Willpower

You say you want to make a change.

You'll workout or work on that creative project or start that side hustle after work.

Then you come home and…

Sit on the couch until it's time to go to bed.

We think there's something wrong with us. We think we're just lazy and we just need to get up and do the thing, right?

I've been there. You may see me working out, but there are other things I like to do, if you can believe it. One of them is playing guitar. Let me reassure you that at night, no matter how the rest of the day was, trying to be productive is a grind.

You're not a bad person.

The reason is willpower. Willpower is the ability to resist something. What you may not know is that this drains as the day goes on. I don't remember the specifics, but when there are judges that have to judge people all day, they judge more harshly as the day goes on. (I think they get a little boost after lunch. Makes sense since they're not hangry.)

I think as we get older, we compare ourselves to our younger, stress-free selves. Or worse we compare ourselves to everyone else on social media. If someone doesn't have your same responsibilities - kids, job, dogs, house - then it's not a fair comparison. That's another reason to stay off social media.

But we want to, nay, NEED to make a change in our lives. How do we get this to actually happen? How do we stop self committing self sabotage?

You just have to work with your energy systems.

The Willpower Drain

I learned that every decision we make drains a little bit of willpower. Every event or anything requiring you to use your brain drains willpower. It wasn't that bad for any of us when we were younger, but things pile up as we grow up. This is the reason we want to scroll or watch shows or eat sweets at night. It's the time when our willpower is the lowest, so we reach for the things with the lowest resistance to alleviate the "pain" of the day.

I was going to talk about discipline, which is doing something when you should do it, even if you don't feel like it, but I think an education on willpower is important to know why this happens to you in the first place. Plus you can figure out how to work around it. If you have a hard day at work, yelling at yourself like a drill sergeant will only take you so far. You'll start to hate the process and eventually rebel against yourself. (Enter video games and ice cream.)

The Willpower Fix

The same with motivation, I think we all have a certain amount of willpower. Actually I think we can train it to be stronger, but let's talk about how to use the energy you already have.

Pretend you have a battery each day when you wake up. It's full at 100%. We have to make sure those drains don't happen too early and too quickly.

Here's how.

Step 1: Nothing Off Limits

• Wait, isn't this about resisting things? Shouldn't we make a list of things to avoid and swear off of them for the rest of ours lives? Yes, but to a point…

• If you want to make a change in your life, you probably have to give up something but also start something new. Doing both at the same time is going to be a double whammy. It is possible, but it will be hard, and telling someone to give up their favorite coffee latte whatever each morning AND go to the gym in the morning will be hard. Hit the gym first.

• Now you can't go too crazy with this, so use the next strategy.

Step 1.5: Space Out Your Vices

• Keep your "thing" away from you in reasonable ways. Use them as rewards. Only have them at social events. When it's still on the table (Get it? Table? Hahahaha) then it loses power over you.

• Be responsible here. You can have desert on weekends with friends, but don't keep pints of ice cream on tap in your house.

• Games and entertainment don't inherently harm you (maybe they mess up your sleep if done too late), but it's harder to delete apps or unsubscribe from streaming services when you can just as easily re-install them. Prove you can spend time away from things before you say you're ready to quit completely.

Step 2: Replace

• When you start doing new, healthy things, you'll end up with less time to do other things that don't lead you anywhere. Step one is to just start working out. Get up and go to the gym. If you need to start from scratch, start doing bodyweight workouts and going on walks. Doing those two things alone will eat up about 30 minutes in your day and cut back the time you'd have to watch TV late into the night.

• When it comes to food, I think we have a hard time resisting because we're just physically hungry. Not just for food volume, but for real nutrition. Meat, eggs, potatoes, veggies and fruit are hard to overeat. When people think "I need to eat healthier," the first thing we think to do is to just eat less of what we're eating, no matter what the food is. But an egg and an Oreo have the same calories. How many eggs would you eat at once vs Oreos? My answer would be almost the entire pack. Or think about a huge salad and a steak. When you're done you're not going to want to eat anything (if you even finish it) because you're full of nutrition. Eat real food.

• What about entertainment, scrolling and games? Again, we have to replace it. But instead of filling your stomach, you have to fill your mind. How? Read real books. They educate you, slow your overstimulated mind down and increase your attention span. I like books instead of audio books because it's easy to have an audio book going and do something else, so your attention might be split in two different directions. Reading is one subject, no audio, no video, no suggested videos on the side, no ads and no WIFI. It's the opposite of social media. Try to read 10 pages per day. That's one of the rules from 75 Hard. 75 Hard says that it has to be a non-fiction book, but fiction is still better than all the super stimulating stuff out there these days.

• As a bonus, you can also start to "meditate," which is just do some quiet time. Or you can use the first and last hour of the day in silence to recover your brain. Stare at walls. Go on quiet walks. Go to the gym without music. Work on cutting down your social media and general screen time down. All of this stuff is related because it reduces our impulsive behavior when you're feeling down. Besides, remember that mental battery that starts out at 100% in the morning? Little hits of stimulation drain it, so stop doing that.

• If you add in enough good habits, your dopamine will start to reset and/or you won't even have time to goof off. Using 75 Hard as an example, if you actually do it then you have two workouts at 45 minutes minimum plus reading 10 pages per day. That soaks up about 2 hours of your day with good habits. Contrary to popular belief, an abundance of free time isn't the best thing for us. We start to self sabotage. Giving yourself healthier things to do to fill up the time (if you have a lot of it) will shrink the time you'd use on stuff that doesn't lead you anywhere.

Step 3: Make The Task Easy

• When it comes to working out, skipping is easier when your gym is at home. There is a case for going to a physical gym. No matter how hard the work day, if you drive straight to the gym, you'll be more likely to workout. For anyone working out at a home gym, or with no gym yet, and you're trying to bring your training home, you'll have a mental battle between your pushups and the couch.

• Starting out, take things as easily as possible. Make it 10 pushups, 10 squats and a walk every day. Start with just warming up. Start with just getting some workout clothes. To take a page from James Clear and his book Atomic Habits, 2 minutes each day, no matter the effort, goes a long way to building new habits you want to build, especially if it's been a few years for you. Momentum is powerful.

Step 4: Use The Mornings

• Remember the willpower drain and the fact that your battery starts full every morning? What does that mean? It means you should think about putting your workouts as early in the day as possible. People will immediately say that they're not morning people, or they can't output as much energy in the morning as they could in the mid-morning, or afternoon or evening.

• To all of those rebuttals I ask you this: have you been consistent already? If you haven't been showing up at all, or have "lost motivation," or keep saying that you'll workout after work but stuff always happens and the workouts aren't happening, what do you think is a better solution?

• No you're not as strong early in the morning, but for most busy people, for both physical tasks and mental tasks, the mornings are the only slot in the day that you can truly have to yourself. At least, you have that time slot to be productive. "Me time" at the end of the night looks a lot different than me time at 5am.

Give Yourself a Fighting Chance

Temptation is all around us.

That means being tempted to do stuff that isn't good for us and the temptation to avoid the stuff that is good for us.

There's a part in the Odyssey where Odysseus and his crew were about to pass by a part of the ocean where the sirens were. They were bird-women with beautiful voices that lure you in, and then they'd capture you and do not-nice stuff to you. So Odysseus tells his boys to plug up their ears before they pass by them. He still wanted to hear the sirens (for bragging rights) so to prevent himself from climbing out the boat, he tells his men to tie him to the ship. (I'm not sure why he wouldn't just ignore them altogether, but oh well.)

The moral of the story is that you have to keep whatever could lure you in away from you as much as possible.

Tie yourself to the ship.

I heard this piece of advice saying that to get over your longing for candy, get a piece of your favorite and sit it on your desk so that you learn not to be tempted by it.

I'm not sure about you, but for me if a long day is over that candy will vanish.

I don't like playing games when it comes to willpower.

If you can't control yourself around a food item, don't keep it in the house, but if you want it at a party, have it.

If you want to play games or watch TV, spread out the times you do to the weekends.

If you want to resist working out, make it so easy (and early) that you'd feel silly for skipping.

If you want to scroll, do it later and keep your phone off your desk while you work.

Put the odds in your favor. Fix the temptation and the power it has over you ahead of time so that the future, tired you won't be affected.

Thanks for reading!

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