The Accelerating Importance of Willpower
Or: The Double Edged Tech Sword.
It was a simple task, mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle hardened SEALs, but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over… it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed.
That’s former NAVY SEAL, Adm. William H. McRaven expounding on the virtues of willpower. Few people understand willpower quite the way SEAL’s do. And while everyone gets that it’s very important, it may be less obvious that willpower is actually rapidly increasing in importance because of the double edged sword that is technology. In fact, it will continue to increase at the rate that technology becomes more pervasive in our lives, which is to say faster and faster.
First, a primer; willpower is the thing that lets you make good long-term decisions every day. The ability to go to the gym, not buy dessert, or save money. You have a very limited amount of willpower that dwindles throughout the day (this is clinically verified). Every decision takes willpower. Even every online ad you see shaves a bit more off your daily count when you decide not to click on it.
Let’s call what you have at the end of the day your “net willpower”. That’s what you have left to improve yourself, work on side projects, eat right, etc.
One edge of the tech sword is attacking your net willpower every day. Gaming companies are hiring psychology PhD’s to help make their games more addictive. Amazon and Google use thousands of data points on you to make the ads as attractive as possible. Have you noticed the New York Times has a “suggested” article fly in from the right side when you near the end of the article you’re reading? It’s non-stop questions that you have to respond “no” to in order to get on with your day.
But technology is just a tool, so while the one edge is on a non-stop assault of your willpower, the other is cutting non-stop opportunities. Online education is better and more open than ever. Any book can be downloaded instantly. There are more events to know about, and more news to empower you, all for free, no matter where you are.
These facts suggest two interesting ideas. One is that as more and more willpower gets taken away from us daily, then your net willpower becomes ever more important. Let’s say you start with 10 “willpower points” every day. 5 years ago, life reduced that by 5, so your net will power was 5. But today, under new stresses, it gets reduced to 4. That’s a 20% reduction. One more would be a 33% reduction. The next, 50%. Since the initial amount is likely to stay the same (people aren’t changing), every extra bit that modern life takes away is a higher percentage of the net willpower than the last. This makes whatever you do have left all the more valuable.
The second point brings it all together. If net willpower supply keeps dwindling, then the percentage difference among people will increase (smaller numbers, same absolute difference). This will create a growing divide among people who have more willpower and people who don’t. And then here’s the real kicker, since there are ever more productive ways to spend your willpower at all times, the opportunity cost of your time is going up and up. This will further exacerbate the divide between those who use their willpower well, and those who don’t.
Thinking historically, this is just a continuation of the trend that technology empowers those with the discipline (and resources) to take advantage. Before the lightbulb, it was tougher to read at night. Even if you were smart and ambitious, you may not have had the option to read after dark. Before A/C, everyone in the south mostly just stopped working in the afternoon because it was too hot. After A/C, you could stop working, but that was a choice. Some people took the break, others kept working. I bet I know who found more long-term success.
But the good news is that willpower is indeed like a muscle. It can be trained; SEAL’s prove that. And like the SEAL’s making their bed, creating good habits can spill over to many other aspects of your life. The magic is that once you form good habits, they no longer require the use of willpower, and you’re free to use it elsewhere. Our best defense against the modern assault on willpower — and our best use of modern technology — is to form habits for the things we know are truly important.
Interestingly, one of the god father’s of our modern technology, Steve Jobs, once spoke to the power of habits when he referenced an old hindu proverb in an interview from the 80's. “For the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits. For the last 30 years”, he said, “your habits make you.”
