I am two selves.

Morning-me flows through decisions. Easily sets priorities, navigates meetings with diplomatic precision, reads the room with surgical accuracy. Knows that this team member needs encouragement, that one craves challenge. Decline the third coffee with resolve, listen to complaints with genuine patience, ask the questions that unlock solutions. This version of me operates from abundance.

Afternoon-me is paralyzed by the weight of seventeen browser tabs. Each unopened email feels weighted with consequence. Lets feedback requests sit unanswered. Closes and reopens the same document four times. Stands in front of the fridge hoping food will choose itself. This version operates from scarcity.

Something essential drains away as the day progresses. The capacity to respond rather than react. To choose rather than default. What is this resource that seems to govern the gap between the two?

Are you also two selves?

Ego depletion is a psychological theory suggesting that self-control and willpower draw from a limited pool of mental resources, a reservoir that slowly empties throughout the day.

Roy Baumeister's groundbreaking research in the late 1990s painted willpower as a finite resource. Each decision to resist temptation, focus attention, or regulate emotion draws from the same internal well. By evening, the reservoir runs dangerously low. The third cookie becomes exponentially harder to refuse than the first.

This model explains our daily experience. Why we make poor choices when tired. Why good intentions crumble under stress. Why the disciplined morning self feels like a stranger by midnight. The theory resonated because it validated what we already knew: mental fatigue is real and measurable.

Then came the replication crisis.

Multiple studies failed to reproduce Baumeister's findings. The elegant theory that had explained so much began to crumble under scrutiny. Researchers found themselves staring at data that told a different story entirely.

What if ego depletion reflects expectation more than actual resource depletion? The evidence was unsettling: when people believe willpower is unlimited, they show dramatically less fatigue. When they expect to feel drained, they do.

The contradiction forces us to reconsider the nature of self-control. Perhaps willpower isn't a reservoir that empties, but a story we tell ourselves about our capacity.

If our sense of limitation is partly self-imposed, what other boundaries do we accept as fixed that might be more fluid than we imagine?

Whether willpower is truly limited or just feels that way, both perspectives offer wisdom.

The practical synthesis: Use both approaches strategically. Protect your peak hours for what matters most, but also experiment with pushing through when the stakes are lower.

When you feel that familiar afternoon drain, pause and ask: Is this the moment to honor my limits and work with them, or to challenge them? What happens when you hold both truths simultaneously?

I'd love to hear what you discover.