The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

WHEN SLEEP IS THE WILLPOWER CHALLENGE
One of my students, Lisa, was trying to break the habit of staying up late. At twenty-nine, she was
single and lived alone, which meant there was no one setting a sleep schedule for her. She woke up
each morning exhausted and dragged herself through her job as an office administrator. She relied on
caffeinated diet soda to get through the day, and to her embarrassment, she sometimes nodded off in
meetings. By five o’clock, she was wired 
and
tired, a combination that left her cranky, distracted, and
craving drive-through fast food. The first week of class, she announced that going to sleep earlier
would be her willpower challenge for the class.
The next week, she reported no success. Around dinnertime, she would tell herself, “I will
definitely go to sleep earlier tonight,” but by eleven p.m., that resolve was nowhere to be found. I
asked Lisa to describe the process of how she 
wasn’t
going to bed early. She told me about the
million and one things that each seemed more critically urgent the later the night got. Browsing
Facebook, cleaning the fridge, tackling the stack of junk mail, even watching infomercials—none of
this stuff was actually urgent, but late at night, it felt strangely compelling. Lisa was hooked on doing
“one more thing” before she went to sleep. The later it got, and the more tired Lisa got, the less she
was able to resist the immediate gratification that each task promised.
When we redefined getting more sleep as a 
won’t
power challenge, things turned around. Forcing
herself to go to sleep wasn’t the real problem, it was pulling herself away from the things keeping her
up. Lisa set a rule of turning off her computer and TV and not starting any new projects after eleven
p.m. This rule was exactly what she needed to feel how tired she really was and give herself
permission to go to bed by midnight. With seven hours of sleep each night, Lisa found that
infomercials and other late-night temptations lost their appeal. Within a couple of weeks, she had the
energy to tackle the next willpower challenge: cutting back on diet soda and drive-through dinners.
If you know you could use more sleep but you find yourself staying up late anyway, consider
what you are saying “yes” to instead of sleep. This same willpower rule applies to any task
you are avoiding or putting off—when you can’t find the will, you might need to find the
won’t.

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