PDF Summary:Willpower Doesn't Work, by Benjamin Hardy

Modern society teaches us that we can accomplish anything through willpower and discipline—but what if that’s the wrong approach? In Willpower Doesn’t Work, psychologist and productivity coach Benjamin Hardy says we can’t just “will” our way to success. Instead, we need to carefully design our lives in ways that make reaching our goals inevitable, minimizing the need for willpower.

Our guide to Willpower Doesn’t Work will begin with a high-level overview of why willpower won’t allow you to reach your goals and Hardy’s proposed solution of designing your environment for success. From there, we’ll discuss how to optimize your working and resting environments, how to remove distractions that drain your willpower, and how to optimize your “mental environment” by adjusting your thoughts and habits.

Our commentary will explore the science behind Hardy’s principles. We’ll also compare and contrast Hardy’s ideas with some popular willpower-based self-help books, such as Grit and The 10X Rule. Finally, we’ll provide some actionable tips and tools to help you put Hardy’s advice into practice.

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Second, risk helps you to learn from your mistakes. It’s a common maxim that failure is the best teacher (even Yoda said so), but Taleb adds that this is only true when that failure costs you something. The motivation to learn from your mistakes comes from the pain of loss and the fear of losing more. Or, to look at this another way: If you don’t face any consequences for failure, all you’ll learn is that it doesn’t matter whether you succeed or fail.

Finally, having skin in the game ensures that you’ll act more ethically, because you know that you’ll face consequences if you don’t. For example, if you run a business, you might be tempted to ignore some safety regulations so that your employees can work faster and more efficiently. However, if you’ve invested your own money into that business, the risk of getting fined for safety violations will most likely keep you honest—this is because it’s your money on the line, not just a faceless corporation’s profits.

Force Yourself Toward Your Rest Goals

It might seem strange to set goals for your resting time, but remember that rest itself is the goal. Therefore, Hardy urges you to design every aspect of your resting environment with that goal in mind.

Whereas your work environment puts you under as much (healthy) stress as possible, your rest environment is a place where you’re protected from any stress. This should be a place where you can sleep, enjoy your hobbies, spend time with loved ones, and do whatever else makes you feel rested and refreshed—all without needing to worry about people putting demands on your time and energy.

First, Hardy says that you should decorate your environment in ways that help you to rest. For instance, choose colors and artworks that make you feel relaxed, uplifted, or joyful. Fill the space with things that make you happy such as books or collectibles, and get furniture that keeps you comfortable.

(Shortform note: While Hardy urges you to make your rest environment as comfortable and relaxing as possible, some people argue that too much comfort is bad for your health. Fans of the “furniture-free” movement (which is a bit of a misnomer) say that most people spend far too much time sitting on couches and chairs; this is especially true for people who work desk jobs. In fact, the World Health Organization has warned that a sedentary lifestyle increases your risk of health problems ranging from obesity and heart disease to depression and anxiety. It’s unlikely that Hardy would suggest throwing out all of your furniture in light of this information, but you could look for some physically active ways to relax as well, such as going for regular walks outside.)

Second, writes Hardy, note that your rest environment isn’t just the physical space you rest in: It also includes the activities you do and the people you do them with. Therefore, joining social groups such as a book club or a fantasy football league can help keep you on track for your resting goals. Doing so will ensure that you regularly spend time with people who have similar interests and, in many cases, you’ll have a fixed schedule that forces you to do things you enjoy.

(Shortform note: While ideally you’d make some close friends by following Hardy’s advice here, casual acquaintances also help bolster your mental health and reduce stress, as they help you to rest and recover when you’re stressed out from work. In 2014, a series of studies showed the impact that a social network beyond close friends could have on people’s happiness, suggesting that the more acquaintances you have—and the more regularly you interact with them—the happier you’ll be.)

Rest Is as Important as Work

Effective rest is, naturally, crucial for recovering after working your hardest. However, Hardy adds that resting is also when your skills and abilities improve. The cycle of work and rest functions just like exercise does for your muscles: You go to the gym to break down your muscles, then they become stronger when they repair themselves. However, without a rest period, that process doesn’t work; if you kept working the same muscles every day they’d have no chance to repair themselves, so you’d never get stronger (and you’d probably injure yourself).

In addition, you’re more likely to have original ideas and creative insights while resting. This is because rest frees your mind to wander, so you can make connections between thoughts that you’ve never made before. Conversely, while you’re focused on work you’re only thinking about how to accomplish the task in front of you, which doesn’t give you much opportunity for creativity.

(Shortform note: Many experts agree with Hardy that rest is crucial for coming up with creative ideas, but that doesn’t mean creativity is a passive process where you just wait for ideas to hit you. It’s much more common to come up with creative ideas while you’re searching for answers to questions or solutions to problems. In fact, at least one scientific study has found that the most creative people are those who actively try to come up with new ideas. This means that rest doesn’t have to be a time when you completely turn off your brain—although there may be days when that’s what you need—but rather, rest is an opportunity to think deeply about ideas that you couldn’t explore while you were working.)

Finally, Hardy warns that most people simply don’t spend enough time resting, no matter how well they design their environments. He says that you should spend at least as much time resting as you spend working, and preferably more than that.

Why—and When—You Should Rest

Comparing mental abilities, like willpower and technical skills, to physical muscles is fairly common because they work similarly in many respects. Another way your mind works like your muscles is that overusing it without rest can cause you to injure yourself—in this case, that injury takes the form of burnout.

As productivity expert Ali Abdaal explains in Feel-Good Productivity, two common causes of burnout are working too hard and not resting enough after working. Abdaal doesn’t say exactly how much rest you need, because it’s different for each person, but he does advise using your feelings as a guide: if you’re still tired when you go to work, or if your work is starting to feel tedious or overwhelming instead of enjoyable, then it’s likely that you haven’t rested enough.

Occasionally Try a New Environment

Hardy also says that no matter how well you’ve designed your resting environment, sometimes the most effective way to boost your motivation and creativity is to find an entirely new environment. By doing so, you can have what he calls peak experiences: rare, thrilling moments when you’re suddenly filled with energy and ideas.

The author adds that most people will have a few such moments in their lives simply by chance. However, you can experience them much more often if you deliberately seek them out. Furthermore, the strategy for doing so is fairly simple.

First, detach yourself from any outside stressors just as if you were going to your resting environment. Then, take a notebook and a pen and go someplace that’s not familiar to you. This doesn’t have to be anywhere distant or exotic; just a few miles from your home will do, as long as it’s a place you haven’t been before.

(Shortform note: In The Artist’s Way, teacher and professional artist Julia Cameron suggests a similar practice that she calls artist dates. Two key details that Cameron adds are that you should do this at least once a week and that you should go alone—this is both so you can take a break from other people and so you can connect more deeply with your thoughts and feelings. Cameron says that these “dates” will help you to rest, gather your thoughts, and recharge your creative energies. Like Hardy, Cameron also says that this time in a new environment will help guide you toward powerful experiences, those rare moments when you find yourself suddenly filled with inspiration and energy.)

Hardy says that once you're there, take out your notebook and write down everything and everyone you’re grateful for in your life. This will help you to connect with what matters to you, and that connection will give you a powerful emotional boost.

Next, write down your current goals, both professional and personal. Are you hitting your targets or falling behind? What do you need to do to reach your goals? What changes do you need to make? What difficulties and frustrations are getting in your way? The purpose of this exercise is to clear your mind and refocus on your goals, so it’s crucial to be brutally honest with yourself—remember, nobody else will ever read this journal, so there’s no need to be embarrassed.

Finally, map out your grand dreams. What are your most ambitious hopes for the next few months, or the next year? What is your ultimate life objective? The goal here is to reconnect with your core values and pinpoint the fundamental thing that motivates your actions. In other words, the goals you’ve set are your “what”; this last step is about finding your “why.” For instance, if one of your goals is to become a teacher, you might realize it’s because, at heart, you’re driven by a desire to help others or to make the world better for future generations.

Tip: If You’re Not Sure About Your “Why,” Just Ask

Since the ultimate purpose of this journaling exercise is to find your “why,” you may find it helpful to simply ask yourself that question.

In Grit, psychology professor Angela Duckworth suggests a journaling exercise where you write down one very simple, short-term goal like “Finish the weekly report for my manager.” Then you ask yourself why you want to do that. The reason behind your small goal will point you toward a larger goal, such as getting promoted at work. Now ask why you want to get promoted; perhaps it’s because you want to earn more money, and maybe you want to earn more money so you can support your family better.

Keep asking “why?” until you can’t answer it anymore: When you find a large, ambitious goal that you want to achieve just because you want to. Duckworth says that goal will illustrate one of your core values or passions. To continue the previous example, suppose you find that one of your goals is to ensure that your children have good lives after you’re gone. Then, when you ask yourself why you want that, you can’t come up with a clear answer—it just feels right to you. Now you’ve clearly defined the fact that love for your children is one of the most important things in your life, that ensuring your children are happy is one of your main goals in life, and that countless short-term and medium-term goals are supporting that ultimate goal.

Tip #2: Remove Temptations

While Hardy’s first tip was to identify ways to push yourself toward your goals, his second tip is to remove anything that doesn’t get you closer to your goals. This is important because, by doing so, you’ll eliminate temptations that drain your limited reserves of willpower. Therefore, Hardy says you should identify what in your environment is helping you, and ruthlessly get rid of everything else.

In this section we’ll discuss how to minimize the technological temptations in your life, how to minimize the temptations that come from other people, and (briefly) how to minimize the various other temptations you regularly face.

Remove Technological Temptations

One of the biggest temptations in your life is probably technology, particularly your phone. While you’re trying to work, your phone is a source of constant, endless temptations ranging from social media to videos and games. And while you’re trying to rest, it’s a source of stress because it allows people to contact you and make demands on your time and energy.

Hardy says you can eliminate many of these temptations by identifying which phone apps really help you to either work or relax and deleting everything else. Then do the same with your computer.

(Shortform note: The constant temptations from phones and other technology may be even more disruptive than Hardy suggests. In ADHD 2.0, Edward Hallowell and John Ratey—two doctors who specialize in treating ADHD—say that even people who don’t have ADHD are beginning to show symptoms mimicking the condition. The authors explain that these ADHD-like traits, such as the inability to stay focused and the compulsive need to check your phone, are the result of people trying to keep up with a constant barrage of information that comes in more quickly than their brains can process it.)

Remove Human Temptations

Aside from technology, Hardy says that the biggest thing holding you back is probably relationships with the wrong kinds of people: friends and family members who tempt you away from what you want to achieve.

Therefore, it’s crucial to stop spending so much time and energy on people who don’t support you. This includes anyone who insults and belittles you, encourages you to do things that aren’t in line with your goals, or puts excessive demands on you. You can hopefully accomplish this just by having some frank conversations and setting clear boundaries with those people. However, if they refuse to respect your boundaries, your best option is to remove them from your life.

To illustrate this point with an extreme example, a recovering alcoholic is in great danger of being tempted away from their goal of sobriety by friends who still drink. If those friends won’t respect the person’s choice to give up alcohol, the only solution is for the person in recovery to cut off contact, thereby eliminating that temptation.

The author acknowledges that managing your relationships like this is difficult; it requires willpower. However, in the long run it requires a lot less willpower than you’d spend resisting people’s temptations.

Enforce Your Boundaries by Setting Consequences

Hardy discusses the importance of managing your relationships with other people, but he doesn’t give much actionable advice on how to do that. In her book Set Boundaries, Find Peace, therapist and social worker Nedra Glover Tawwab explains that the key is to reinforce your boundaries by setting consequences for violating them.

Typically, the first time someone violates one of your boundaries, you should simply tell them so; it was probably an honest mistake, or perhaps they weren’t even aware you had that boundary. However, if they repeatedly violate that boundary, you need to inform them of the consequences. For example, if you have a friend who keeps messaging you during work hours, you might warn them that you’ll block them next time it happens. If they keep messaging you, make sure you actually block them—following through on your warnings is crucial, otherwise people will learn that they can freely trample on your boundaries.

Finally, Tawwab agrees with Hardy that cutting people out of your life should be a last resort, but you should still be prepared to do it. Some people will make it clear that they simply do not and will not respect your boundaries, no matter the consequences; you’ll be better off without such people.

Remove Other Temptations

Hardy says that technology and people are two of the biggest temptations in most people’s lives, as well as the hardest to eliminate. However, you’re almost certainly weighing yourself down with other, lesser temptations as well. Remember: Anything that’s not actively helping you is an unnecessary drain on your willpower.

Therefore, think carefully about anything else that might be cluttering up your life and tempting you away from your goals. Some common examples include junk food, recreational drugs, and old projects that you’ve been “meaning to get around to” for years.

Counterintuitively, you’ll probably also find that this process involves eliminating some of your goals. That’s because those goals interfere with more important ones. For example, if one of your goals is to host a weekly podcast, but doing so interferes with your goal of spending more time with your family, it’s most likely time to bring that podcast to an end.

Tip: Check in With Your Feelings

It can be hard to know what’s really beneficial to you and what isn’t. This is especially true when it comes to rest, for which there’s often no concrete way to measure your progress—and, therefore, no sure way of knowing what’s helping you toward your goals.

If you’re having trouble deciding what to keep and what to get rid of, try taking a break from logic and checking in with your emotions instead. Organizing consultant Marie Kondo describes this process in her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Kondo suggests picking up one thing at a time to see if it “sparks joy”—in other words, do you notice an emotional connection with that item, or do you feel nothing toward it? Using this method, you’ll often be able to feel whether something’s valuable to you, even if you can’t rationally explain why. If something makes you feel that connection, keep it; if not, you can safely throw it away.

While Kondo is discussing physical objects, you can use this same process for anything you’re not sure about. You’ll find that checking in with your feelings is equally effective for digital items (like phone apps), as well as purely conceptual things like goals and old projects.

Tip #3: Optimize Your Mental Environment

So far we’ve discussed your working and resting environments, but it’s also important to optimize your mental “environment”—which is to say, your thoughts and habits.

Intentionally Redirect Your Thoughts

One way Hardy suggests optimizing your mental environment is by anticipating and counteracting thoughts that could make you fall short of your goals. In other words, expect yourself to fail, but use that expectation to put a plan in place so you can avoid that failure.

For example, suppose that your goal is to eat healthier, but you know you have a sweet tooth that could derail that goal. You might set the following plan: “The next time I’m craving sweets, I’ll eat an apple instead.” Hardy calls this an implementation intention.

Implementation intentions are essentially if-then statements, even when they’re not worded that way. So, the previous example could be rephrased as “If I have a sugar craving, then I will eat an apple.”

(Shortform note: Implementation intentions are relatively simple yet highly effective. An analysis of 94 studies on this topic found that this technique had a moderate to strong effect on achieving goals. In layperson’s terms, people who used implementation intentions were—generally speaking—better able to start working toward their goals, prevent themselves from getting distracted, and rest as needed to avoid exhaustion and burnout.)

Break Bad Habits by Altering Them

Another way Hardy suggests optimizing your mental environment is to recognize and break the bad habits that are getting in the way of your goals. However, as always, he says you should do so in a way that minimizes the role of willpower.

Therefore, instead of trying to overcome bad habits through force of will, try to identify the triggers that prompt these habits. For instance, say you have a bad habit of staying up late playing video games. You might realize that seeing a particular time on the clock prompts you to start playing, with the assumption that you’ll play for a half hour and get to bed at an appropriate time—but then you play for an hour or more, go to bed late, and wake up tired the next day. You might break that pattern by getting rid of the clock so you never get that prompt to start playing. Another option would be to move the clock forward by an hour so you start playing sooner and still get to bed by the time you intended.

Start by Changing Just One Habit

You might be tempted to try changing numerous bad habits at once. However, that’s very difficult—meaning that it requires a lot of willpower—so you’re likely to fail and get discouraged as a result. That’s why Charles Duhigg (The Power of Habit) suggests starting with just one habit you’d like to change. Duhigg says the benefits of changing that one habit will then motivate you to change other habits and make it easier to do so.

For example, if you’re a smoker, that’s a habit you probably want to change. Once you’ve been smoke-free for a while, you’ll find that you can breathe more easily, and you have more energy as a result. Those health benefits make exercising easier and more enjoyable, so then you might get inspired to replace another bad habit with regular workout sessions.

Hardy also proposes modifying how you carry out your habits. The goal in this case is not to stop the habit all at once, but rather to disrupt your behavioral patterns. Your mind will take a moment to adjust to the change, giving you a chance to question whether you really want to do what you’re about to do.

For example, if you’re trying to stop smoking, you could simply change which hand you use to hold your cigarette or vape. Even that small disruption to your pattern will force you to pause and think about what you’re doing, which gives you a chance to not do it.

The “Essential Pause” Creates Options for You

Creating opportunities for yourself to stop and think is a crucial part of self-awareness and self-control. In Radical Acceptance, psychologist Tara Brach calls this "the essential pause"; catching yourself before you mindlessly react to something and giving yourself the chance to thoughtfully act instead.

Brach explains that the power of the essential pause comes from uncertainty: When you’re carrying out a course of action, you already know what you’ll do next. However, when you interrupt that action with an essential pause, you open up more possibilities for yourself.

So, if you interrupt your smoking routine like in the above example, you could then continue to smoke as usual, but you could also decide not to smoke and find something else to fill that time instead. Since you’ve disrupted your behavior pattern, you don’t truly know what you’ll do next. That uncertainty gives you the chance to choose what to do.