Willpower doesn’t work.
We all know the feeling of setting big, exciting goals but falling short
despite hard work. After enough failure, it’s easy to conclude that you are the problem. But what
if it was not your fault?
Willpower is the power to exert your free will against internal or external obstacles. According to
psychological research, your willpower is like a muscle. It’s a finite resource that depletes with
use. Therefore, by the end of a strenuous day, your willpower muscles are exhausted and
you’re left with zero self-control.
If you need to exert willpower to do something, there is an obvious internal conflict. It means
your desire for your goals isn’t strong enough and you aren’t invested in yourself and your
dreams. It also comes from a challenging environment that opposes your goals.
To achieve a goal you need to make a committed decision by:
● investing upfront
● making it public
● setting a timeline
● installing several forms of feedback/accountability
● removing or altering everything in your environment that opposes your commitment.
Rather than relying solely on your own internal strength, true commitment involves building
external defence systems around your goals.
For example, if you want to eat healthy, remove all unhealthy foods from your house. If you
want to be more motivated, take on greater responsibility and increase the stakes for both
success and failure.
You can design your worldview by shaping your external inputs:
● the information you consume
● the people you surround yourself with
● the places you go
● the experiences you have.
You must proactively shape your environment to have the life you want so you can
subsequently shape your thoughts and behaviors.
Part 1: Your Environment Shapes You
Historian Will Durant spent four decades studying the history of the world and concluded that
great leaders did not shape history. Instead, he found that difficult situations created great
leaders. He found that necessity creates more greatness than intelligence or vision. He said that
the ability of the average man could be doubled if it were demanded.
In our individualistic culture, we often believe our environment is separate from us. The truth is
that our environment shapes everything we do and think. Your environment has a direct and
measurable impact on the rest of your life, unless you actively change it. Most people live small
because their environment doesn’t require them to become more than they currently are.
Goal-setting and attitude change only work for a small subset of behaviors, such as giving a
public speech, because it is something you rarely do, thus it requires your conscious attention.
Every environment has a set of written or unwritten rules and it shapes how you think, act, and
behave. In one experiment, a group of fleas are placed in a jar. When there is no lid on the jar,
the fleas can easily jump out. However, when the lid is on the jar, the rules of the environment
change. Quickly, the fleas become trained not to jump so high. Three days later, when the lid is
removed, the fleas remain at the lowered height and do not jump out of the jar.
The same is true for you. Who you are and what you can do in one environment is very different
from who you are and what you can do in another. You are always acting in a role and the roles
are typically fixed. You act a particular way because of the rules of the situation you are in. You
can change your patterns and change your roles by altering your environment. If you remain
stuck in the same roles and patterns, it doesn’t matter how much willpower you exert – you will
always be confined within the limiting context of your role.
When you’re in an enriched environment, your desired behavior is automated and outsourced.
When you’re in an ordinary environment, you must remain conscious of what you’re doing and
thus you require willpower to act in desired ways.
Part 2: How to Make Willpower Irrelevant
Peak experiences are deeply moving, and it is often in these moments that we have our best
ideas and can truly assess what we want in life. These experiences happen when we connect
with ourselves. Peak experiences happen during periods of rest and recovery. Schedule
“disconnected days” for relaxing, thinking and learning.
Resting and recovering will actually increase your productivity. Only those who truly detach –
mentally, emotionally and physically – can reattach when they start working again. After you are
rested, you will return empowered and energized. Journaling is a key part of resting. Take an
honest look at your life, how far you’ve come, and where you’d like to go. This will help you stay
connected to your “why.”
It is important to have a daily environment to help you stay on the right path toward your goals.
You need to continually check in and make course corrections to ensure you’re going in the
direction you want to. The best way to do this is to begin each day with a morning routine to put
yourself into peak state.
You should journal every morning to set the tone for your day. Write your goals down daily to
deepen your own sense of belief and desire in those goals. Success happens when you take
twenty steps in one direction. Most people take one step in twenty directions.
Elimination is the fastest path to progress and forward momentum. In order to transcend your
current environment, remove the excess baggage that is keeping you where you are. Get rid of
the physical objects you don’t need, distractions, people that don’t inspire you and your
short-term memory.
If you’re stuck doing automatic behavior, change your default option and your behavior will
change too. People often take the first choice given to them. Our environment prompts
behavior, so to break unconscious habits, change your environment.
Act consciously and do everything with intention. If you know ahead of time what you’ll do if you
veer off course, you’re more likely to stick to your habit. For example, you can make a plan such
as ‘if I enter the kitchen and want to eat a cookie, then I’ll drink a glass of water instead.’ You
must replace an addictive behavior with another behavior, so implementation intentions are
crucial.
Part 3: Outsource High Performance and Success to Your
Environment
If you want to achieve your goals, you must determine which environments produce the best
outcomes. You can optimize your environment by structuring it with forcing functions, which are
self-imposed situational factors that force you to act and achieve what you want. For example,
you can leave your phone in the car if you want to be present with your loved ones. Instead of
relying on your willpower, you can remove the option altogether.
You can set up external defence systems around your goals too. For example, if you leave your
laptop charger at home, you will be more motivated to work hard during the few hours you have
until your battery runs out.
You can use social pressure to hold you accountable to your goals. Again, it’s not willpower that
drives you, but external pressure. If you create consequences for failure, you will work much
harder.
If you put yourself in higher pressure environments, you are more likely to thrive. Set tight
deadlines for yourself and commit outwardly so you can’t back down. Compete above your skill
level so you can learn from your opponents. Compete in public so there is more pressure to
succeed.
Learning through doing is far more powerful than reading a textbook. Context-based learning
often involves immediate feedback on your performance so you can get better, quicker.
Hire a mentor or a coach to help you. Investing in yourself is the best investment you can make
and you will see huge returns.
Keep implementing what you learn until it becomes unconscious. To turn a skill to automaticity,
you must first master the skill. Then, make your training progressively more difficult. Add time
constraints so you are forced to work quickly. Finally, practice it with intentional distractions to
encourage the automatic response.
Set up your environment to optimize for productive work. The best creative work requires a
blend of intensely tight focus for one to four hours, followed by a relaxed mind in a different
environment. Work according to your personal energy levels instead of the social norms, such
as nine to five. Switch up your environment to keep your brain active. Provide yourself with
mental breaks throughout the day and take a short walk. If you can rotate and alternate your
working environments, you will have more energy and focus.
Every environment has its own set of rules, but these rules are not absolute. Shatter the
traditional rules and replace them with new and better ones. If you play by the same rules as
everyone else, your results will be average. You must reshape the rules of your environment to
thrive and the best way to do that is through new connections. Collaborate with people with
different worldviews and you will come up with unique ideas and strategies.
You are not bound by your past, but you should honor it. The more sense of history you have,
the more context you will have around yourself and the more sense of control you’ll have over
your life.
Don’t let your success go to your head. Remember that you are not the cause of your success.
Instead, you are the product of your changing environment. Stay in a continual state of humility
and gratitude.
Willpower is not an effective approach to personal change. Outsource your willpower to a
goal-enriching environment and you will flourish.
