Jane read the Inner Workout book. It expanded her idea of what self-care could look like. She mapped out practices and built her self-care toolkit, but Jane struggled to use the tools she’d built for herself.
She knew a midday meditation made the afternoon at her hectic job more bearable, but she found herself catching up on celebrity gossip instead of meditating.
In theory, Jane was going to read before bed as part of her upgraded evening routine, but the pull of one last scroll and refresh (which turned into another…and another) was too strong.
Jane didn’t understand the disconnect between her desires and her actions. All the advice she found pretty much just said, “Mind over matter. You’ve gotta increase your willpower and self-control.”
And that advice didn’t resonate.
I’m writing this blog post for Jane, and I’m writing it for you, too.
If it were as easy as just taking care of ourselves, we would have done it already. Let’s talk about what’s getting in the way, with no shame and a sprinkle of science.
We’ll break down:
We love a definition at Inner Workout. Socrates said, “The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.” And definitions are also great for sifting through the noise of online advice.
The American Psychological Association sums up the concept of willpower nicely with this definition: “Willpower is the ability to resist short-term temptations in order to meet long-term goals.”
See the circular logic here?
You’re not making the choices you want to make. You ask for advice. Then people tell you to stop acting on impulse and just make more thoughtful choices with your future self in mind.
It’s like, “Yes, I get that. But how?!”
Maybe willpower isn’t enough? That’s where self-control comes in.
In her research, Dr. Marina Milyavskaya defines self-control as “the process or behavior of overcoming a temptation or prepotent response in favor of a competing goal.”
I love this definition because the word control can feel, well, controlling, but it’s really about choice. We’re choosing the option that is best for us, like not looking at our phone first thing in the morning or not getting caught up in a scroll + shame spiral, when we’re exercising self-control.
So choosing yourself is the ideal, but, if you’re reading this article, it’s not happening as often as you’d like. Let’s explore what is going on.
Have you ever heard that willpower is a finite resource? That’s actually up for debate in the research, but science can’t deny that it feels depleting when we’re exercising self-control and willpower.
You know what else makes us feel depleted? Being tempted. It takes a little something out of our tank when we’re presented with a choice beyond what we want to choose for ourselves, according to research conducted by Dr. Marina Milyavskaya and Dr. Michael Inlicht.
That same study suggested that when we feel depleted, we’re less likely to do the things we want to do.
Of course it is! It’s hard to exert self-control and choose journaling when you get a notification that your fave YouTube creator just published a new video.
Whether or not you ultimately decide to journal, the temptation of the YouTube video can make you feel a sense of willpower depletion.
If this is the reality of the situation, what can we do to increase our self-control and strengthen our willpower? There’s gotta be more to this work than resisting temptation or delaying gratification.
In another paper, a Dr. Blair Saunders joins our friends Milyavskaya and Inlicht to research five self-control strategies: attention deployment, cognitive change, response modulation, situation selection, and situation modification.
Those strategies are a mouthful! First, I’ll explain what each strategy means. I’ll also rank them, Myspace style, and talk about how they apply to self-care.
Situation selection makes it easy to do what you want to do by creating a temptation-free environment. There’s no impulsive decision-making in the moment because your Past Self already decided for you. It’s proactive.
The Inner Workout app uses this strategy for scheduled Lock sessions. Instead of having a daily internal battle about scrolling first thing in the morning or last thing before bed, you can set up a recurring Lock session. You don’t have to worry about a lack of willpower because you’ve cut willpower out of the equation altogether.
Here’s another example: say you want to journal when you wake up, but you end up app hopping instead. You could charge your phone in another room, use an alarm clock that’s not on your phone, and keep a journal and pen next to your bed. Could you still get up to grab your phone? Absolutely. But now you’ve created an environment where morning journaling is the easier choice.
You can’t design every situation to avoid temptation. You have to leave the house at some point. That’s when you can lean on situation modification. With situation modification, you tweak your environment (or leave the environment altogether!) so it’s easier to make the choices you want to make. It’s reactive.
Say you went to a cafe to read and reflect, but the surrounding tables are definitely not using their inside voices as they spill dating tea and dish work gossip. You’d find it entertaining if you weren’t here to focus. So what are you gonna do? You’re using situation modification if you decide to grab your noise-cancelling headphones out of your bag and play some lo-fi beats. You’re also using situation modification if you pack up and finish your session at home.
If your issue at the cafe was compulsive app checking instead of noisy neighbors, you could set up a one-off Lock session to create an environment where you can concentrate.
Attention deployment is an academic way of saying, “Distract yourself.” If you’re mid-task, the distraction keeps you in the moment and helps you delay gratification for whatever you want to do next. You can also use distractions to make decisions that align with your broader goals. Let’s break that down.
I’d sometimes go on runs with my dad growing up, and I’d get so bored running around a track that I’d want to stop early. So my dad distracted me with... math problems! On the first lap, he might ask me to count all the cars I could see. Then on the next laps he might ask me how many mirrors, windows, doors, or tires that would be. Before I knew it, our run was almost over.
In your life, you might be craving that dopamine rush of opening an app and seeing what likes, comments, and DMs rolled in. You might distract yourself by seeking dopamine elsewhere, or just tell yourself you’re going to do one thing first. Maybe that one thing is a meditation, a journaling session, or part of a mini-course on the Inner Workout app.
Whereas the first two strategies are about changing the situation, cognitive change wants to transform your thinking. Here are a few ways to do that:
Response modulation basically means you muscle through it. Mind over matter. It’s what we traditionally think of when we think about self-discipline and willpower.
I ranked it last for a reason. Response modulation works, but it can be energetically expensive.
Even though the jury’s still out on whether willpower is a limited resource, we know that temptation tires us out.
Can you choose not to look at the notification that popped up as your friend catches you up on work drama? Sure. But wouldn’t it be easier if you’d muted notifications before y’all sat down to chat?
These strategies exist on a spectrum of proactive to reactive. As you test them out, you’ll create your own ranking and figure out which strategies are most effective to you.
We’ve embedded many of these strategies into the Inner Workout app. Know you’ve always got a digital partner in your corner. Here to boost willpower and amplify self-awareness so that you can make care-filled choices.
Taylor is the founder and author of Inner Workout. She's also an ICF-certified coach, a certified meditation + mindfulness practitioner, and was named one of Fortune's 10 Innovators Shaping the Future of Health.