Willpower is like a muscle. People aren’t born with ironclad willpower that powers them through the day. To increase your willpower, think of it as a muscle that you can build and strengthen over time.
Before we get started, keep in mind that willpower tends to be greater if you have your own goals set in mind to work on. If your goals solely rely on making sacrifices for someone else, you’re just draining your willpower.
Here are nine simple tips to help you increase your willpower and get more done!
Don’t Take on Too Much
Our first tip is this: don’t take on too much.
The human mind is one of the most complicated things, but once you understand the components of your behavior, you’ll understand why the “iron grip” on your willpower that you thought you had before didn’t last as long as you thought it would.
Want to master building your willpower and get all those annoying tasks done? People with powerful willpower get more done. That’s a fact. They achieve greater success; they’re considered above average in their fields.
And they stand out from the crowd due to how awesome they are.
Think of this as tips to increase your awesomeness and spread your awesomeness across the most things you can get done!
To gently ease you into having strong willpower, the first is to not take on too much at once. There’s no point in setting unrealistic goals– only to feel frustrated and discouraged when you understandably don’t meet those goals.
No, you want to set achievable goals and focus your willpower on finishing them. Your goal can be something as simple as drinking more than 80 ounces of water per day to cut down on snacks. See, willpower is like a muscle. So think of this as increasing muscle mass.
And to get things done, you don’t need to be constantly busy and stressing about juggling multiple tasks. To get things done, you need to be productive.
Getting Things Done
by David Allen
⏱ 13 minutes reading time
🎧 Audio version available
Get Enough Rest
Every day, we work with a fixed amount of willpower, just like how marathons take training, increasing your willpower to get through the day and the day yours takes practice. Accept that you can’t dramatically change your life, especially if you’re going through a stressful time.
This is non-negotiable. An adequate amount of rest, a good night’s sleep, is beyond necessarily. A proper good night’s rest is about seven to eight hours a night for an average adult. And it’s about 10 to 12 hours for a child.
While you’re off in dreamland, crossing Mordor, or inserting yourself in the plot in a Marvel movie, you’re positively affecting how your prefrontal cortex works. The moment things go wrong and lose motivation is when you’re getting less than six hours of sleep per night. This isn’t efficiency.
This is sleep deprivation. And it changes how your body and brain use energy.
Try this technique and let us know the results. We want you to try waking up an hour earlier– even if you’re not a “morning person” and detest that time of the day. You can become an early riser with enough practice.
So don’t hit that snooze button and enjoy the abundant amount of minutes you were just handed of peaceful time. Whether you want to use this time to work in silence or sit in peace, that’s up to you! Studies have shown that waking up early leads to a drastic increase in productivity and success.
Develop Powerful Habits
Good habits are one of the most critical parts of strengthening our willpower. Even if it’s something as simple as a morning routine of making your bed and brushing your teeth, this can have a powerful effect on your brain. Because you know what?
You’ve subtly developed habits that lead to self-discipline and control, so the transition into spreading that self-discipline into other areas of our lives won’t be that hard.
A good habit to develop is to exercise, even if it’s just a few minutes in the morning. This is one of the most ignored yet the most efficient ways to achieve higher willpower. You’re training your brain alongside your body.
We’re not telling you to do burpees when you wake up. A mindful yoga routine will provide the same benefits.
How to Conquer Your To-Do List
To-do lists don’t have to be written down, though we encourage it. There’s nothing more satisfying than achieving a goal and ticking it off.
To-do lists may help you become more organized, but they may be increasing your stress while decreasing your willpower. And we can’t have that, can we?
When your to-do list is a mile long, and tasks slip by, and those “check” marks are less than there are tasks, your brain jumps to stress and worry modes, preventing you from acting and leaving you with a bad, jittery mood.
Your to-do list should be realistic. If you have to do laundry, put batteries into a clock, put that on the list. You’ll feel more motivated when you can tick them off. And here’s a pro-willpower move. Get the most challenging tasks out of the way first.
There’s a saying by Mark Twain that was further popularized in a time-management help book by Brian Tracy that says, “Eat that frog!” It means that “If the first thing you do in the morning is to eat the frog, then you can continue your day with the satisfaction of knowing that this is probably the worst thing that will happen to you all day.”
There’s nothing to empower that will of yours than to know you’ve already mastered your day from the get-go.
Take a Bite of Chocolate
Often, rewarding ourselves goes a long way. And you know, sometimes, we need a quick and small energy boost, and a bite of chocolate does just that.
Of course, it’s a lot better to eat healthy and slow-burning foods so that you never need a quick burst of energy, but indulging in something that will increase your willpower isn’t so bad.
Willpower is ultimately not about just eliminating bad thoughts or lazy habits. It’s about changing how you act. Suppressing your thoughts and shaming yourself is the farthest thing from motivation. Never say “I won’t” to yourself.
Like the chocolate-eating advice, when you want to cut down on something, instead of refusing it, think of things like you’re postponing things to make way for the more important things now. When you tell yourself, “Not now, but later,” you’ll be less stuck on the tempting thoughts you’re trying to avoid.
Related: 9 Things You Need To Give Up To Become A Highly Successful Person
Meditate
If you want to increase your willpower, manage your stress, improve your attention span, increase your self-awareness, and just come to peace, meditation is your medicine.
Five minutes. Five minutes is all that’s needed. Breathe, and take a step back from the chaotic world around you.
How to Manage Temptation
There’s a way you can game the system– the system being your willpower and your brain.
Temptations won’t be that tempting if they’re not in your straight line of sight. That means switching off notifications from your social media apps so that you’re not tempted to spend another hour scrolling through other people’s lives.
If you’re worried about drinking, stay away from events where drinking is the most popular activity. Don’t go into the kitchen before dinner so that you won’t have the option to jump into dessert straight away.
And if you do bump into Temptation, plan ahead how you’ll deal with that Temptation. Think ahead about how you’ll deal. Do you have a plan? Write out an action plan that you can follow. This can bolster your willpower when faced with Temptation.
Allow Yourself to Take Breaks
Remember how we said willpower was like a muscle? Now, it’s impossible to focus on exercising a single muscle all the time consistently. It will snap. And you will run out of energy, aka willpower, which leads to bad decision-making.
Now, how can we get over this roadblock? The answer is simple. It’s not an indulgence, but do give yourself permission to take breaks and to rest.
Take a nap now and then. Pause to grab a snack. Then you’ll be able to get back to your goal refreshed and armed with a bucketful of willpower.
Remember Why You’re Here– And What Will it Cost if You Quit
And for our final tip, we want you to remember why you’re here. Why you want to increase your willpower, and what it will cost if you quit.
So what’s your purpose behind wanting to change your behavior? What’s your end goal?
Then we want you to think about what you will lose if you do give in to your bad habits. When the going gets rough, consistently remind yourself of the answers to these questions.
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