How to Build Willpower for the Weak | Hacker News Reader

How to Build Willpower for the Weak

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140 pointsmofeeta54 comments

Something I've yet to see explored is the difference between negative and positive willpower. For example, I find it very difficult to motivate myself to do something I don't want to do, and easy to procrastinate. But it is relatively easy for me to have the willpower not to do something that I do want to do.

On the other hand, many people seem to have the opposite problem; they find it relatively easy to do things that are unpleasant, but difficult to restrain themselves from indulging in the things that they enjoy.

Of course, you can have a mix of both problems, and it might vary based on what makes the activity unpleasant or pleasant. If something is physically addictive, then someone with strong restraint might find an exception there. And if a task is stressful or painful rather than merely cumbersome or boring, someone with strong proactive willpower might still have difficulty with it.

But I think it's worth investigating because it seems plausible that these are entirely different problems conflated by language. And it seems likely that totally different strategies would be needed for managing them.

This is an incredibly interesting point that I've never heard anyone mention before.

When the task requires some effort, it's obvious that it's easier to just not do it, even if desirable. The least effort it requires, the harder it is to deny it (e.g. smoking).

Maybe, but I'm not sure that always holds up. Playing video games requires effort, but many people find it difficult to refrain from that. This may be confounded somewhat, since in some cases procrastination might be mistaken for lack of restraint. But I don't think that's always the case.

There must be a distinction between deliberate effort and flow effort? One weird thing I note is that reading highly technical articles online is easier to make myself do than reading technical papers (even if the article is roughly as difficult). It's like the same task but the classification causes me to make different decisions.

I see that sort of thing in myself.

I find myself to be a fundamentally 'enthusiastic' person -- I love to act, and hate to refrain. Which shows up in things like health; I'll exercise like a dog and eat like a pig, because run is an action, but moderation is a lack of action (don't eat)

Can confirm making the exact same self-observation

I have the same issue. Of course, sometimes they get conflated. DON'T waste time on Hacker News is indirectly a problem with DO work on your project. But once I decide, 'start work on the project even if you don't really feel like it', that part is easy.

There is yet another category of people who find it difficult to summon both types of will powers.

Takes a bow

And interestingly, these two actions are controlled by two different parts of the brain. So technically, there are two "reserves" of willpower.

I've been reading a lot of research lately and sadly, it looks like willpower is determined by how developed (determined by genetics) or active (determined by exertion of willpower) are the prefrontal cortex regions.

We can train ourselves to have more willpower by exercising these parts of the brain regularly, but not by much. We hit our personal limit pretty fast and the best we can do then is to limit the amount of decisions we make...

I've thought a lot about this one, too. I'm in the opposite camp from you. Restraint is so much harder than "willfulness".

I'm great at putting myself through punishing training, physical or mental over a short duration but very weak in resisting things over the long term. For example, I've done endurance events that involve sleep deprivation, done intense 80hr/week work weeks when starting a business and even swimming sprint workouts so hard that I puked. But I've struggled greatly to avoid things like eating that extra 1500 kcal of cheese while watching Netflix from midnight to 2am.

The result has been a very high variance in my success at various endeavors. In the past year or so, I've been coming to believe that improving my weaker "negative" willpower carries a much greater benefit at this point than further improving my "positive" willpower. It's almost like the blades of a pair of scissors. If one it sharp enough, it can cut things on its own, but it's far better to have both blades at least reasonably sharp.

First of all, I too think this is an interesting idea that I've never heard/considered before. I too find restraint easy but action difficult.

I agree, too, with your last paragraph.

But aside from that, even if individuals we do not find good strategies for better managing our weaknesses.... can we find better strategies for collaborating with others with complementary strengths and weaknesses? Of the people replying to you and stating a side, it looks like roughly a 50/50 split.

Is it possible for strong-restraint people to lend restraint to weak-restraint people? Is it possible for strong-initiative people to lend initiative to weak-initiative people?

I always see the best way to develop will power towards doing something is to try and take the smallest step possible in doing it. I've had tremendous success with it. Can't stay awake till 3 AM in the morning to code? Try doing it till 22:00, then try pushing until 22:15, then till 22:30. In short your objective should be not giving up for the next 15 minutes, and when that is over; the next 15, and when that is over; 15 minutes after than... till you get to where you were aiming.

Chances are you will break, but with time and patience you can only get better.

I had this challenge once with a friend. He told me being a nerd I had the worst fitness ever; after a good debate why workout doesn't matter he told me I wouldn't last 5 minutes on a thread mill- The very next day I ran(more like walking very fast) for 45 minutes. Of course I was nearly collapsing after that. By my point was never to run 45 minutes. It was to run the next 3 minutes without giving up, slow down when its overwhelming and keep going at a steady speed and aim to not give up for the next immediate 3 minutes.

I've tried everything else. Drinking sugar cane juice, eating a snack, sipping tea. Nothing has worked apart for that 'Don't give up in the next x minutes' strategy. I'm lead to believe this is common in sports too, Test cricket for that matter is believed that, can be excelled by players who can play from a session to session. Just focus on playing this session well.

Yeah -- if willpower is a muscle, then you've got to keep running to exhaustion. People used to call that 'character building.'

You've got to keep doing things until exhaustion(which it self is a moving target, and you won't reach exhaustion easily or quickly if you practice it enough number of times).

Will power is basically getting yourself to do something which you can't because of reasons outside your interest, passion etc. Stuff like working under pressure, duress, extreme tiredness and in faces of adversity.

If you are lazy, dispassionate or just bored about something. Will power won't help your there.

> If you are lazy, dispassionate or just bored about something. Will power won't help your there.

Maybe I am being overly nit-picky here but I feel the last paragraph completely contradicts the rest of your comment.

At first you claim that will power can overcome a lack of passion but then you say that will power can't help you if you are dispassionate/bored.

Let me clarify.

There is a massive difference between 'Pain' and 'Disinterest'.

Lets say you are super passionate about making the next big programming language. The task is huge, its monstrous. But you go about it eventually, meanwhile you stretching beyond means. You stay up awake whole nights, you are working weekends, you've stopped seeing your friends. All that 18 hr/day work is causing you immense tiredness, there is reasonable amount of failure you are seeing every day. All that failure and way things are going is humbling you down. Now despite there is pain here, you are still carrying on. Because you go on and on, despite situation and find ways to just keep doing it; Until you eventually win. This is what is will power.

There is a second scenario. You come to office 9 AM every day sharp. There is build failure you need to look into, which is some trivial ftp call timing out. You have nothing serious or challenging. All your innovations and extra efforts are treated by your immediate superiors as threat-to-their-positions and crushed ASAP. In fact all you do is fix builds, fix trivial bugs and add an occasional feature. Your time goes in hearing dis interesting stories of what totally irrelevant issues your colleagues are upon during stand ups, your afternoons are full of filling up boring time sheets and agile management software. You are doing this only because you want a health insurance, some assurance no one will fire you ASAP and some comfort pillow. You are just seasoned to do this routine, because of some fear of failure.

While the first situation has tremendous pain associated with it, you are putting up effort in situations where others can't.

The second one is clearly the craving for safety, fear of failure and total non willingness to change unless forced to. This is some what opposite of Will power, because if you had it- you would be doing something else.

In the second case, then, will power would be helpful?

Pushing yourself to stay awake is probably not something you should be doing if you want to function at max mental and physical capacity.

"Researchers say we humans have a limited supply of willpower" -- it's an interesting idea but worth noting there are counter-claims.

Particularly, it turns out that this may be self-fulfilling prophecy -- people who subscribe to the limited willpower hypothesis tend to run out of willpower more quickly[1]

What's interesting here, for those looking to practically increase their willpower, is that treating your willpower as delicate and fundamentally limited might be part of the problem.

Personally, I'd like to subscribe to the 'abundant willpower' hypothesis, if that turns out to be the more powerful premise. (But then, I'd also like some cake. What can you do? ;) )

[1] http://www.livescience.com/38980-willpower-is-not-a-finite-r...

Agreed. His initial example of hunger for one struck me as odd, as hunger is cumulative, so really the only thing that happens when one is continually offered food (one does not really want to eat) on an empty stomach is at some point hunger wins by value, not "attrition".

This whole article would be perfect support for men&women who need a new excuse for their cheating habits.

> I just get so many tempting offers during the day, eventually I had no choice in the matter.

I can confirm the article's introduction: willpower behave somehow like a muscle. Or, at least, you can act as if it was so.

From my own (little and personal) experience, I've found it usefull to get into the habit of flexing it whenever I can, if possible in public. Just something like "ok, I'll go with you eating there, I'll just take a salad if you don't mind". Sometime people don't take the opportunity to discuss it further, but when they do it's an easy way to play the role of the guy who's aim in life is to improve his willpower. Incarning a role is, from what I've found so far, the best path to really become that person you want to be.

With time, I've found that there's a pattern that occurs when I'm placed in front of a bad looking choice, and it seems more easy to counter that pattern when it pops to mind, along with the memory of previous "willpower workout".

I don't know how to define "willpower" so I found the initial thesis of his article off-putting.

However, Mr. Adams then appears to go into how he manages broad terms that are vague (like willpower) by structuring that term around concrete things like the dopamine rush he gets by being alone with his thoughts and treats the "willpower" to work out as a package deal that includes a vague term with a specific event.

Pretty cool little experience article that appears to give a little indication of how he manages things he thinks he should do, with things he knows he will do anyways to bundle up the positive reinforcement.

The "dopamine rush" is actually an endorphin rush - they make you feel good, the dopamine is just released along with the endorphins to facilitate habit formation (basically programming you to do that thing again in the future since it makes you feel good). I think it's a distinction worth noting...

I do the same. I don't eat chocolate or any other sugar sh*t when I have mangoes, apples, oranges or any other delicious fruit.

In Spain we have a selection of fantastic food, like "jamon" or cheese or fish or nuts(don't eat Californias's ones, they don't taste at all, the best nuts are the ugliest and dirty in the outside ones) so I prepare mini dishes in the refrigerator so five times a day I open it and there is something delicious and healthy. No need for pizzas or hamburgers(nothing wrong about good pizzas, the Italian ones or good hamburgers from time to time).

Eating well gives you energy along the day that nothing is going to give.

Exercise is also not a problem in sunny Madrid, but when I travel to Europe or Boston or Illinois I find it super hard to exercise while is freezing cold out there and cloudy, even going to the gym is so much work.

Will power is what you will need when things like eating healthy, exercise isn't helping.

Will power is what counts when your absolute physical limits are challenged.

How is delicious fruit not "sugar shit" exactly? Eating poorly gives you energy too. Energy is measured in calories. Consuming sufficient calories is not a challenge.

Fruit is far healthier than junk food.

Healthier but not necessarily far healthier. It's harder to overeat fruit since much of it has large water and fiber content. But fruit is still mostly empty calorie sugar. When given the choice between junk food and fruit pick fruit but there are alternatives.

>sugar is far healthier than sugar

Really? By what definition of "healthy"?

Fruit contains far more than just sugar: fiber for example, is great for you. Vitamins and minerals are also, generally speaking, good for you.

Furthermore, eating fruit will not spike your blood sugar the same way an equivalent amount of pure sugar or a caloric equivalent amount of junk food.

These are not controversial statements, there is plenty of actual research to back this up.

Finally, there are many ways to heat healthfully, and fruit is not essential: however it is unambiguously healthier for you than junk food.

Yes, eating fruit will spike your blood sugar just like candy will. Notice how diabetics need to eat candy or fruit if their blood sugar gets low? There's a reason they say either one, because they have the same effect. Sugar is sugar. You believe adding a tiny amount of a few vitamins that are easy to get well over your RDA of already makes candy into health food. I believe candy is still candy even with a bit of vitamin C in it.

This is the least data-backed, and most drivel-filled article I have read on hacker news. Seriously?

Anyway I strongly recommend "The power of habit: Why we do what we do, and how to change" which is a scientific investigation into, well, the science of habit, but more importantly the information contained in those pages is highly usable.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-Habit-Why-What-Change/dp/18479...

Not to mention the "Don't break the chain" principle, which inadvertently makes you apply the most fundamental principle of good habit building:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36497

"If we use up our willpower resisting one temptation we will have less in reserve to resist the next. That’s a big deal because you don’t want to use up all of your willpower resisting a cupcake.."

That is true, but also you can't avoid this situations because if "willpower behave somehow like a muscle" you have to train it. It is hard to find a mix between training your willpower and not spending too much willpower on training and having nothing left.

I recommend everyone to read more about this topic, there are great books out there which explain how willpower works in your brain and body.

One little trick helps me a lot.. If you look at your stuffed garage say to yourself: what a beautiful pile of willpower training.

I think a wrong concept is being circulated around. Will power is not energy, and there isn't a 'bank' you are depleting. And there isn't a 'spending' will power. If you are hungry, just go eat something and get back to work. Working while running short on energy is one of the things where will power helps, and not the only thing.

There are plenty of people who are very healthy and fit, but can't push for a minute extra beyond their threshold of tolerance.

If you look at it that way, Will power almost has mystical effect surrounding your ability to do certain things when they seem impossible to people outside. Which is why not every one eating and living healthy is swimming the English channel, or writing the next operating system, or playing the football world cup finals, or some one in dire poverty rising their way by hard work.

These things can't be gained eating something or living a particular lifestyle.

The prefrontal cortex regulates the three challenges "I will not", "I will" and "I want". These three challenges cost energy everytime we make it.

That is what we call willpower. And almost everything you do needs willpower. Willpower doesn't only come in if you wan't to push further.

We require energy to do anything. Even to just merely exist.

But that isn't all there is to, is it?

Willpower is a fascinating subject. It often boils down to what Dan Ariely calls 'Ego Depletion' whereby you are competing with yourself. Eventually you will lose.

If you haven't seen it, it's worth watching the marshmallow experiment. You can see that some young children seem to have an ability to enhance their willpower at even a very early age. Adults who seem to be strong willed often exhibit this behaviour in the form of routines.

There's more about the subject with tips on improving your will power here: http://www.startupclarity.com/blog/people-dont/

Fine, my comment was apparently irritating some people. I deleted it. It's unfortunate I can't discuss something that's been bothering me with the HN crowd.

Just continue teaching people, like you are doing now.

No, that's not the point at all. If it reads as condescending, you didn't pick up on the last few sentences well enough.

I've done plenty of stuff that I regret, some of it worse than what I'm sure the average person has done.

Actually, I was trying to be sincere -- our actions have consequences on other people and the world at large.

The flip side is that we become observers when we don't take any action in fear of affecting the world.

Other times, we may think that there may be a certain consequence, but the actual outcome ends up being considerably different.

Reference experience becomes important at some point -- it ensures that we take action, make mistakes, set boundaries, and live in the world.

You come off intelligent and thoughtful. I'm not sure where you are located but I'd love to connect with you. I'm Sarkis -- skarayan@gmail.com

"If I sound condescending, it's because you just didn't understand what I was trying to say"

wow.

This is not a completely unique situation, but it can feel very unique. I suppose it's like being gay or something, in that, until you realize there are others like you, you feel like there is nobody like you.

For me, I have similar difficulty with observing relationships, whether love, marriage, business, or other. I see people getting into relationships and thinking, "What the heck are they thinking, can't they see what's going to happen a mile away?" But when someone gets hitched in one of these relationships, whether dating, marriage, or business, how can you say anything other than congratulations without everyone labeling you a total jerk? And because I go overboard thinking of all those things from a mile away, I usually take very few risks in relationships at all (again, all encompassing including love and business). http://xkcd.com/439/

Delayed gratification is often cited as an important variable for predicting future success of people. That in turn speaks to level of willpower. I am not saying I am good at it, as I know I am not (though it's quite easy for me to avoid stupid relationship decisions).

Having good willpower and good delayed gratification capability is supposed to be good for one's future. Just make sure that you don't let the good quality of willpower enable you to rationalize yourself into being gunshy so that you don't do anything at all. I am still learning that.

I realize that having willpower to keep your integrity and avoiding risks are two subjects not necessarily related. So sorry if I made the turn go even farther off-road.

Wow, you are so special.

Edit: I think you took it down for your own sake, not ours.

You're not the friendliest person around. Do you delight in making me feel bad?

How am I making you feel bad? By pointing out that you have an inflated self perception? And if you disagree with that, then maybe you should have kept your original post up.

This is a difficult discussion to have without examples. I've given up plenty of values from when I was a teenager. It wasn't because of weak willpower, it was because I eventually realized those values were silly.

Another thing that comes to mind; "a plan never survives first contact with the enemy". Values/morals like to be black & white, but the world is grey.

Edit: I had no problem with your original comment, and as it was still positive I doubt many people had a problem with it at all. I see, what, all of 1-2 mildly negative replies? Don't needlessly play the victim, it is unseemly.

I've thought a lot about willpower since Jason Shen posted his self-help ebook on here a few weeks ago -- oddly, I have become a believer in cold shower therapy -- and I've come to believe that willpower is indeed limited, but that it can be "exercised" in a way by doing uncomfortable things.

However, I think that it's not so much that the exercise is increasing your capacity of willpower, it's that you're training yourself for your activities to use less willpower. Essentially, you can turn what would normally be willpower draining conscious decisions into routine habits that don't require any. Bad analogy, but you're not increasing your MP, you're just making it cheaper to cast Cure.

Part of this process for me is learning and reinforcing new habits, but I think there's also value in building confidence in your ability to form new habits. When you see that you're capable of meaningful change, that little jolt of happy chemical rewards serves to reinforce the metahabit of self improvement.

I wanted to read the article, but I just couldn't make myself do it.

Thanks mofeeta, for this post.

I'd really recommend people seeking to increase their willpower (and productivity) read Getting Stuff Done by David Allen. I'm a lot more organized after reading this book and the author does talk about the scientific basis for 'limited' willpower.

I made some personal goals this month and have been tracking them. Willpower has helped me toward accomplishing some of these goals, but motivation has plays a much larger role. Perhaps motivation recharges the lost willpower.

My willpower is directly proportional to the amount of coffee I drink.

Your actions are largely based on your belief systems, knowledge, confidence, and such. You don't need strong willpower, good sleep, or high energy to do things.

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