Everything You Need To Know About WIll-Power

Will-power is getting a lot of attention these days and is being talked about from many different angles. Let’s explore all of it so that we can stop being confused and conflicted and decide what we want to think.

On the positive side, will-power is known to be a point of differentiation for successful people. There’s a study that suggests will-power is a better predictor of academic achievement than IQ by a factor of two. Alongside that, in the infamous Marshmallow experiment where kids were closed in a room with a marshmallow and told to delay eating it to get an additional reward, the kids who could hold off on eating the marshmallow for longer were found to achieve significantly more in their career.

Now on the negative side, we’re learning that will-power is like a muscle, with a finite capacity that eventually wears out. This means that will-power is unsustainable and cannot be used as a primary source of motivation. We’ve also heard that will-power isn’t even the most effective thing you can use to change your behavior, and that your environment is the greatest contributing factor to the things you do or don’t do. Dr. Benjamin Hardy wrote a book all about this called “Willpower Doesn’t Work”.

With all of that in mind, what if I told you that all of it was correct? That willpower was the greatest point of differentiation and unsustainable and dwarfed by the influence of environment?

This all can be true when you talk about when and how willpower is meant to be used.

In “The One Thing”, Gary Keller says “When it comes to willpower, timing is everything.” It is not meant to be used in every moment of every day but rather reserved for the high-leverage things when you need it the most. And equally willpower is not best used over and over again to do the same thing, but only initially to get yourself to take action enough times so that it becomes a habit.

This is a strategic approach to using willpower ensuring that you have it when you need it, you’re not relying on it for everything, and you don’t need it forever. And taking a step back, that’s similar to how self-discipline works - first structure your environment to make the right choices easy to make and when appropriate use willpower to enforce the commitments you’ve made when you don’t feel like following through.

If you want to establish this healthy balance of willpower in your life and implement high-level systems that make consistency easier than ever (which is what will-power is meant to help you with), and because of that become more productive and intentional on a daily basis... You should register for the Super Habits System Bootcamp. After just 21 days of dedicated focus to your mindset and life systems you will take your game to the next level!