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“A man under temptation resists once because he has strength of mind, he yields another time because this is overcome.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I think of willpower as a battery.
Each use of your willpower draws from the same depletable reservoir.
You can save willpower in three ways.
1) Change your environment.
Around 1950, Ray Bradbury couldn’t write at home with young kids around. He heard typing below him in the library at UCLA and followed it down to the basement. Typewriters there rented for a dime per half hour.
He came back with a bag of dimes. In nine days he spent $9.80 and wrote the story that became Fahrenheit 451.
Ignoring a distraction costs willpower, so put distance between you and distractions.
2) Automate decisions.
Mountaineer Ed Viesturs climbed by one rule: getting to the top is optional, getting down is mandatory. On his first try at Everest in 1987, a storm was building and he turned back about 300 feet below the summit. He said later that his team could have reached the top but would almost certainly have died on the way down.
Write one rule you’ll follow without redeciding each time. For example, after 9 p.m., your phone charges in the kitchen.
3) Delete decisions.
During the 2020 lockdown, Groundhog Day star Andie MacDowell stopped coloring her hair and watched the gray come in. Her daughters told her she looked “badass.” Her Hollywood managers told her to wait.
She kept the gray.
In 2021 she walked the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival with her hair silver.
Coloring your hair means deciding every few weeks to do it again. Stop coloring and that decision goes away.
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What’s one decision you could delete to conserve willpower?
