Willpower is an incoherent concept invented by smug people who think they have it in order to denigrate people who they think don’t.
Having long been frustrated by the realms of my life where I lacked willpower, the last five years have been a pleasant exercise in learning how to make it easier to achieve the things I'm interested in. But it hadn't crystalized in words in my mind till I read this.
To win against addiction, you have to make the fight as easy as possible by totally remaking your life.
This is really, really good advice, and applies to much more than addiction. Identify the places where you feel like you aren't making any progress despite exerting effort and ask yourself how you could get it done with less effort, rather than telling yourself to try harder.
my body has made it totally clear that I need to do resistance training, or I’ll be rewarded with poor physical health and poorer mental health. But my mind has made it totally clear that I will not go to a gym to do it, regardless. So, I have a personal trainer come to my house twice a week and force me to pick up the weights.
Failing to wake up early to write? Maybe you need a standing early morning meeting with a friend in an earlier timezone to force you out of bed. Or maybe writing late at night achieves the goal.
Perhaps I could demand discipline of myself, or at the very least feel bad that it’s worth it for me to exchange money for someone else’s time. But I have more important things to coerce myself about.
I am curious where this leads: what does Hall coerce herself about?