Willpower is not the Key to Success - Environment design is

Willpower is not the Key to Success

Brad Stulberg

Consider the temptations in your environment. You don’t have to resist them if they’re not there.

There’s a popular theory that willpower is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it becomes. But like any other muscle, if you use willpower too often without any rest or recovery in between, eventually it fatigues and gives out - you eat the chips, skip the meditation, and check your notifications for the umpteenth time.

The problem that we all face living in the modern world is that it can feel like one constant exercise in flexing our willpower muscles. Our apps and social feeds are designed to keep us scrolling, and we’re marketed a nonstop barrage of junk food and junk content.

Constantly resisting these temptations is tiring; studies show it leads to lower performance on both physical and mental tasks.

One option to improve performance is to focus on strengthening your willpower. There’s some evidence that meditation may help with this. Other research shows that regular exercise is also conducive to building willpower. If you’re working out hard, then the training session itself becomes one big exercise in resisting the urge to quit.

But even so, meditation and exercise are rarely enough.

An equally powerful route to dealing with the willpower challenge is to eliminate the need for willpower altogether, to admit that you’re never going to have enough of it to live the kind of life you want to live. Or at the very least, to admit that exerting willpower all the time is no fun and detracts from what you’re actually trying to do.

One of my favorite studies in my book Peak Performance shows that even when we don’t check our phones during a face-to-face conversation, merely having a phone present—say, on silent mode, sitting facedown on the table—detracts from the quality of the conversation. Researchers speculate this is because we are using so much energy (energy that could be used to be fully present in the conversation) to resist the urge to check our phones. I’ve certainly had this experience.

Perhaps a better option than always relying on willpower is to consciously design our environments to remove the temptations that regularly get in the way of us living our best lives.

A few common examples:

1. If you struggle with eating unhealthy foods, then keep them out of the house in the first place. And if you struggle not to buy unhealthy foods, then don’t grocery shop when you’re hungry.
2. If you want to be more present with your family in the evenings, turn off your phone and computer and store them in a far corner of your house. Better yet, leave them in the garage.
3. If you want to do deep-focused work, consider going to a coffee shop without wireless (and leave your phone at home).
4. If you want to get to the gym earlyin the morning, prepack your gym bag and work clothes, so all you need to do is wake up and go.
5. If you’re having a hard timing concentrating enough to read a book, make sure you’re reading in a room without a television, computer, or other digital devices.
6. If falling asleep is difficult because your mind is prone to racing, keep your phone, iPad, and laptop out of your bedroom, at least at night.
7. If you’re always checking your phone, take everything off it but the essentials. Usually, the essentials are maps, voice calls, and text messaging. Remove social media, the internet, and e-mail off of your phone - see if you will regret not having them on your phone. (For more on this strategy, see an outstanding book called Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.)

The basic gist is to reflect on the behaviors that you want or don’t want to do and then set up the conditions conducive to those outcomes. Identify the obstacles that get in your way—the stuff that taxes your willpower—and eliminate them altogether.

This can be hard to do at first because so many of the things that tempt us are like candy - they’re addicting in the short term but make us feel not so great in the long term. But once you get used to a life without candy everywhere around you, you tend to realize it’s actually a much better life.

Brad Stulberg researches and writes on sustainable excellence and wellbeing. He is bestselling author of the new book, The Practice of Groundedness: A Path to Success that Feeds—Not Crushes—Your Soul.

Free Will and Willpower Are Becoming a Thing of the Past. Here’s What You Can Do About It.

Benjamin Hardy, PhD

Sep 11, 2017

The global environment has dramatically changed in the past 25 years. Technological advancements are accelerating at exponential levels. Humanity, for the most part, has no idea what just hit them.

The result?

Pervasive addiction.

Work. Technology. Information. Stimulants, such as caffeine. Over-stimulating foods containing refined sugar and other refined carbs (although this form of addiction has only intensified since the industrial revolution).

“In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time — literally — substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.”

– Peter Drucker, famed management consultant, educator, and author

The very technologies that provide human beings with increasing choices are the very technologies diminishing human choice.

The future, with all of its incredible potential for joy, success, experiences, and learning — is not going to be a positive place for most people.

Every environment is optimized for something. Some environments, are optimized for learning, connection, and growth. However, the environments in which people most find themselves are optimized for dopamine.

Because people can’t handle the allurements that come with all the advancements of society, they have developed unhealthy and addictive triggers around technology, information, food, work, etc. Nearly everyone is an addict now.

And the most pervasive cultural addictions all fuel each other.

Because we are constantly plugged into our technology, we can’t sleep well. Because we can’t sleep well, we are dependent on stimulants and over-stimulating foods to get us through the day. Because we spend 70% of our time at work distracted, we’re unfulfilled, frustrated, and filled with impostor syndrome.

Because we are constantly plugged in, we never get sufficient time “off” to get clarity. Because we lack clarity, we are focused on the wrong things — always trying to keep up, fearing to miss out.

One hour of focused clarity is more productive than 30 days of non-focused clarity. As author and philosopher, Alex Epstein, has said, “You are the casualty of clarity’s absence.” And, unless you’re giving yourself plenty of time to unplug and reset, you’re probably moving the wrong direction.

“If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.” - Stephen R. Covey, author

Are you going up the wrong ladder? How would you know if you were? Have you developed addictive tendencies? How connected do you really feel to yourself?

Free Will Is Becoming a Thing of the Past

Although people instinctively believe they are making their own choices, in today’s trigger-laden environment, the opposite is more true.

Most people are not making their own choices. They are unconsciously and reactively operating in a world that was created for them, not in a world that was created by them.

In The Adrenal Reset Diet, authors Alan Christianson M.D. and Sara Gottfried M.D. explain that

Unless we create the space to truly unplug, reset, refresh, and recharge, our body’s natural and evolutionary response is to store fat rather than burn it. Hence, it is projected that within the next 10 years, the majority of the global population will be overweight to obese.

This has nothing to do with willpower. Often, those who are working the hardest are failing the worst.

It is for this (and many other reasons) that willpower is no longer an effective strategy for success. The environment we now live in is simply too stimulating, addicting, and non-stop. You can’t beat this environment. It’s too much. It will take you down an addictive and lonely rabbit hole leading to a place you don’t really want to be. It’s only going to get more intense.

We are on the brink of another quantum leap, and most people don’t adapt at quantum levels. The environment is going to dramatically change. And most people will not see it coming. Most people will be a casualty.

You Must Take Control Of Your Environment

“If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us.” — Dr. Marshall Goldsmith

Although most people are unconsciously losing their free will, there has never actually been a more liberating time in human history to live, to thrive, and to experience freedom. But the only way to thrive is by consciously designing your environment. There is no other way.

The opposite approach is attempting to overcome your environment through grit and willpower. Again, this doesn’t work anymore. Perhaps it worked in previous eras, when the external environment was not so intrusive, addictive, and constant. But the truth is, your environment is no longer static and passive. Rather, it is aggressively seeking to influence, persuade, and even sell you stuff. And it’s doing its job very, very well. You have a digital identity that knows your behaviors and habits more than you do. Technology allows markets to put exactly what you want right in your face non-stop.

Consequently, you must create and control your environment. You need to be able to completely block out people and media you don’t want. But until then, you’re going to need to become proactive and aggressive about blocking stuff out. You’ll need to create systems to avoid addiction, distraction, and self-sabotage. You’ll need to shift and change your physical space. You may even need to completely remove yourself from your environment altogether. You may need a new house, a new state, or a new job.

One thing is for certain. If you don’t change your environment, the chances of you making desired changes is practically zero. The reason is simple: you are locked into a role. The people all around you see you a certain way. It’s very hard to break those paradigms. Even if you start acting differently, your current environment (and the people in it) will forcibly try to keep you the same.

Everything you’ve built around you keeps you where you currently are. It’s like a spaceship trying to leave orbit. You need an intense amount of force to get out of orbit. Hence, spaceships require rockets to shoot them off our planet.

Can you exert that much force? Or, will you simply need to lighten the load?

In the Right Environment, Desired Behavior Is Automatic

Almost all human behavior is unconscious — in other words, it is outsourced to a particular environment.

Willpower can also be automated by your environment.

So can motivation, and even success.

All you need to do is shape the environment that organically supports desired behaviors, goals, and values.

Your ability to create conditions that make success happen is essential to your success.

It’s essential to your very free will. Because unless you create an environment that allows you to act, you will be an unconscious object which is acted upon.

Free will is not a zero-sum game.

“Free will” actually doesn’t exist. Instead, all of us have a contextual agency — our ability to act in desired ways is based on our context.

But who creates that context? For most people, someone or something else. For you? Well, that’s your choice.

If you take control of your environment, you can overcome addiction. You can outsource desired behavior to a congruent and empowering environment. You don’t need to tax your willpower — only to adjust your environment when you’re triggered to self-destruct.

Example

Imagine you’re walking through a grocery store, and you see your favorite brand of Häagen-Dazs ice cream, and you think, “That would be so nice to have for dessert tonight.” Then you remember your doctor told you to cut back on sugar. So now you have a choice: Do I get the ice cream, or do I not get the ice cream?

Now, here’s a different situation: You’ve just finished supper. Your spouse sits down with a bowl of ice cream and says, “Do you want this bowl of ice cream?” Again, you’ve got a choice. There are a gazillion studies showing that

it’s much easier to resist when you’re thinking about getting the ice cream hours from now as opposed to having ice cream seconds from now.

Book recommendations

1. The Adrenal Reset Diet, by Alan Christianson M.D. and Sara Gottfried M.D.