You Don’t ‘Run Out’ of Willpower

Willpower is not a depletable resource if you know how to use it wisely

Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash

It’s common to hear people complain about feeling “burned out” or “spent” these days. However, these terms conjure a completely incorrect view of willpower.

As I discussed at length in my book, Indistractable, and in previous articles, willpower is not a depletable resource.

Plenty of new research has found that willpower is not “used up” like gas in a gas tank or charge in a battery.

This raises the question, “If willpower is not a finite resource, then what is it?”

More practically speaking, “How do we motivate ourselves to do things when we feel we lack willpower?”

Michael Inzlicht, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and the principal investigator at the Toronto Laboratory for Social Neuroscience, offers a forward-thinking understanding of willpower that dispels the myths.

Inzlicht believes that willpower is not a finite resource; instead, it’s more like an emotion.

Just as we don’t “run out” of joy or anger, willpower ebbs and flows based on what’s happening to us and how we feel.