It’s not the only way to change your habits: you could start by making the goal easier in the first place
• From quitting sugar to writing that novel – how to achieve your goal
It’s hard to think of a situation in which it wouldn’t be extremely useful to have more willpower. For a start, your New Year’s resolutions would no longer be laughably short-lived. You could stop yourself spending all day on social media, spiralling into despair at the state of the world, yet also summon the self-discipline to do something about it by volunteering or donating to charity. And with more “political will”, which is really just willpower writ large, we could forestall the worst consequences of climate change, or stop quasi-fascist confidence tricksters from getting elected president. In short, if psychologists could figure out how to reliably build and sustain willpower, we’d be laughing.
Unfortunately, though, 2016 was the year in which psychologists had to admit they’d figured out no such thing, and that much of what they thought they knew about willpower was probably wrong. Changing your habits is certainly doable, but “more willpower” may not be the answer after all.
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