effect on our performance.

On our mental energy.

And the interesting thing is that I keep finding this effect over and over again.

For example, in this previous newsletter, I shared how the perception of sleep length can acutely affect mental performance.

For me, it’s really fascinating - and a bit motivating - to see how much of a real effect mindset and perception can have.

Imagine you’re going through a period of high stress and not quite sleeping as much as you should.

Well, it seems that maintaining a mindset where “stress is, or can be, positive” and “I have slept enough” can actually help you get through those challenging periods with better performance.

That said, this is obviously not an excuse to not prioritize sleep or overload yourself with stress.

As I’ve shown multiple times, sleep deprivation and excessive cognitive load will, over time, have a clear negative effect on your performance, focus, motivation, and mood.

Still, keeping the right mindset can definitely help us stay on track in the pursuit of our ambitious goals.

So, I’d like to ask you; do you have any specific routines that help you work on your mindset?

Simply reply to this mail, and I’ll share some of them in my next newsletter.

Articles used for this newsletter:

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