How to Live a More Productive Life With Zero Willpower

Here’s the deal: You can’t out-will yourself. The average person struggles to exert self-control over everything they want to achieve because willpower is spent over the course of the day. Unless your will is superhuman, you won’t be able to exert self-control indefinitely.

Willpower (the ability to resist short-term gains to do what matters most) is a valuable tool, but it’s not always enough to make the right choices. Research shows that relying on willpower alone can backfire in several ways. After you exhaust your reserves, you’ll have even less control to get things done. As a result, it’s easy to end up with more regrets than you had when you started.

The problem with willpower is that it can only be called upon when your actions are already predetermined. If you’re choosing to eat a doughnut, you might have already decided to do so, and there’s nothing left for willpower to do. To make better choices, however, it’s essential to think about what you want and why you want them before you act. That way, your choices will be based on things that really matter to you.

Living a life of productivity requires you to get obligations, commitments, and tasks done in time. The problem is that many of us struggle to prioritize and take good action. Design systems as a foundation for a productive life to consistently get more things done.

Instead of using all your willpower when making one choice, take a break and build better routines, rituals and behaviors for getting work done. This will help you avoid burning yourself out before the end of the day.

For a more productive life, think in systems

“The problem with trying to use willpower to achieve and sustain a behavioral change is that it is fueled by emotion. And as we all know, our emotions are, at best, fickle. They come and go. When your emotions start running down — and they will — even your best-laid plans will fall flat.” — Phillip C. McGraw

Willpower is not just about resisting temptation. It also involves making emotional choices in the first place. When you have to choose between two or more options, willpower can be hard to summon up. This makes it all the more important to rely on systems to improve many areas of your life from the start.

First, identify the areas of your life willpower tend to fail you: getting up early to do more high-value work, making time for exercise every week, choosing healthy food options, focused productivity, or investing. Look for areas you spend a lot of willpower to push yourself and systematize them.

In other words, don’t rely on willpower alone — build structures that take over spending mental energy to figure out the way forward.

Experiment and stick to what works for you. For example, instead of “exercise twice a week”, a good structure that rules out willpower will be “exercise on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6 am to 6.30 am before work”. If you struggle to get up early, that may not work for you unless you design a morning system for waking up early and repeating consistently to make it a habit. If exercising in the morning doesn’t work, try scheduling it in the evening or on weekends.

“Drawing one cartoon a day is a system; so is resolving to take some kind of exercise daily — rather than setting a goal, like being able to run a marathon in four hours,” writes Oliver Burkman of The Guardian.

“If you’re a writer, your goal is to write a book. Your system is the writing schedule that you follow each week,” says James Clear.

Systems are not always perfect, but they will get you started to build better habits. They manage expectations. When you don’t know how long a task will take, it can be tempting just to start and see what happens. However, this approach can backfire. The point is to reduce your reliance on willpower.

When you start something without setting reasonable expectations, you may end up with an unfinished task or, worse, nothing at all. Systems can keep you on track and prevent frustration from setting in too early.

Instead of relying on willpower alone, try using a planner or other tools to help you stay organized and on track throughout the process. If you want to invest for your future, don’t do it when you feel like it; automate your monthly investment outgoings: commit to specific amounts every month.

Systems deliver results

“An important function of almost every system is to ensure its own perpetuation.” — Donella H. Meadows

We all want to lead happier, productive and stress-free lives. Psychologists have found that our emotions and incentives play a huge role in how we act — and not necessarily for the better! In other words, if you’re determined to succeed at something, find a way outside willpower.

Living a life of zero willpower is easier said than done, but it’s not impossible. Systems are essential for peak performance, whether you’re trying to build a morning routine, get fit or do more great work. Willpower doesn’t always work. Some of the world’s most successful people don’t possess an extraordinary amount of self-discipline; they’ve built systems that optimize almost all areas of life.

“People who are good at self-control … seem to be structuring their lives in a way to avoid having to make a self-control decision in the first place,” says psychologists Brian Galla.

Highly productive people get things done not because of willpower but because they’ve built-in routines, rituals and habits that rule out self-control. Systems are key for taking micro steps towards your goal.

This article originally appeared in Medium.