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- Planning: The Secret Weapon Willpower Can't Beat
Planning: The Secret Weapon Willpower Can't Beat
Plus, 5 steps to achieve your goals without relying on willpower alone.
Sol TV
January 23, 2025
đź—“ Planning Beats Willpower Every Time
✨ TL/DR: Why Willpower Doesn’t Work
🔄 Sol Bites: Step-by-Step Guide to Avoid Temptation
🔑 The 3-Part Willpower Secret: How to Finally Achieve Your Goals
🌟 Words of Wisdom
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Have you ever set goals and failed? When that happens, most people blame a lack of self-control. However, the real culprit is often something else: poor environment setup and lack of planning. When you focus your attention on those two areas, you can set yourself up for success—usually with little willpower required.
TL/DR: Why Willpower Doesn’t Work
Imagine you're a football coach planning a crucial battle at the Super Bowl. Would you simply tell your players, "Try your best!" and send them into the game? Of course not. Yet this is precisely how many of us approach our personal goals—with hope and willpower as our only strategies.
Let’s consider another example: Imagine a college student who wants better results from studying. Every night, she sits at her desk with her laptop, promising herself she'll focus on coursework. But Netflix is just a click away; her favorite online shopping sites have sales, and her phone constantly buzzes with text messages and Instagram alerts. Despite her best intentions, she usually caves into these distractions.
Is this a failure of willpower, or is it just poor environmental design?
Sol Bites: Step-by-Step Guide to Avoid Temptation
Let's explore how the way you set up things around you can cause you to fail and how to fix it.
1) Audit Your Environment
Start by observing where and when you typically make decisions that don't align with your goals. Identify triggers, temptations, and circumstances that lead to unwanted behaviors.
2) Create Distance from Temptation
Instead of relying on willpower to resist temptation, increase the physical and mental distance between you and potential distractions. Think about it this way: A pianist practicing for a major recital doesn't keep their gaming console in the practice room.
3) Design Success Paths
Make it easy to make good choices. A nutritionist doesn't just try to eat healthily—they prepare nutritious meals in advance and keep their kitchen stocked with wholesome ingredients.
4) Build in Accountability
Create systems that make it harder to deviate from your plan. If you’re trying to get into a fitness routine, schedule morning runs with a friend, making it socially awkward to skip your workouts.
5) Plan for Hiccups:
Accept that your system won’t be perfect and build contingency plans. Just as savvy investors might diversify their portfolio, you should have backup strategies when your primary plan stops working. For instance, if you’re working on a fitness goal but don’t have time to head to the gym or it's too cold to do a morning run, you could run stairs in your building for 15 minutes.
Remember: The most successful people aren't those with superhuman willpower—they're the ones who intelligently design their environment and build backup plans, so they rarely need willpower at all.
It's a hidden struggle for many: 27% of Americans cite lack of willpower as their greatest obstacle to change. But there is a way to break free.
Words of Wisdom
We shape our buildings, and afterward, our buildings shape us.
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Mona & The Sol TV Team ❤️
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