Willpower 101: How To Become More Disciplined
If you are reading this I assume that you know the importance of discipline.
I also assume that you, knowing that, still have a hard time being disciplined.
As someone who’ve struggled with willpower (and still do from time to time), I can tell you that it’s not quite as simple as “Just Do It”. Willpower, which is the backbone of discipline, is not an endless well. As much as we wish we could, we cannot draw upon our reserves of willpower infinitely. In this article, I will give you practical ways to improve your discipline by applying the science of willpower to parts of the everyday life that we live. I will share practices I’ve found helpful to me, and will guide you on your way to becoming more disciplined.
I warn you however, that if you expect to become perfectly disciplined right after reading this, you will be disappointed. Rather, this is simply a guide on developing discipline over time.
How This Works
“Ideation without execution is mere delusion” — Robin Sharma
You see, my quest for discipline came when I stumbled upon the self-development world. I read books, watched videos, took courses, and truly felt like I was changing.
But I wasn’t.
I wasn’t actually doing the things I knew I should do. Wasn’t actually building habits I knew I should build. I was in fact, simply becoming someone who knew stuff but wasn’t using them. It took a long time for me to realize that, and an even longer time to actually work on applying what I’ve learned.
I don’t want you to fall into this trap. I don’t want you to finish reading this article and say “Huh, that was nice read” and just go back to who you were before. I want you to actually gain value from this, and actually apply what you’ve learned.
Who doesn’t love homework?
So, how do you apply what you will learn in this article? Well, leave that to me.
You see, this article is more of a mini-course rather than a blog so naturally, I’ve set up some actionable takeaways for you. As I go through each section, there will be “homework” for you to do.
DO NOT move on, unless you’ve actually done the tasks. DO NOT simply read, do nothing, and scroll down. (Actually, if you want this to be a waste of both your time and mine, why not?)
I’ve designed this article so that it will change your life if you do the work (albeit slowly). Of course, feel free to do more and come up with other ideas to use what you’ve learned. But I want you to know that if you just read this article, and do the work provided, you’re already doing great.
The Beauty of Systems
The problem with discipline (as you might have already discovered), is that it’s really hard to keep up high levels of motivation at all times.
After we watch inspiring videos, we feel really motivated to change our lives. We think “From now on, I will wake up everyday at 5. I will exercise everyday for 4 hours. I will read a book a day. etc. etc”. Thing is, that level of motivation drops off rather quickly. For some, it is a few weeks. For others, a few days. This leads to a few problems. After the motivation wears off, we tend to say things like “I’m just not motivated right now, I’ll do it later/tomorrow when I feel like it”. Then, we repeat the same things another day, and another, until slowly we simply go back to the old ways.
The solution to this then, is to build systems so that it doesn’t matter whether you’re motivated or not. In this article, these systems include:
- Changing your Environment
- Building Habits
- Creating Routines
- and more…
Your First Assignment. Yay!
You ready? I’ve told you this wasn’t going to be passive. So, here we go.
Write down why you want to be disciplined by answering the following questions. (Feel free to write more on your own)
- “In the long run, what is not being disciplined costing me?” (Think of the worst possible scenario)
- “In the long run, what would being disciplined give me?” (Think of the best possible scenario)
Yes, I told you that motivation isn’t reliable (and it isn’t), so why am I asking you to do this? You see, you may or may not have had a spike of motivation from doing that exercise but that doesn’t matter. What does matter, is that there will come a time when you will feel tired/lazy/unmotivated/etc. When that time comes, you will ask yourself “Why bother doing this, why does it even matter?”.
When that time comes, you will know that there is a reason.
That yes, it does matter.
Willpower 101
“All models are wrong, but some are useful” — George E.P. Box
Look, this isn’t meant to be a research paper on the science of willpower. This is meant to be a guide to help you use the science of willpower in your everyday life to help you achieve your goals.
That said, there are a few things you need to know about willpower so that you understand why I’m asking you to do what I’m asking you to do.
In this article, I will be comparing willpower with muscle a lot and I want to make this clear right now. Willpower is not (exactly) a muscle. I’m just using this comparison because it’s the simplest way to explain how willpower works.
By the way, if you want to learn more about willpower in detail, check out Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength.
Saving Willpower
Imagine holding something in front of you. Imagine holding it for hours. What do you think will happen to your arm? Of course, it will eventually get exhausted, sore even. Well, willpower works the same way.
Willpower is limited. It is not something you can just use forever and not run out. Knowing this, it’s important to save your willpower for doing the things that truly matter to you.
So how do you save willpower? Well, there are some methods but one of the best way is to decrease unnecessary decision making. If we compare this to muscle, think of it like losing fat (and saving energy from not needing to carry that extra fat around).
Fun Fact: If you ever wondered why Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg wears the same clothes everyday, it’s because they want to have one less decision to make everyday, hence saving their willpower reserves.
Now, I’m not gonna tell you to wear the same clothes everyday (although you are more than welcome to do so), but I want you to understand that a lot of the systems that I will talk about later are based upon this: lowering unnecessary decision making.
Increasing Willpower
Ahh, the good news. Although we know that willpower is limited on a day to day basis, the total reserve can be increased over time (like a really long time).
Again, think of willpower like a muscle:
- It gets weaker if you don’t use it (like muslces atrophying)
- It gets weaker if you overuse it (like muscles breaking down)
- It gets stronger if you train it properly (like muscles getting strong after proper exercise and rest)
The key here is to challenge yourself, but not overdo it. For example, if someone suddenly decides that starting tomorrow, they will wake up at 5, eat only healthy food, sleep on time, exercise for an hour, how long do you think it will last? Not long, I would presume.
Instead, stretch yourself a little bit each day. Do something small that you’ve had a hard time doing. Keep at it until it doesn’t take a toll on you anymore, then start something else.
Recovering Willpower
Our willpower recovers naturally of course. Otherwise after we run out of it one day, we would still be empty the next day (note: sometimes it does happen, like when you feel extremely lazy for 2 or more days).
So how does it actually recover? Well, from a whole host of things. Things like sleeping, eating, taking a walk, etc/etc. Basically, things related to health. Guess what, if you are sleepy, low on energy, and sick, you won’t have much willpower to use. What a surprise!
Although this isn’t a health article, I will tackle a few topics regarding health because it does play an important role in optimizing willpower.
Assignments for “Willpower 101”
Starting from now on, this article will turn from theoretical knowlege to practical applications. Before you start reading that however, there’s something I want you to do.
- Brainstorm ways to “Save, Increase, or Recover Willpower”
Yes, I’m gonna be sharing with you methods on how you can optimize willpower by saving, increasing, and recovering willpower from now on. But it’s important that you actually think about how you can apply it. Again, doing is a large part of learning.
First Things First: Changing your Environment
“No matter how much internal resolve you have, you will fail to change your life if you don’t change your environment.” — Benjamin Hardy
On an instinctual level, I think most people understand that their environment affects them. Perhaps what they might not be aware of is how much it affects them, and in what ways it affects them.
In terms of optimizing your willpower, your environment plays a huge role. Just imagine two scenerios:
- You are in a cinema and you have popcorn and coca cola at your side
- You are in a gym with only a water bottle near you
In which environment do you think you are more likely to eat popcorn? In the gym where if you wanted popcorn you would have to travel quite far to buy them? Or in the cinema where there’s popcorn right beside you?
Of course, I am stretching things a bit, as most of the time situations won’t be that different but you get my point. Your environment saves or costs you your willpower reserves.
For more information on how your environment affects your willpower, check out the article Willpower Doesn’t Work.
Make your Bed
As a general rule, your brain prefers organized and neat places/things over messy and chaotic places/things. In his book, Willpower, Roy Baumister writes
“The people in the messy room scored lower in self-control on many measures, such as being unwilling to wait a week for a larger sum of money as opposed to taking a smaller sum right away.”
If you are already a neat and tidy person, this is great news for you. If you are not, I would recommend that you start cleaning up your environment.
The problem with getting people to become more organized or neat is that there is so much to clean up. The task seems onerous and you simply don’t want to start. But making your bed isn’t that hard now is it?
What is important is to start. And what better way to start than by making your bed? (I’ve learned this originally from Improvement Pill and you can check it out below for more information.)
Making your bed has a 3 main benefits
- It makes your bedroom more tidy which lowers distraction
- If it’s not already a habit, it’s a chance for you to build one (thus training your willpower/discipline).
- It allows you to “win” first thing in the morning and gives you momentum.
If making your bed is not already a habit, I would highly recommend that you start with this in the habit building section that is coming up.
Can’t be tempted
Earlier, I’ve talked about lowering unnecessary decision making to save your willpower. Well, this is how it works.
If you’re someone who likes Coca Cola (and knows that you shouldn’t be drinking it), and there’s a bottle of coke right besides you, you have to make a decision. Do I drink it or not? If you do decide that you won’t drink it but the coke is still there, you will continuously have to make decisions about whether you should drink it or not.
However, in the same scenario, if you decide that you won’t drink the coke and you throw that bottle away, you won’t have to make further decisions about whether you should drink coke or not, because you can’t.
If you make it so that you have no choice in doing or not doing something, you won’t waste willpower deciding what to do.
This can be very useful. For example, if you decide that you don’t want to open your phone/check social media as the first thing you do when you wake up, just make some changes to your environment. Instead of using your phone as an alarm clock, buy an actual alarm clock and put away your phone in a drawer at night where it’s hard to reach upon waking.
Don’t let distraction in
Much like decision making, being constantly distracted drains your willpower. One of the problems we have nowadays in this era of technology is how much distraction there is. We are constantly bombarded by notifications, ads, feeds, etc. Each time that happens, each time your attention is grabbed by something, and then another, you’re slowly drained of your willpower reserves.
Today we’re gonna try to remedy that.
I’m not saying you have to give up social media. I’m not saying you should shut yourself in a room without any devices to shield yourself from ads. What I am saying is that there are simple things that you can do, right here right now, that can help you reduce distractions.
Here it is:
- Get your phone (or ipad, or whatever else you use), and go to the notifications settings. Disable “allow notification” from ALL of the apps. Now, go back from the start and re-enable notifications for the things you truly need. Most of the notifications we have are just noise, most should be irrelevant and should be turned off. Now repeat this process for the other devices that you may have.
- If you watch Youtube, download and install a youtube recommendations blocker extension for your browser. What this does is that it removes your recommended feed for your browser. This way, you can still watch youtube, but you have to find each individual video through the search bar. It makes it difficult for you to be distracted by what youtube’s “home page” or “the side bar with the “recommended list” that shows things that are likely to draw you in and distract you . For safari I recommend “Focus for Youtube” and for chrome I recommend “Distraction free for Youtube”
- If applicable, repeat the above for other platforms that you use.
Assignments for “Changing your Environment”
This is mostly a reminder but make sure you do these before moving on.
- Make your bed if you haven’t and start making your bed every morning.
- Change at least one thing in your environment to lower temptations on something you want to stop doing. (junk food, devices, etc.)
- Go through the notifications detox
- Install a recommendations blocker
Alright, next up, it’s gonna be all about building habits.
Habits: The Holy Grail of Discipline
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle/Will Durant
Fun Fact: I was searching up who said the above quote because I forgot. Turns out, although Aristotle is most commonly accredited for that quote, it was actually from a philosopher named Will Durant.
In my opinion, building habits is the best way to increase discipline and optimize willpower. The process of building habits increases your willpower, having habits can save you willpower, and the effect of the habits themselves helps recover your willpower.
For example, let’s take a look at sleep. If you’re someone who’ve struggled with keeping a consistent sleep schedule, you may decide to build a habit of having a sleep routine. In the first weeks, it will be hard for you and this process trains your willpower to become stronger. Then, after the habit is fully automatic, you no longer have to spend any willpower to follow your sleep routine. This saves you willpower from now on. Finally, having a proper sleep routine allows you to fully recover your willpower reserves for the next day.
As you can see, habits are very powerful. In fact, if there is one thing that you take away from this article, let it be this.
Habit Inventory
Alright, before we start building our habits, let’s make a “Habit Inventory”.
- Create a document. It doesn’t matter which app you use so long as you can save and access that document easily.
- Make 2 columns and name them “Habits I have” and “Habits I want to have”
- Fill those columns in. For “habits I have” don’t worry if you don’t have any right now, you can fill them in as you build your habits
What this does is that it gives a brief overview of what habits you can work on (plus, it allows you to focus on one habit and not worry about other habits you want to build later on).
This also helps when “life happens” and you’re thrown off track. You’ll easily be able to get back on track because you know what habits you’ve already built. You may also want to review this sheet on a monthly basis just to make sure you’re on track and to see when it’s time to move on to a new habit.
Picking a habit
Now that you have an idea of what habits you want to build, it’s time to pick one. If you are new to this, I recommend starting out with a “Keystone Habit”.
Keystone habits have their name for a reason. Much like how a keystone holds together other bricks in an arc, keystone habits affect other areas of your life instead of just one.
For example, a famous keystone habit is exercising. In The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, he found that people who just focused on building a habit of exercising would slowly begin to eat healthy. They were also more likely to smoke less, be less stressed, and had more patience as compared to before they began exercising.
You don’t have to build tons of habits rapidly. You just have to build a few solid keystones for your life to radically shift.
Here are some keystone habits:
- Making your Bed (huh, isn’t that interesting)
- Reading
- Meditation
- Exercise
We’re gonna start planning for the habit next so make sure you’ve picked one before moving on.
A word of caution
Remember what I said in that last sentence?
Pick one habit?
This is crucial. Do NOT try to build multiple habits at once. Although you can do other things while building that one habit, make sure that you only focus on one at a time.
I am stressing this a lot because I once tried to build multiple habits at once without waiting for one habit to solidify before moving on. The result? A whole year wasted and I had to re-do one habit at a time.
Designing Your Habit
Although there have been new models regarding habit building nowadays such as the James Clear model or B=MAT model, I’ll be using the Charles Duhigg model because it’s simple while being very effective.
According to Charles Duhigg, there are 3 parts to a habit:
- Cue: the conditions (time/place/event/etc.) that occur right before the habit happens
- Routine: the actual habit itself
- Reward: something pleasurable that you get as a result of doing the habit
For the purposes of building a habit, we will design our habit based on the above model.
Cue
If you’ve ever seen lighting from afar and covered your ears before the sound hits, you know what a cue is. Cues simply condition us to expect something that is associated with it. If “x” occurs right before “y” does, after many repetition, your brain is conditioned to think x=y.
Of course, when people talk about conditioning, it is seen in a negative light. But here, we can use it to our advantage. If you make it so that “x” occurs then do your habit right after, over time, when “x” happens you will instinctively do your habit without having to even think or expend willpower.
As an example, say that your habit is reading. A good idea might be to read right after brushing your teeth at night.
Here are some tips for Cues:
- Make sure you only use one cue for one habit. If you have multiple cues for one habit, it will be harder for your brain to associate the cue with the habit.
- Stack habits if possible. In the previous example, I said setting your cue to be brushing your teeth might be good because brushing your teeth should already be a habit (which means the cue occurs automatically). Others might be waking up, eating breakfast/lunch/dinner, or other habits you already have. In this case, the “routine” of the pre-existing habit becomes the “cue” for the habit you’re trying to build (this is perfectly fine, habits can stack).
- Try to make the cue associated with many “senses”. Back to the example of reading, a good cue might be “everyday, at ____ AM, after brushing my teeth, when I see the book”
Alright, now take your time choosing your cue before moving on to the next section.
Routine
In terms of design, there isn’t much to say about this. If you picked the habit of reading, the routine is just reading. What does matter in this part is how you approach it.
Low Bar/High Bar
One of the most important things to note when it comes to building a habit is that people try to do too much too fast. If you’re a person who’ve never exercised before, saying “I’ll do an hour of exercise everyday” isn’t a good idea.
This is where low bars come in. Low bars are the “minimum requirements” for a habit that you do. For example, if your habit is reading everyday, the low bar would be reading 1 page. Having low bars mean that it should be almost impossible for you to miss doing your habit because it is so easy (unless you forget to, and that’s why habit stacking is so powerful because your cue is something that is already automatic). Not missing a day is crucial because in terms of building habits, it’s the consistency that matters not the intensity.
That being said, reading 1 page a day will not change your life. And this is where high bars come in. High bars are the “maximum” that you want to do consistently. At first, your high bar and low bar maybe the same. But eventually, your high bar may increase from reading 1 page a day, to 10 page a day, and so on.
Try to do your high bar everyday of course, but make sure to do at least your low bar. Again, it’s the consistency that matters, not the intensity.
Reducing Friction
We’ve already talked about environment before so this is just a reminder of how you can apply it to your habits. Reducing friction is simply making it as easy as possible for you to do your habit.
For example, if you want to exercise in the morning, something you might try is to prepare the clothes and shoes beforehand. That way, when you wake up, the gear is already there which makes it easy to just put them on and start your exercise routine. If you want to read books, then put your books near the place that you want to read.
Again, using your environment to help you do your habits is extremely powerful and you definitely should think about ways you can apply this to your habit.
Reward
Finally, after you have set up your cue and routine, it’s time for the reward. In the beginning, rewards are what essentially makes a habit. Remember the habit model? Cue -> Routine -> Reward?
If you repeat this loop, what this tells your brain is that “Hey when I sense cue and do routine, I will have a reward”. That anticipation for the reward is what makes your brain want to do the habit. Without that reward, it will be much harder (if not impossible) for you to build a habit. After all, why do something hard if it doesn’t have a benefit?
Short Term Reward
There are 2 types of rewards to consider when building a habit. Short term rewards and long term rewards. The short term reward is something that you get immediately, something that can enjoy right now. This would be things like treating yourself to good food after exercise, or watching your favorite TV show after reading.
Long Term Reward
This is the “goal” of doing your habits. These are the long term results that you get from consistently doing your habit. For example, if you exercise regularly, you will become healthier/fitter over time. Long term rewards aren’t something you can easily get, these aren’t things you can reward yourself for doing your habit. These are the effects of doing your habit.
You brain needs to associate this benefit with doing your habit, notice that yes, it is beneficial to do this. So what can you do to help it? It’s simple. Track it
In the early stages of building a habit, having some sort of tracker is very powerful. You don’t need anything fancy or complex, just use a spreadsheet or paper (you can also use habit trackers but they really aren’t necessary). For example, if your habit is journaling, you can track your stress levels at the end of each day. When you see that your stress levels go down over time, you will be motivated to continue doing the habit.
Wrapping Up Habits
By now, here’s what you should have done:
- Make a habit inventory (also remind yourself to check it every month)
- Pick a habit
- Choose a cue for the habit
- Choose a low bar and high bar for your habit. (Remember: you must do at least the low bar each day, and the high bar is “optional”.)
- Choose a short term reward
- Set up a tracker that measures your progress long term.
If you’ve done that, great. All that’s left for you is to actually do the habit every day.
So… how long does it take to build a habit?
Before we get into that, let’s define what it means for a habit to be “built” really quick. For the purposes of this article, a fully formed habit is one that requires no effort to execute. Keeping that in mind, the answer to the question is, “It depends”.
Although the “66 days to build a habit” research done by University College London is commonly preached nowadays, what it actually says is that it takes an average of 66 days for a habit to be built. In actuality, they found that it took as little as 18 days and up to 254 days to build a habit depending on many factors.
This is what you should keep in mind. If a habit is easy, something like making your bed, it can potentially be “built” in 18 days. If a habit is hard, something like meditating, it can take up to a year. So how do you decide when your habit is fully formed? When you don’t have to think about it anymore. This means that as a general rule, focus on it for 2 months, then see if you’re ready to move on. If you notice that you miss one day, go back and focus on that habit again.
What if I miss a day?
Well, for the most part you shouldn’t be. Having low bars mean that it should be almost impossible for you to miss a day (it’s just reading 1 page or, doing 1 pushup, or writing down 1 grateful thing). But yes, life can happen. In that scenario, make sure that you don’t miss the second day. Just because you missed a day doesn’t mean you’ve lost all progress, it simply makes it harder for you to do the habit the next day. Missing 1 day isn’t too noticable. However, missing 2,3, days will make it much easier to miss 1 week, and the progress can go down the drain.
The takeaway? Try not to miss a day (do at least the low bar everyday), and if you do, make sure to not miss the second day in a row.
Final Words on Habits
Wow, that was a long section. I just wanted to congratulate you for finishing it. Remember, although you can do other “discipline things”, focus on building only 1 habit at a time. Other things (like the ones that I’m about to share) are optional, do them if you can. Just know that even if you “fail” at those optional things, it’s fine. 1 Habit at a time.
Finally, if you want to learn more about habits, check out the following article:
Design Your Day
“You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.” —John C. Maxwell
Now that you’ve learned how to build habits, it’s time to structure your day.
Before that though, I want to give you a reminder. A lot of the things I’ll be sharing from now are essentially habits themselves. Don’t worry if you can’t stick to them all right away. Try to do them if you can, but don’t measure your success with being able to do everything. Rather, so long as you’re sticking to one habit that you’re currently focusing on, it’s enough. Eventually as one habit forms after another, you will be able to stick to the new routines that I’ll be sharing in this section, … and more.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, lets get started.
Eat the Frog
“Do the hardest thing as the first thing you do”.
Yes, this is very cliche, and you’ve probably heard of this a lot. But it’s for a good reason. Remember how willpower is limited and it depletes throughout the day? This means that your willpower is gonna be at it’s highest when you wake up and it tapers off as you go through the day (with a few exceptions).
This also means that if you try to do the hard things at the end of a long day, when you’ve already used up your willpower reserves, it will be much more difficult.
With that in mind, when you plan your day, schedule the hardest, most mentally draining things in the morning.
Note: if you’re a night owl, just do the hardest things right after you wake up. It doesn’t really matter if it’s morning or if it’s night. What matters is that you do the hardest thing when you have the highest levels of willpower (which is right after, or soon after you wake up).
Worth It
With regards to planning your day, this is another guideline like “Eat the Frog”. This time, along with planning the hardest things first, you schedule your day so that “rewards” come after work/doing hard things.
In Willpower, by Roy Baumister, he found that children who were raised with “rewards after work” mentality had better self control. The following is an excerpt from the book which I found to be a great example regarding this.
“Later, when Soo went off to college and asked her parents for a cheap used car to get around, they refused but offered to buy her a brand-new car if she was admitted to medical school”
Using this same technique, you should schedule your day so that things like watching TV, using social media, playing games, etc. etc. comes after doing things that you generally do not enjoy doing. This will train you on a daily basis to delay gratification and to associate work with reward.
Batch Processing/Planning
The “Eat the Frog” mini section was a general way of how to structure your day but this is a routine that you to schedule into your day. (Again, you may want to make a habit one day. If it’s not your focus right now, try to do it but don’t mind it if you miss days)
Back to the “Saving Willpower” section, recall that when we are distracted, our willpower reserves diminish. This is a problem because our mind tends to come up with thoughts naturally. You’re gonna have ideas, to-dos, thoughts, etc. throughout your day. If you try to keep them all into your head, you will inevitably be unable to focus, you will be distracted by all those thoughts, and lose unnecessary reserves of willpower.
How do you counteract it? Well, you Capture and batch Process.
Before we get into that, imagine yourself doing laundry. Would you wash, fold, and iron 1 shirt at a time? Of course not! You would wash all clothes, then fold them all, then iron them all. Batching things and doing them is “common knowledge” but we tend to forget it when our ideas/thoughts come into play.
What tends to happen is ideas and thoughts pop up, and we try to address it immediately. This is like washing 1 shirt and folding 1 shirt at a time. Instead, from now on, try capturing all ideas that come to you. Carry around a note-book or have an “ideas holder” in your devices (my personal favorite is MiniNotes but Drafts is a more popular option). Write everything that comes into mind, regardless of whether if it’s a good idea or not. Having the confidence that nothing is missed will give you ease of mind.
After you’ve captured your ideas, you need to set times to process them. Only during these set times, you look at your captured ideas and process them one by one. If it’s a task, put it in your to-do list. If it’s an event, put it in your calendar. If it’s an idea for later, save it in a separate “long term” ideas note. Also, you’ll likely find that some ideas that you’ve written down aren’t worth doing anything with it, in that case just erase it (this is much better than trying to sort out if an idea is good or bad when you come up with it).
This concept is most commonly accredited to David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done. Watch the following video by him to learn more about it.
Sleep is for the Strong
There is no question that you need sleep. Even disregarding everything else, sleep is essential to recovering your willpower (when was the last time you woke up groggy and said to yourself “I’m gonna be disciplined!”). In this section, I’ll be giving you a few tips on how to improve your sleep.
- Keep a consistent sleep schedule
Even if you don’t increase the amount of sleep you get on average (which you should if you are sleeping less than 7 hours), having a consistent sleep will increase your sleep quality. Our bodies have circadian rhythms and having consistent sleep schedules mean it can regulate our body better for sleep. This means that you shouldn’t sleep in during weekends to catch up on your “sleep debt”. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t work. Instead, just try sleep and wake up at the same time everyday.
2. Avoid blue-light at night
Blue-light is actually more like white-light. It’s the light that you’re probably using to read this article with. This light is similar to the sun’s light and if you’re exposed to blue-light at night, your brain will have a hard time sleeping because it thinks it’s still morning/afternoon. Although this is fine during the day time, avoid it as best you can when you’re about to sleep (I would recommend at least an hour prior to sleep). Instead, if you need to your devices, use yellow-light. Many devices have this option available in the form of night shift and you can also use apps like F.lux if your device doesn’t have it by default.
Those are the two major keys to a good night’s sleep but there is plenty more I could’ve talked about. If you want to learn more about sleep, the best resource I’ve found is Get Better Sleep, but there are plenty of free resources on sleep out there if you just search it up.
State Changes
Generally, willpower levels taper off as you go through your day. Hence, the reason why you should “eat the frog”. That said, your willpower does recover after “Stage Changes” which I’ve listed below:
- Naps: Naps should be no longer than 25 mins. Our sleep has different stages and if you sleep longer than 25 mins, you will fall into deep sleep. At night, this is good, but when you are napping it is not. If you wake up from deep sleep instead of light sleep, you will feel groggier, not refreshed.
- Exercise: Any type of exercise is actually fine but if you are stressed for time, I would recommend HIIT exercises. Another great way is to just take a walk for a while.
- Meditation: I feel a bit hypocritical while writing this because although I meditate periodically, I haven’t actually made meditation a habit yet (it’s the next habit I’m gonna build after I’m built my current one). However, I still wanted to include this because there are many benefits to it.
The above 3 are just activities that I know which the mental states so there are probably other ways to go about it. You can choose which ones you want to add to your daily routine but just know to spread them out. They help recover your willpower so schedule them between times that you feel drained or stressed.
Final Words
Wow! You did it. Congratulations.
At this point, you’ve learned
- The basics of willpower
- How to use your environment to optimize willpower
- How to build habits
- How to design your day to optimize willpower
As a reminder, I just wanted to say “take it slow”. Try to do what you’ve learned but focus on building habits. Know that you’re progressing towards becoming more disciplined. Know that it’s enough.
Now, start changing your life. One step at a time.