5 Tips to Improve Your Willpower
Exercising willpower for a prolonged period of time is something we all wish we could accomplish. Whether we want to kick a bad habit or master self-discipline, willpower is a tool that many of us struggle with.
Many assume that willpower is a gift that only some people are born with, but recent research suggests that willpower is something that can be cultivated and exercised. Learning how to leverage your willpower can allow you to tackle daunting tasks you’d otherwise prefer to avoid.
Here are five tips to break the impasse that blocks your concentration and fully utilize your willpower.
1. Conquer Difficult Tasks First
Ask yourself how often you save the most difficult task for last. People defer unpleasant or difficult decisions because there’s an immediate reward in doing so. Difficult tasks naturally impose stress upon us, so when we evade the hard stuff in favor of addressing simple tasks, that stress is immediately lifted.
But this often brings about more issues down the line.
In a 2011 study on parole decisions, researchers from the National Academy of Sciences found that “the likelihood of a favorable ruling is greater at the very beginning of the workday or after a food break than later in the sequence of cases.” In other words, as the day wears you down, you make worse decisions because of the energy lost on earlier tasks.
So instead of using the most productive part of the day to tackle simple tasks, train yourself to deal with the larger, more laborious responsibilities first. You may be surprised at how much easier it is to deal with larger projects when you have the proper amount of energy to tackle them. This also applies to conquering the most important tasks first, which often go hand in hand with the most difficult.
2. Minimize Your Choices
Think of the number of choices you have to make throughout your day. As the day rolls on, you lose mental energy, and each decision becomes more and more difficult to make. As the required amount of energy to make a decision increases, we begin to cut corners, jump the gun and eventually stop caring in order to preserve that energy.
So instead of trying to stretch your energy thin in dealing with a number of smaller, less important tasks, place your focus on fewer, more important ones. With fewer choices, you make better decisions. With better decisions, you produce better results.
If possible, prioritize the choices you have to make in a given day, and eliminate the ones that aren’t as important. If you have the resources to delegate the less critical matters to others, use them.
The idea of eliminating choices can be applied to your personal life as well. For example, if you leave email alerts turned on, you have a choice about whether or not to immediately follow up with an alert. If you get 30 emails a day, that’s 30 alerts. You could check each one, expending energy on each alert. But if you turn off those alerts, and limit yourself to only checking your emails every hour during the workday, you reduce your email checks from 30 to eight.
3. Stick to a Plan Through Self-Affirmation
According to a 2009 study by the American Psychological Association, “self-affirmation holds promise as a mental strategy that reduces the likelihood of self-control failure.”
Self-control is the key ingredient in sticking to a plan, so don’t put yourself down by saying “I can’t do this.” Instead, say, “I don’t want or need to do things that get in the way of completing this task.”
This is self-affirmation. By training your brain to stick to a plan despite distractions or speed bumps, you are exercising willpower.
4. Always Remember Your Long-Term Goals
We’ve all heard and said, “I’ll start my diet tomorrow.” The reason why humans settle on “tomorrow” is most commonly due to mental fatigue, which leads us to choosing the easy way out. We don’t do this just for losing weight. We do this for many things that we should never put off.
Since the possibility of getting fired is a stronger motivator than gaining a few pounds, it’s easier to ignore personal goals than professional ones. As a result, we often sideline our own individual desires and goals in favor of focusing on work duties.
So why don’t you attach a motivator to your personal goals?
Do so by placing reminders throughout your daily routine. You could tape a dollar bill to the outside of your wallet to remind yourself of the money you need to save for that family vacation. You could even set calendar alerts labeled “For my family,” or upload a family photo as your computer wallpaper to always keep your source of motivation in front of you.
Not only will these reminders keep you from making impulsive decisions that distract you from your goals, but they will also free your mind and body of those distractions. With this newfound freedom, you can apply your willpower to bigger and better things.
5. Meditate
Meditation has been linked to increasing the brain’s willpower reserve. It can be as simple as doing breathing exercisesthat take less than 10 minutes to perform. You can do these while your morning coffee is brewing, while your kids are taking a nap or during your lunch break. You can even meditate at work. If you have the time and desire to do more than 10 minutes of meditation, it may improve your willpower even more.
Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University, suggests that brain changes have been observed after only eight weeks of brief daily meditation. Additionally, meditation can enhance attention and focus, as well as self-awareness and stress management. The same benefits can also come from physical exercise. So if you do both, you should notice your willpower improve.
Some other quick tips to help improve your willpower include:
- Eat healthy and frequently.
- Get more sleep.
- Make choices today that you know will make tomorrow better.
Smarter decision-making and exercising your willpower will not only help you meet your goals, but it will also make the sensation of achieving your goals more fulfilling and worthwhile. Again, willpower isn’t something you’re born with; like a small business, it’s something you must work on every day to grow and make better.
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