Stop Relying on Willpower

(Transcript edited for clarity.)

Hi, I'm Wes. Today we're going to talk about this idea: stop relying on willpower. Thanks for being with me.

Hopefully this helps you as much as it helped me when I learned it.

You might have seen on the thumbnail, or whatever you clicked to get here, that it said, "Build systems." That might not seem directly related to stopping reliance on willpower, but I'm going to show you why it's not only directly related - it's actually the solution for willpower, or the replacement for willpower.

Willpower is excellent when it works. For as long as it works, willpower will carry you through all kinds of stuff. But what I've found is that willpower is such a short-lived thing.

If I'm operating on willpower alone, it's too much mental strain over the long term. It drags you down mentally, and it can also drag you down physically, so you have to find something to replace willpower with in order to keep going. That said, willpower is a wonderful thing when it works, but as a long-term strategy, it's terrible.

I'm going to explain how you can replace willpower with systems or frameworks to keep going on your important goals.

If doing the right thing depends on consistently making the right decision, you will eventually lose that battle.

Let me read that again to make sure you get it.

If doing the right thing depends on consistently making the right decision, you'll eventually lose that battle.

Here's what that means on a practical level. If I have to make a decision every day about something, then eventually the decision process breaks down. Either I make a mistake or I don't make an optimal decision.

There are plenty of things you have to make decisions about every day, but what I've done in many areas of my life is replace what I would call decision fatigue with deciding once, and then I'm done. There are two things about this.

For example: what I eat. I eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch every day. It's not that I don't like variety. It's because I have a very simple system for eating, and because I made the decision once, I don't have to think about it every day.

Therefore, I have more mental capacity to think about other things that are more important decisions - for example, what I'm going to do for my work that day. I don't have to think every day about what I'm going to eat for breakfast or lunch.

The only meal we plan is supper, and even that I've simplified. We have about 20 suppers that we rotate through. Before we go to the grocery store, we pick what we're going to have for supper the next week.

We get that stuff, and then we have those meals. It's already decided, so I don't have to expend any mental energy on what I'm going to eat.

What you're going to eat might not seem very important. In the larger scheme of things, it's not. But remember, we're talking about willpower.

My willpower doesn't get tested on what I'm going to eat because I've already decided what I'm going to eat.

Here's another thing about willpower that I had to learn. There are certain things I can't have in the house, food-wise, because eventually my willpower will break down and I'll eat them if they're in the house.

The decision was made: I'm not going to buy them. I don't have them in the house. Therefore, willpower has nothing to do with it. I can't eat it because it's not in the house.

For example, I like ice cream bars. I like candy bars. I don't have either one of them in the house because eventually I'll break down and eat one if they're in the house.

I know I shouldn't, and if I eat one, I'll feel bad, beat myself up for a little bit, and then I'll get right back on track and not eat any more for a long time. But if I don't have it in the house, I can't eat it.

There's a practical use for replacing willpower with a system or a one-time decision.

How can you use that with whatever you're working on right now, whatever your important goals are? Where can you make one choice or one decision, put it into place, and then not have to worry about it anymore? You can focus on more important decisions.

Because of this, the goal isn't to become stronger. The goal is to make the right choice easier or, even better, replace the repeated choice with one choice so you don't have to make the same choice over and over.

I did spend years, maybe decades, trying to beat all of this by becoming more disciplined or having more willpower. But that wasn't the answer.

The answer was this: my life changed when I stopped trying to improve my willpower and started improving my environment or my system. That goes right back to the foods in the house.

I've also used that in business many, many times - in different business things I've done, business ventures, and businesses I've owned.

I've found, for example, when my most productive time was. Then I did most of my heavy or deep work during that time.

At one time in my life, my deep work time was from about 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. I made sure I had nothing scheduled from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. except work. I turned off my phone, turned off distractions, closed the door, and worked on the most important things from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. every day.

I protected those hours. I didn't think I needed to do that. I didn't decide every day that I was going to work on the important things from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m.

I became the person who worked on the important things from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. every day.

That's changed now. I have a different peak time, and that's fine. Whatever you decide once to defeat or lessen decision fatigue, it doesn't mean you have to keep it for the rest of your life, because you can evaluate and adjust.

My best time is no longer 7:00 to 9:00 a.m., so I changed my deep work time to a different time of day. But I did the same thing.

Every decision costs mental energy.

We make thousands of decisions every day. We also already have a lot of decisions automatically programmed into our subconscious, so they aren't real decisions anymore. You just automatically do certain things.

Here's another example from my life. I always wear a suit on Sundays. I'm not great at matching colors.

My wife can match colors. I don't. I'm not a color guy. I don't know which color goes with which, but I basically have about 10 suit combinations. I've memorized, from my wife telling me, which shirts go with each suit combination.

Every Sunday, I don't have a decision. I do, I guess, have a decision. I pick one of the 10 suit combinations, but let me tell you how that works for me.

It's not important to me which suit it is. I want to look a certain way, and all 10 suit combinations I have portray what I want.

I just pick one and make sure it's not the same one I wore last Sunday. Other than that, it can be any of them. My entire decision process takes about three seconds.

It's: What did I wear last Sunday? The next one is fine, whatever it is.

The problem is already solved on Sunday morning. I get up, make sure I don't pick the one I wore last week, and then get the right combination - the right jacket, the right pants, and the right shirt - and I'm done.

That's very simple. There's no decision fatigue for me there. It's already solved, so I don't worry about it.

Decision fatigue is real. I said that all of us probably make thousands of decisions every day, but we only have a few decisions that are really important.

The thing about decision fatigue is this: if you're making too many decisions every day that you don't have to make, you can make those decisions once or put a system in place to take them off your mental load. That gives you more mental capacity and less mental fatigue for the most important decisions you make every day.

Good systems make good decisions easier. Great systems make them almost automatic.

Think about what I'm talking about with what I eat every day. It's automatic what I eat for breakfast and lunch. It's even automatic, for the most part, what I eat for supper every week, even though it changes.

On Sunday mornings, it's automatic what I'm going to wear.

I was talking about when I used to work from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. on my deepest stuff. That was automatic. After I started, the decision had already been made. I automatically did it every day.

All of this ties back into willpower, and here's the thought I want to leave you with:

Don't build a life that requires constant willpower.

Build one that requires less of it by putting systems in place, making one decision one time, and then doing that.

Stop relying on willpower. Success comes from designing better systems, not becoming a stronger person.

Thanks for being with me. Please subscribe for more educational videos just like this. Have a great week.

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