Behavior, Self-Control, and Willpower - Chapter 9: Behavioral Algorithms and Self-Control

Designing the Mind: The Principles of Psychitecture - Ryan A Bush 2021

Behavior, Self-Control, and Willpower
Chapter 9: Behavioral Algorithms and Self-Control

Men’s natures are alike; it is their habits that separate them.

- Confucius, Analects

Now that we have covered the greatest obstacles to living a self-directed life, we can dive into the nuts and bolts of behavioral psychitecture. Some people have the capacity to overcome their impulses a remarkable amount of the time. They seem to exert superhuman control over their impulses, consistently following through on their goals throughout their lives. But these people are not merely endowed with abnormal levels of willpower. They make use of strategies that can be learned by anyone, and their secrets may surprise you.1

We all know that it is possible to overcome negative behaviors, break bad habits, and act according to our goals. But you also may believe that for many of your highest goals, you simply don't have the willpower to make them happen. You want to break the habits which clash with your ideals, find the motivation to work toward them, and do the things you know you should. But sometimes, you just can't. You can't muster the strength.

Since the Medieval era, the key to self-control has been thought to lie in the special strength of willpower.2 This mysterious energy of effortful restraint inside us allows us to resist our strongest urges and work toward what really matters. Willpower, we are often told, is like a muscle. It depletes in the moment as we use it. The more we demand of it, the stronger it gets in the long run. But this notion of willpower has fallen in light of modern thought and research.3

As it turns out, the willpower muscle may amount to the percentage of glucose in one’s blood. Yes, like a muscle, glucose can be depleted, and one’s ability to resist urges along with it. It can also be temporarily replenished by sipping a sugary drink, though this will come at the expense of longer-term self-control. But unlike a muscle, it seems that increased exertion of willpower does not necessarily increase capacity for it, though a healthy diet and proper sleep do seem to increase its capacity.4 But the greatest problem with the notion of willpower as the key to self-control is this: the people with the highest self-control aren’t even using willpower.5

We have all heard the inspiring sentiment that we must overcome our desires and do what is rational. What we don't realize when we say these things is that the idea of overcoming desire is a bit delusional. We don’t actually resist our drives. No matter what we do, we always succumb to our strongest desires. This does not mean we are helpless to control ourselves. But it does mean that if we want to harness the power of self-control, we will have to change the way we think about it.

Nietzsche believed that all beings could be viewed as the sum of a multitude of drives - competing, conflicting, and struggling for power. He denied that an individual possessed a unified will which could overcome these drives, arguing instead that the most powerful drives always win out and determine our actions. The key to self-mastery, he suggested, was not found in using reason or willpower to conquer our drives, but in the coordination of those drives toward organizing ideals. The ideal state was one in which the individual had organized his passions and directed them toward his highest goals.6

Nietzsche’s view on drives has aged well. It seems that taking the right actions and avoiding the wrong ones is once again a creative design process, not a white-knuckled battle of will. Some of our drives long to align with our ideals and achieve our goals. They are just not the most powerful drives by default. If we want these drives to win out, we have to domesticate the stronger desires, canceling out the noise so the whispers of our values can be heard. The secrets to self-control and good habits lie in the management and training of these desires.

The initial trigger is one major leverage point for reprogramming behaviors.7 In order for a trigger to generate a drive, one must not only encounter the trigger, but must pay attention to it, and must interpret it to be desirable. Our behaviors are mediated by our cognitions and emotions. So we can use our environmental inputs, our thoughts, or our emotions to reprogram habits.8

The immediate result of a certain behavior also plays a major role in habit formation and can be designed to alter habits. The strength of a drive is conditioned by the strength of the immediate reward resulting from our response to the trigger. We see the bag of candy in our pantry, and the craving we feel compels us to grab a piece. The strength of the immediate reward reinforces the link between input and output. This reward, or lack thereof, is called the consequence.9

And in many cases, the reassessment and restructuring of goals can make it so that desires which would be working against us can work for us instead.10 This leaves us with several promising opportunities for reprogramming our behaviors - all found in modulating, activating, and using our desires.

Image

The ability to use these levers to manipulate our drives is the key to self-control. By using smarter strategies and modulating the strength of existing desires and emotions, we can ensure that our goals are completed not only effectively, but effortlessly.11 We can gradually become proficient at using our drives to fuel us in the right directions and at keeping them from leading us astray. We have seen that our drives are not to be trusted as guides to the good life. We have seen that emotional tranquility depends on the ability to modulate these drives to keep them from causing us needless pain. Now it is time to learn to harness them.