Quoting on May 17:

By willpower, I mean your ability to act according to your sober, carefully reasoned preferences. When those preferences “win out” often on big decisions, we feel like we’re in control of our lives, and we sometimes describe it as high willpower.

When I’ve been acting with high willpower in the recent past, I’ll be able to continue acting with high willpower, until some outside factor drastically changes my day-to-day life. So really this is the opposite of willpower-as-a-finite-resource. It’s a compounding resource.

Every time conscious desire wins out, it reinforces that pattern for the next time. And, sadly, when there are no wins in recent memory, there’s even less chance that the next battle will be a win. Procrastination and laziness compound, too.

Even if we’re not in a terrible rut, sometimes it’s still better to not try things, at least not right away. If some particular goal is going to take more willpower than you’re confident you can put out, it may be a bad idea. Because if you fail, it’ll damage the pattern you were building. Keep in mind I am talking about willpower failures, not ordinary failures.

By motivation, I mean the raw emotional experience of desiring something strongly and feeling that you have abundant power to get it.
Motivation is a performance-enhancing drug for your willpower. It works, but most of the time you don’t need it, and you certainly shouldn’t rely on it. Because it’s an emotion, and your mind refuses to experience the same emotions reliably. After repeated exposure, you’ll become desensitized to whatever stimulus used to trigger the emotion.

the performance-enhancing drug of motivation can become the enemy of real willpower, if you’re not careful.

your willpower discounts will take the form of systems that your past self sets up to make decisions easier for your future self. The system does part of the work for you. Treat your future self like an idiot who needs everything laid out for them: pick your workout clothes the night before, make your healthy meals ahead of time, etc. Treat your future self as untrustworthy, and instruct a friend to check up on your commitments later on.

your body loves ritual, even if your mind thinks it’s silly.