Willpower Revisited

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If you haven’t read my post, The Myth of Self-Discipline, you might want to do so. This post is in response to feedback I received.

Rev. Bud Brown emailed to challenge the idea that willpower is a limited resource. He noted that a meta-analysis of all studies since the original chocolate chip/radish experiment could not confirm the concept of ego completion, and suggested there was a bias toward confirming the original study. Furthermore, a large-scale study that tried to replicate the results was inconclusive.

At the very least, this called into question the idea of ego depletion. For some, this served to debunk it all together. Rev. Brown also shared this article from an addictions article that suggests that the concept of willpower is harmful and should be ditched altogether.

My own opinion is that there is something about the idea which I found helpful. But I tend to agree with this article that researchers need to clearly define self-control, the tasks that require self-control and how to develop testing models that are falsifiable before any conclusions can be drawn about the concept of ego depletion. All of this is to say that the ideas of willpower, self-discipline and self-control are imprecise.

I’m grateful to Rev. Brown for sharing his feedback. It shows that more often than not, there is more grey than black and white.

I was aware of the controversy when I wrote my book. Regardless, I still find idea that willpower is exhaustible to be helpful. This is true for me personally and the students that I have worked with in my habit formation course. Here are three reasons why.

Focus

Whether or not willpower, self-discipline and self-control are exhaustible resources, focusing my efforts on one particular habit was life-changing for me. It has enabled me to develop habits that have helped me in all aspects of my life.

Regardless of where you might come down on this controversy, it’s pretty well established that once you develop a habit you do it automatically. That’s the definition.

But I also know that trying to do too many things at one time it is a recipe for failure. In practice, that was the big takeaway for me. I found this true for others, as well. One blog reader emailed me to say that she was going to stop trying to do so many things and focus on one.

Keystone Habits

Charles Duhigg emphasizes the importance of keystone habits, which are correlated with developing other positive behaviors. Keystone habits include exercising, tracking what you eat, meditating and planning your days.

Focusing your effort (willpower?) on developing one keystone habit can have a cascading effect. Here is one example from my book:

In landmark research, Megan Oaten and Ken Cheng asked six men and 18 women, ages 18 to 50 years old, to exercise more. They were given a free gym membership and encouraged to use it. The group did not exercise regularly at the start of the study. Their actual results were not overly impressive. For the first month, they exercised an average of once per week. By the end of two months they were up to three times per week.

Here is what’s amazing. According to the researchers: “…participants also reported significant decreases in perceived stress, emotional distress, smoking, alcohol and caffeine consumption, and an increase in healthy eating, emotional control, maintenance of household chores, attendance to commitments, monitoring of spending and an improvement in study habits.”

All this came about after just two months and a modest increase in exercise. A control group showed no such change.

Self-Discipline

Focus and keystone habits lead me to this statement: self-disciplined people DO have more willpower than the rest of us. But they didn’t start out that way. Perhaps keystone habits were instilled in them when they were young. Or, like me, they somehow focused their efforts on developing keystone habits. In either case, the keystone habits cascaded into developing other positive habits and behaviors. And, as the Oaten/Cheng study indicates, this results in more self-control, which I interpret as willpower.

Ray Zahab is a great example. As a young man, he smoked a pack of cigarettes a day, ate fast food all the time, didn’t exercise and drank heavily. On January 1, 2000, he quit smoking. He decided to carry around the half a pack of cigarettes left over from New Year’s Eve in his back pocket until he didn’t want one anymore. In other words he focused his willpower on not smoking until it was easier not to smoke than to light up.

That keystone habit of not smoking resulted in better eating and exercising. He eventually entered a 160 KM ultramarathon and won. The rest is history.

Zahab has run over 14,000 KM in the most in uninhabitable and inhospitable areas of the world. He has run across countries and even continents and in the coldest and hottest places on earth.

The idea of willpower may be imprecise and hard to quantify. Thanks to Rev. Brown for pointing this out. Regardless, I believe that focusing effort on developing a keystone habit increases our willpower and self-discipline. That’s been my experience.

The Rev. Jack Shitama serves as executive director of Pecometh Camp & Retreat Ministries in Maryland.  This post is republished with permission from his blog, The Non-Anxious Leader.