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Place a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup in my kitchen, and I might resist it the first four times I see it (make that three, or two). But I’ll eat it eventually. Most of us blame moments like this on weak willpower. As if successful people have some superhuman reserve of self-control the rest of us are missing.
But even the most “disciplined” people know they can’t rely on willpower alone. So they do something smarter. They treat willpower like emergency cash — great to have when you need it, but not something you spend on daily expenses.
Take your friend who never struggles with healthy eating. When they’re exhausted after a brutal day, they’re not staring down that Reese’s on the counter. There simply isn’t one in their house. They save their willpower for those unexpected cupcakes in the office break room. What looks like superior discipline is actually superior design.
The key is to spend willpower once to build systems that make future willpower unnecessary:
- Instead of debating what to make for dinner every night, use that energy once to meal plan your week.
- Instead of hoping you’ll ignore notifications, use that energy once to set up app blockers during work hours.
- Instead of relying on motivation to save money, use that energy once to automate transfers to your investment and retirement accounts.
I call these chosen constraints. They’re guardrails you place for yourself rather than limits someone else imposes on you. Setting your own chosen constraints helps you follow through and create real change.
Because the secret isn’t having more willpower. It’s needing less of it.
Design your physical space with environmental constraints
Your surroundings conspire either for or against you. Track how many times your environment decides for you today. Sneakers buried in the closet? You skip your run. Ride-share app on your phone’s home screen? You use it instead of hopping on the bus.
Shape your spaces so good choices are easy and bad choices are hard. The best environment design takes just a few minutes of rearranging. For example:
- A professional deletes all social media apps from her phone, forcing her to log in on a desktop. This friction stops mindless scrolling throughout the day.
- I removed the batteries from my TV remote and stored them on the opposite end of the house. That small bit of friction turns a reflex into a choice.
We tend to follow the path of least resistance. Design that path on purpose, and your environment will guide you toward better choices without burning willpower.
Create productive pressure with time constraints
Without deadlines, tasks stretch forever. Projects stay “almost done” indefinitely. Parkinson’s Law says work expands to fill available time. I’m still waiting to organize my digital photos from 2019. Any day now.
Time constraints create urgency that nudges action. For example:
- An executive schedules 45-minute meetings instead of the usual hour. Discussions stay focused because time is tight.
- My newsletter is called System Sunday, creating a built-in deadline. I have to publish on Sunday because any other day breaks the name. This constraint saves me from perfectionism and forces me to share my work.
Harness accountability with social constraints
Few things motivate you like the fear of letting someone down. Social constraints harness this by involving others in your progress. For example:
- Every morning, actor Hugh Jackman writes about his ideal day as if it already happened (“Today my son and I had the best hour together laughing…”) and texts it to his mindset coach. “We all need to be accountable to someone,” he says. Of course, not everyone has a mindset coach.
- If your goal is to run a marathon, you might text a friend your training plan each morning. Their “How’d it go?” reply at the end of the day nudges you to follow through.
Quick caveat: Announcing your goals can backfire. Research shows that people who share their goals publicly are less likely to achieve them, since talking about them creates a premature sense of accomplishment and weakens the drive to do the work.
So share your goals strategically. Tell only the few people who can truly support you, like a coach or a trusted friend. The real accountability makes up for any initial drop in motivation.
Raise the stakes with money constraints
Put cash on the line, and suddenly you have skin in the game. For example:
- A writer books a nonrefundable creative retreat months in advance. “I should work on my novel” becomes “I’ve already paid $2,000 for dedicated writing time.”
- A language learner prepays for weekly tutoring that has a $50 cancellation penalty. Skipping now costs double.
The beauty of financial constraints? We hate wasting money, so we follow through to justify the investment.
Ben Meer is a writer, speaker and coach known as “The Systems Guy” (Forbes). His weekly newsletter, System Sunday, reaches more than 250,000 subscribers, and his ideas on productivity and systems thinking have built a social media following of over two million. After receiving his MBA from Cornell University and advising Fortune 500 companies at Ernst & Young, Meer discovered that the same systems driving business growth could make everyday life easier.
Excerpt from “How to Be Good At Life: Simple Systems to Achieve More and Stress Less” by Ben Meer, published on October 6, 2026, by Avery, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2026 by Ben Meer.
