The Great Misconception About Willpower
Porcelain-skinned women donning new neon wedgie yoga pants with matching mesh halter tops.
V-shaped formations of bro dudes in sweat-stained tank tops and basketball shorts enjoying the spectacle. They were a match made in hell.
The first Monday after New Year's Eve was always the same. Hyde Park's LA Fitness was an unmitigated meat market.
Those who worked out looked cherry-faced and miserable. Those who didn't looked bored.
Most of them were gone after two months.
Gym resolutions are the crowned prom queen of failed willpower. They live on as a reminder of shame to these participants for the remaining 10 months of the year.
The unfortunate fact is that these people were never bad or inadequate. They just bought in to a great misconception about willpower.
The experiment of focus explains it
Each day, 205 people went about their lives, walking through Germany, going to work, going on dates, doing the routine things of everyday life.
Every few hours, their phone beeped. An app asked about their difficulties with self-control (since their last check-in).
They were part of a study at The University of Chicago that produced a paradoxical result: the people who reported being best at overcoming temptation also experienced the least amount of temptation.
Put another way, a signal of good discipline was not having to use it at all. A separate study had a parallel conclusion: people who exerted more self-control felt more exhausted and achieved fewer goals.
This runs in sharp contrast to society's obsession with willpower, and glorification of figures who exude it in spades. Hustle culture would have you believe that willpower is a vessel to unlimited motivation and success.
Understand your genetic influences
In lab rats, they identified and activated the gene that causes hunger:
When they activate the hunger gene in a group of rats — by diminishing the appetite suppressant, leptin — the rats rapidly gained weight and doubled in size.
They experienced what a bear preparing for hibernation feels: insatiable hunger that returns just moments after eating a huge meal. Were you the hunger-enhanced rat, it is highly unlikely willpower would stop you from inflating like a water balloon.
Each time we face temptation, we create cognitive dissonance: a pleasure-seeking voice that wants one thing, and a wiser voice that demands restraint.
The tension between those two drains us. Each time we painfully say no, it gets harder to say no again. Willpower is depleting resource.
Metacognitive tactics you can use
The children who succeeded in the achievement-predicting Marshmallow Test — get one marshmallow now or wait 10 minutes and get two—used what is referred to as compensatory mechanisms.
Some looked away from the marshmallow. Some sang and played with their hands, or looked down. These kids were deploying early signs of metacognition, a secret superpower of high achievers.
Metacognition is the awareness of the conditions under which you typically succeed.
As an obvious example, men who are good at staying faithful to their partner, don't typically frequent single bars until wee hours or get loaded at the strip club every weekend. They don't cuddle with a coworker to a Coldplay concert.
They intuitively know that willpower and love don't render them invulnerable to temptation. They put themselves in a position to achieve their desired outcome.
For example, years ago, I struggled to manage my weight. I can vividly remember sitting on my couch, thinking about eating candy. I heard the Twix bar singing to me from my kitchen. I felt haunted. I couldn't make it go away.
I lost over and over again. My weight loss goal crumbled under the pressure.
If I'd only known the trick wasn't to win the war over what to eat, it was to avoid going to war in the first place. I should have spent less time on that couch, and put fewer unhealthy foods in my fridge.
A self-control test
You are going to see a series of words in a moment. They were part of an experiment to test self-control and its fatiguing effects on the brain.
As you look at them, read the name of the color you see, not the color that the words spell. Make sure you move quickly from left to right.
After doing this in repeated trials, participants showed weaker willpower in subsequent tests and reported being exhausted. I did this several times in a row and can confirm it gets quite tiresome quickly.
Why? Because this conflict between the spelling and the actual color mirrors decision fatigue — the tension you face while looking at the restaurant menu, knowing what you should order and what you want to order.
Allowing this conflict to revisit you is how willpower crumbles and goals fail.
It's why my crowded gym is nearly empty just two months after New Year's Eve.
Make it your goal to reduce this conflict as much as possible. I will sometimes just order food I know most restaurants have, like a chicken caesar salad. Or, I'll ask the waitress about their healthy options, and skip opening the menu altogether.
The ultimate discipline trick
My dad was a Navy SEAL for 37 years. I had this super interesting conversation with him a few years ago.
We were talking about Hell Week. For those who don't know — Hell Week is ridiculous. You wake up on a Sunday to the sound of machine guns firing. Then, you exercise until Friday with no sleep.
Hell Week is the bottleneck where the top 20% of soldiers are reduced down to the top 3%. Many great men tap out and quit.
Dad said the most peculiar thing, 'Tuesday morning was the absolute worst.' Strange, right? Tuesday? Wouldn't Thursday be worse? Or Friday morning? When he explained it, it made total sense.
You wake up on a Sunday morning at ~2 AM to gunfire. You run miles while getting yelled at. You do push ups, jump in the cold ocean (repeatedly), carry logs, roll in the sand. This continues all day, then into the night.
As people cozy up in their warm beds, you continue shivering, running, and getting yelled at.
Monday morning comes. The drills repeat from sun up to sun down with non-stop exercise. It's torture. Then, through the night, you do it again.
Then — Tuesday morning rolls around. You've now gone more than two full nights without a wink of sleep.
You've endured intense stress, cold water, and relentless exertion. By Tuesday morning, you are unimaginably tired. You've never experienced anything close to it.
That's when you start to feel sorry for yourself.
'Oh wow. It is only Tuesday morning. How am I going to get through all of this?'
'If I'm this tired now and I'm not even halfway through… how will I make it through this…'
This is decision fatigue in action.
The men who think like this are the ones that quit. The men who succeed — only look a few minutes in front of them. They don't worry about Thursday or Friday. They stay focused on each individual exercise. They do one thing at a time. The men who pass don't have unlimited willpower. They know to manage themselves and their mindset.
You can apply this to many aspects of your life.
If you are studying for a huge test, take it one page at a time. If you are working on a huge presentation, go one slide at a time. Break up a challenge into tiny bits you can work with. Try to imagine a fog blocking your view of the entire mountain.
A final thought
Gurus would have you believe willpower is a nuclear weapon against laziness.
Willpower is a muscle. It can be strengthened. But it can also be overused, strained, and injured. Thinking you can muscle past every distraction and temptation is how goals die.
Don't fight temptation. Avoid it. Make your efforts as easy as possible. Lower your field of vision. Be selectively blind to things that hold you back. If your fridge is full of junk food, you are already losing the battle.
And remember that no matter how beaten down you get, you always hold the ace card: free will.
And with it, the ability to say no.
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