Willpower Doesn’t Work.

Motivation is an imaginary friend.

Yean Foong (M.Ed.)
5 min readJul 13, 2022
Photo by Alexa Popovich from Pexels.

It was a long day at work. I bathed, sat on my bed, and saw the book I was supposed to read every day.

But I was so tired today”, I heard myself saying, or to be precise, my running-low-willpower said those words. I knew I needed to fight, but eventually, I lost the battle and ended up lying on my bed with a smartphone.

You might find the above scene familiar. We all face a similar situation where we just don’t have enough willpower to resist the temptations to do the opposite of what we should be doing.

“Success isn’t that difficult; it merely involves taking twenty steps in a singular direction. Most people take one step in twenty directions.”― Benjamin Hardy, Willpower Doesn’t Work: Discover the Hidden Keys to Success

What is willpower?

Many would pay to get more willpower as if willpower is the ticket to success.

Willpower is the ability to resist short-term gratification in pursuit of long-term goals or objectives.

Willpower is at the expense of our mental resources — the same resource we use for cognitive…

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Yean Foong (M.Ed.)
Yean Foong (M.Ed.)

Written by Yean Foong (M.Ed.)

I am pursuing an EdD (Doctor of Education). Connect with me on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yeanfoong/)

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