Willpower

itself.”
    The rest comes of itself. That’s the seeming effortlessness that comes from playing offense. Chandler was incorporating several of the techniques we discussed earlier. The Nothing Alternative is a bright-line rule: a clear, unmistakable boundary, like the no-drinking vow taken by Eric Clapton and Mary Karr. Chandler’s particular rule— If I can’t write, I will do nothing— is also an example of an implementation plan, that specific if-x-then-y strategy that has been shown to reduce the demands on willpower. It’s easier to resist the temptation to go into debt if you enter the store with a firm implementation plan, like, If I shop for clothes, I will buy only what I can pay for with the cash in my wallet. Every time you follow this kind of rule, it becomes more routine, until eventually it seems to happen automatically and you have a lasting technique for conserving willpower: a habit.
    Of course, it’s even easier to avoid running up debt at a clothing store if you go there without a credit card. Precommitment is the ultimate offensive weapon. Buy junk food in small packages or keep them out of the kitchen altogether. Plan meals by the week, rather than on the spur of the moment when it’s already past dinnertime and you’re starving. If you’re planning to have a child, set up an automatic payroll deduction plan to build up a nest egg of ten thousand dollars so you’re not stressed out by money during those first sleepdeprived months of parenthood. If you have a gambling problem and are going someplace where there’s a casino, sign up ahead of time for the self-exclusion list (which will prevent you from collecting any winnings). To precommit to the Nothing Alternative, use a software program (like the one named Freedom) that locks you off the Internet for a set period.
    Precommitment helps you avoid the hot-cold empathy gap we discussed earlier: the common failure to appreciate, in moments of cool deliberation, how different you’ll feel in the heat of later moments. One of the most common reasons for the self-control problem is overconfidence in willpower. In one recent study, smokers were invited to bet that they could hold an unlit cigarette in their mouths while watching a movie without succumbing to the temptation to smoke. Plenty took the bet, and they lost. Better to precommit by leaving the cigarette somewhere else.

Keep Track
    Monitoring is crucial for any kind of plan you make—and it can even work if you don’t make a plan at all. Weighing yourself every day or keeping a food diary can help you lose weight, just as tracking your purchases will help you spend less. Even a writer who doesn’t share Trollope’s ability to meet daily quota can still benefit just by noting the word count at the beginning and end of the day: The mere knowledge that you’ll have to put down a number will discourage procrastination (or the kind of busywork that might feel virtuous but doesn’t contribute to that word count). The more carefully you keep track, the better. Weighing yourself every week is good. Weighing yourself every day is better. Weighing yourself and recording it is even better.
    Self-monitoring can be a bore, but it’s easier than ever thanks to the new tools that do the grunt work for you. As we discussed in chapter 5, you can let Mint and other programs monitor your credit card and bank transactions, draw up a budget, and track your progress toward goals. You can track your cash spending by sending yourself messages via e-mail or Twitter with programs like Xpenser and Tweetwhatyouspend. Entrepreneurs are rushing to monitor just about every aspect of your life—your health, your moods, your sleep—and you can find dozens of their products by consulting Web sites like Quantified Self and Lifehacker.
    Besides offering immediate encouragement, monitoring lets you improve your long-term planning. If you keep records, you can periodically check how far you’ve come so that you can set more realistic goals for the future. On days when you slack off and break the rules, when you might be tempted to write yourself off as a hopeless cause, you can see otherwise by looking back at your progress. Gaining a couple of pounds this week isn’t so discouraging if you’ve got a chart for the last six months showing a line sloping downward.

Reward Often
    When you set a goal, set a reward for reaching it—and then don’t stiff yourself. If you just use willpower to deny yourself