Easier than Willpower

“Willpower is overrated. Successful strivers deliberately design their situations in ways that make wise choices easier.” - Angela Duckworth

Famous for her book “Grit”, this quote seems to be the opposite of what we think of as grit, grinding out success through sheer determination and hard work.

What if you don’t have to mentally and physically break yourself to succeed? What if you can design your life so that the path to joy becomes the easiest to follow?

The secret is micro-habits, that make larger success habits the default choice of your brain.  The human brain saves energy by offloading as many tasks as possible to habit to allow more brainpower for processing critical information.  We can hack this system by purposely creating not just habits, but the micro–habits that remove that decision making. When we purposely create habits that lead us to joy, creating a joyful life becomes easy.

How can you build micro-habits of joy? 

Start small (pun intended!) and piggyback on an existing habit.

For example, let’s say you want to build a habit of gratitude.  You decide that you will begin each morning by stating 3 things you are grateful for. Seems easy, right?  Except you suddenly realize it’s 10am and you forgot to do your gratitude practice.  You resolve to do better tomorrow, but then it’s bedtime and you realize you forgot again. So how do you actually build the habit and make it stick?

One way is to build it into an existing habit.  If every morning you get up and make your bed, you can use that habit to add another. It might take a reminder note propped on your nightstand, “Think of 3 things you are grateful for while you make your bed” for a week or two, but your mind will quickly add the new habit into your existing one. By piggybacking habits, you hack the system and begin to create the easy path to success.

Keep moving to joy!