To Increase Your Will Power

What does it mean to regulate your impulses? There are urges and desires within everyone, during every hour of the day and some of us are better at regulating these urges than others. There are two ends of control when talking about regulation - like two ends of a spectrum.  Too much control can be bad and too little control can also be bad. The challenge is to strike the right balance depending on the situation, and this requires willful and mindful strength. Being willful requires a certain level of willpower, a strength of mind to pull out your mental reserve to resist doing what your base urges want you to do. Over time if you can consistently master these urges, then you have gained discipline.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of facts within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgement requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity. - Calvin Coolidge 

People get better at regulating their impulses when they exercise their will power more. Once you get into your willpower groove(kind of like your workout groove), your brain is practiced at helping you focus on your goals. This is why it is important for children to participate in sports or activities that gives them free agency and at the same time the ability to focus completely on a task. Kids with parents who tells them what to do their whole lives, have a large hurdle to overcome when they suddenly have to do things on their own. When these kids become adults it can be overwhelming and a lot of people can't make these transition. Time magazine even had an article stressing the importance of this.

The ability to be in control of your choices not only increases happiness, but it reduces the mental energy required to do a task. This is the reason why in business, the biggest recommendation for being productive is to map out your actions, what you want to achieve and why you want to do it. This pre-planning allows you to be in control and when you undertake the task it will require much less mental energy, and you'll have less resistance. People want to be in control of their lives.

Many companies today employ teaching employees routines that help them deal with different situations at work. They discovered that giving their employees autonomy, gave them much greater discipline at work. Companies like Starbucks, Deloitte, IDEO etc all give their employees a guideline but also free range to make their own decisions.

And I really genuinely believe that if you tell people that they have what it takes to succeed, they'll prove you right - Howard Shultz

Next blog post I will focus on how companies increase productivity through training programs. Why some works and others don't.