Discover the Hidden Keys to Success
People often say that willpower is like a muscle; the more you use it, the more you tire it out. And like any other muscle, you can strengthen your willpower over time – so exerting self-control today will make it a bit easier tomorrow.
So self-improvement is easy, right? To change our lives, we need to push ourselves a little bit harder every day – and before long, we’ll be ready to take on the world! Well, not exactly.
The problem with willpower is that it’s a pretty weak muscle. Our powers of self-control are almost always exhausted these days, but that’s not our fault.
The key message here is: When trying to achieve your goals, willpower is less important than your environment.
Let’s consider the obesity epidemic. The facts are pretty stark: by 2025, it’s predicted that most people in the world will be overweight or obese. Is this down to a failure of willpower? Was it greater self-control that kept our ancestors skinny?
Of course not. In the past, people didn’t need to rely on willpower to stay slim. What’s changed since then is our environment. These days, rather than working outdoors, most of us work sedentary jobs and sit at our desks all day. And the nourishment we rely on is often unhealthy food from a package.
As the author puts it, our environment has encouraged our weight gain. But thankfully, the power of your environment can also be a force for good. How so? Consider Darwin’s distinction between natural evolution and domesticated evolution.
In natural evolution, organisms adapt to whatever situation they find themselves in. So if it’s helpful to be smaller, a species may start to shrink. Essentially, they’re forced to adapt to their environment.
Contrast that with domesticated evolution, the evolution of animals and plants under human direction. Because we control these organisms’ environments, we can produce desirable traits that wouldn’t occur in the wild – like bigger fruits and fatter livestock.
When it comes to people, many of us are like animals in the wild undergoing natural evolution. We’re often unable to change our environments, so we adapt to them instead – regardless of whether this benefits us in the long run. Others do the opposite. Similar to how we treat the animals we domesticate, they design their environments so that any adaptation is actually an improvement, bringing them one step closer to their goals.
The trick is to design an environment that leaves you no choice but to “adapt” into your ideal self. In the blinks that follow, we’ll look at some ways to do just this.
Willpower Doesn't Work (2018) sets itself firmly against orthodox opinion in the fields of productivity and self-help. Drawing on a wide range of psychological theories, as well as the stories of successful entrepreneurs, these blinks argue that when it comes to changing your life, willpower simply isn’t the answer.
You can adapt to whatever environment you choose.
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Blink 3 von 12 - Eine kurze Geschichte der Menschheit
von Yuval Noah Harari
