Benzer On Success Without Willpower

In a passage from Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus and his ship are about to pass through the Siren-infested waters. On the one hand, he knows that hearing their song will spell his doom. On the other hand, he's dying of curiosity and is tired of hearing about their song and just wants to hear their song, dammit, and be the only mortal to live to tell.

Now Odysseus is one crafty dude, so he tells all of his sailors to plug their ears with wax so they can't be tempted by the Sirens' song. He keeps his own ears unplugged, but has his mates lash him to the mast and ignore everything he says. That way, he gets to eat his cake and have it too: he hears the Sirens, but doesn't die.

This is what I call the Odysseus Protocol. Essentially it's arranging your physical environment to achieve the outcome you want so you don't have to rely on willpower.

[...] Now a lot of you may have heard a lot about this thing called willpower. Really? Where is it? Next to the pasta sauce at Ralph's? Must have missed it.
Listen up: willpower does not exist. Never had; never will. There's action, and inaction. That's it.

There's a universal principle for realizing potential: things will flourish spontaneously when the conditions are right. Instead of relying on willpower, create those conditions in advance.

Now with people, we have a similar scenario. We all have vast amounts of talent and potential within ourselves; most of us just don't tap into them as much as possible. This may have to do with people thinking that it's all about willpower or its flip side, weakness.

Well, the good news is that you as a human possess the gift of arranging conditions to favor the outcome you want. It's not about your being perfect or having infinite willpower. It's about recognizing that, like Odysseus, you're fallible. So in lucid moments, you structure your life to serve your own best interest.

[...] Let's say you do silly things when you're drunk on a date. Possible solution: try not to order any booze the evening of your next date.

But that's not the full Odysseus: you're still relying on willpower here, and we already know that doesn't work.

The key is to make it impossible for you to have the undesired behavior. So you have the date at a cafe where alcohol is not served at all. Or go for a walk in the park instead of the sit-down dinner.