Willpower is overrated

Have you broken your New Year’s resolutions yet?  You will.  

Many people no longer make a New Year’s resolution, having learned from experience it won’t be kept anyway.  

Today I read a great essay by Angela Duckworth, a professor of psychology.  She says you should exercise “situational agency.”  Say you drink too much pinot grigio.  Say you have a tall glass every night from that economy-sized bottle you keep in the refrigerator, and then you resolve not to drink.  But you remember it is there, calling, calling...and you say, ok, just one more night.  And another, and another.  [Not that I would know about any of this, of course.]  

What “situational agency” says is that you don’t buy another bottle of pinot grigio.  If it isn’t in the house, you can’t drink it.  Nothing to do with will power.  

Dr. Duckworth gives the example of experiments with teens and their study habits.  Students who kept their phones in another room while they were studying had better grades.  She notes, “physical distance creates psychological distance:  Draw close what you want more of; push away what you want less.”

The essay was printed in todays Times.  It is entitled “Willpower Doesn’t Work.  This Does.”