Willpower Is a Limited Resource

Our online world is dominated by people with great willpower. They initiate projects and implement them. At least it seems so because you only see the projects where they had enough willpower to carry them through. This creates the impression that they have strong willpower. However, this is a fallacy.

On the other hand, there are philosophers who claim that we have free will. They claim that we can choose to do this or that. This claim may be correct (I will not go into it here), but it is practically irrelevant. That is fine because they are philosophers and deal with fundamental things. But the message that we can do everything theoretically within our power is optimistic or perhaps even false.

Free will, or I prefer to simply say willpower, is limited. Using willpower requires energy. We can only focus on what we want to decide and lose sight of the rest. Willpower is clearly a resource to be managed. If you recognize this, you can understand your life on a deeper level. Instead of appealing to yourself to pull yourself together tomorrow, you will realize that this is not sustainable behavior. You will look for ways to remove decision-making from your willpower as often as possible. You achieve this with habits. If you do five push-ups every morning, it does not require much willpower. Later it becomes a habit, and you can increase the push-ups. You use the resource of willpower wisely.

But it is not about abolishing willpower. No, you should strengthen and train it. But you do not do this with constant strain but with selected challenges in life. Cold showers, for example. This is an activity that requires willpower but is also quickly done. This way, you train your willpower. Once cold showers become too easy, you need a new challenge.