What does it take to harness your willpower effectively? How can external pressure help you achieve your goals?
In Willpower, Roy Baumeister and John Tierney explore practical strategies for maximizing self-control. Their research reveals how self-pressure techniques can help you stay focused and motivated, even during challenging times when your willpower reserves run low.
Keep reading to discover proven tools for applying positive self-pressure that can transform your approach to achieving goals and maintaining self-control.
Positive Self-Pressure
Let’s examine some strategies for using your existing willpower to its fullest extent. Baumeister and Tierney say that you can do this by putting various kinds of pressure on yourself, which will drive you to do your best even when you may not feel like it.
The authors provide a number of self-pressure strategies to bolster your self-control and keep yourself focused on your goals. These “tools” are especially helpful when you’re feeling exhausted or overwhelmed by difficult situations—those are the times when your willpower is the weakest and also when you’ll most need willpower to keep your self-control and avoid making impulsive decisions.
(Shortform note: The self-pressure the authors describe is also referred to as eustress. In The Upside of Stress, psychologist Kelly McGonigal explains that there are positive types of stress that trigger what she calls your challenge response, which gets you excited and focused, allowing you to perform at your best. It’s the kind of stress you might feel before giving an important presentation, competing in a sport you love, or working on a challenging project you’re passionate about. This is in contrast to distress, which is negative stress that upsets you and tires you out.)
Tool #1: Commitment
One way to generate external pressure for yourself is to publicly commit to a particular goal.
Commitment means making public declarations or promises about what you’re going to do, thereby creating a psychological barrier against giving up. This is because, if you do give up after such a declaration, you will disappoint not only yourself but also the people you made that promise to.
(Shortform note: Publicly committing yourself to a goal is a way of creating personal consequences (disappointment or scorn from others) if you fail. Risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls this putting Skin in the Game. Taleb writes that personal risk of this sort will motivate you to work harder, stop you from getting bored or frustrated as you work toward a goal, and cause you to make more careful decisions. On the other hand, if there are no consequences for giving up on your goal, then the only thing keeping you on task is your own willpower—which is a limited resource that you should conserve as much as possible.)
Tool #2: Routine
The authors say that routine will provide much-needed structure and guidance during challenging times. Even simple daily habits, like making coffee at the same time every morning, help to reinforce your willpower.
Routine is helpful for two key reasons. First, it creates a sense of normalcy and gives you a feeling of control over your environment. This will prevent you from feeling overwhelmed in difficult situations. Second—assuming your habits are productive ones—your routine will keep you on task even when you don’t feel like you have the energy to work toward your goals.
(Shortform note: Any kind of routine can help you stay grounded and push through overwhelming situations, but it stands to reason that a routine built around good habits will be the most beneficial. Psychologists and self-help experts have numerous tips about how to replace bad habits with better ones. One simple way to start building a better routine is to come up with an if-then statement that recognizes one of your bad habits and puts a good habit in its place. For example, if you tend to drink too much coffee to power through stressful work days, you might set the intention “If I start feeling tired at work, then I will take a five-minute break to stretch.” This replaces an unhealthy habit (overusing caffeine) with a healthy habit (regular stretch breaks).)
Tool #3: Purpose
Baumeister and Tierney say that finding a strong sense of purpose is, perhaps, the most important strategy for reinforcing your willpower. The purpose you devote yourself to could be a lofty ideal like “justice” or “freedom,” but it could also be something more mundane, such as keeping your family housed and fed—everyone is different, so find what motivates you.
A sense of purpose will help you maintain your self-control in extreme circumstances. Believing that you’re engaged in a deeply meaningful task will make you much more willing to endure hardship, and empower you to overcome challenges that might otherwise seem impossible. Furthermore, getting fully engaged in something like your job, volunteer work, or creative pursuits is an effective way to avoid dwelling on your personal problems. This will stop you from wasting mental energy on rumination, and instead keep you focused on what needs to be done.
For instance, say you’re struggling to quit smoking, and you’ve decided that your purpose is to take care of your family. Recognizing that smoking could lead to serious illness or death—thereby making you unable to support your loved ones—will be a powerful motivator to keep you on track when your willpower falters. Also, focusing on your family instead of yourself will help keep your mind off of how difficult and unpleasant it is to break a smoking habit.
| Why It’s Important to Have a Purpose—and Where to Find Yours The authors’ urging to find a sense of purpose closely aligns with psychologist Viktor Frankl’s school of logotherapy, which he outlines in the book Man’s Search for Meaning. Logotherapy, which Frankl developed based on his experiences as a Holocaust survivor, centers on the premise that the primary motivational force in humans is the search for purpose and significance in life. This is because, during his time as a prisoner in several different concentration camps, he observed that people who maintained a sense of purpose— such as reuniting with their loved ones or completing unfinished work—had better chances of surviving the horrific ordeal. People who lacked that sense of purpose simply gave up, and were therefore much more likely to die. Frankl also wrote that there are three ways to find meaning in life: You can find meaning in actions (what you do or make), you can find meaning in love (whether love for another person or for something like art or nature), and you can find meaning in suffering (using pain and hardship as challenges to overcome and chances to experience personal growth). |
Religion Is an Especially Effective Tool
In addition to the toolbox above, Baumeister and Tierney say that getting involved in a religious or spiritual practice is an especially helpful way to boost and preserve your willpower. This is because religion and religious communities provide guidance, support, and accountability by their very nature.
First of all, religious and spiritual practices reduce the need for willpower by providing their followers with clear moral codes, rules of behavior, and routines or rituals to guide their day-to-day actions. This greatly simplifies decision-making processes and provides guidance in challenging situations, allowing practitioners to conserve their willpower. For example, a religion might have rules about what to eat, what clothes to wear, how to treat others, or what to do with your money—all decisions that would otherwise require some amount of mental energy.
Religious practices also encourage self-monitoring, often reinforced by the fear of being shunned by the community and the sense that you’re being watched by a higher power. Furthermore, in some belief systems, that higher power will punish you if you don’t act appropriately. This heightened awareness of your actions and their potential consequences serves as a constant reminder to exercise self-control.
The authors add that, if you don’t hold any religious or spiritual beliefs, there are similar communities in the secular world that could help you in many of the same ways. For example, gyms and martial arts schools tend to value consistency, discipline, and self-improvement, so members still feel pressured to work hard and will be held accountable if they don’t.
| How “Choice Architecture,” Like Religion, Tries to Guide People’s Actions These principles are similar to the concept of choice architecture in behavioral economics—that is, presenting options in such a way as to make people more likely to make the decision you want them to make. This is commonly seen in grocery stores, for instance, which place expensive brand-name items on highly visible endcaps while tucking cheaper products away in the middle of an aisle. Religious practices and choice architecture both create frameworks that guide decision-making without forcibly restricting anyone’s choices. For example, Christians still can commit grievous sins such as adultery and murder, but many believe that they’ll suffer for eternity in hell if they do so. However, these two approaches differ in that religious systems often have a more comprehensive and explicit set of rules and beliefs, whereas choice architecture typically relies on subtle “nudges” to guide people toward specific decisions. Also, religion often tries to guard against the shortcomings of willpower by applying powerful outside pressures, while choice architecture seeks to exploit limited willpower by nudging people toward choices they might not otherwise make. Even so, both approaches recognize the limitations of human willpower and therefore try to create environments that produce desired behaviors. |
(Shortform note: Some studies have shown that religious people tend to be healthier and more satisfied with their lives than their nonreligious counterparts, which suggests that religion is indeed helpful for boosting willpower and thereby reaching your life goals. Notably, however, those benefits were only found in cultures where religion is highly valued. In more secular cultures, such as those found in Scandinavian countries or Japan, the differences between religious and nonreligious people disappear almost entirely. Therefore, researchers have largely concluded that the benefits people experienced weren’t from religion itself, but rather from the social connections and support they gained while practicing their religion.)
Exercise
What’s one source of positive self-pressure you could use to help keep yourself on track? For example, perhaps you have a supportive community you could announce your goal to or a role model you’d like to emulate.
