How to Increase Willpower (And Why You Don't Need To)

Yes, there are real strategies that improve self-control: better sleep, designing your environment, and practicing self-compassion all help. I’ll share them here.

But after two decades of studying habits, I’ve learned something the willpower advice misses: for the habits that matter most (the compulsive, emotion-driven ones), willpower isn’t the mechanism that changes them. The reward system is.

Here’s what actually works for self-control, and why you may not need willpower at all.

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What Does “Willpower” Actually Mean?

Before we try to increase willpower, let’s define what we’re talking about.

Most people use “willpower” to mean the ability to resist temptation - to not eat the cookie, not check your phone, not procrastinate. It’s the feeling of forcing yourself to do (or not do) something.

In psychology, this falls under self-control or self-regulation - the ability to override impulses in service of long-term goals. And for decades, the dominant theory was that self-control operates like a muscle: it depletes with use, recharges with rest, and can be strengthened through training.

This is the ego depletion model, and it’s been enormously influential. It’s also been seriously challenged.

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The Willpower Debate: Is It a Finite Resource?

The idea that willpower depletes like a battery was one of psychology’s most popular theories. Over 100 experiments seemed to confirm it: exert self-control on Task A, and you’ll perform worse on Task B.

Then the replications failed. Large-scale replication attempts found little or no evidence of ego depletion. The scientific community split: some researchers still defend the model (with stronger experimental manipulations), while others argue the effect is much smaller than originally claimed - or doesn’t exist at all.

A landmark paper in Perspectives on Psychological Science proposed a different explanation: self-control failures after effort aren’t about resource depletion. They’re about shifts in motivation and attention. People don’t run out of willpower - they shift toward whatever feels most rewarding in the moment (Inzlicht & Schmeichel, 2012).

This reframe matters enormously. If willpower failure is a motivation problem, not a resource problem, then the solution isn’t “get more willpower.” It’s change what feels rewarding.

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Strategies That Genuinely Improve Self-Control

The science does support several strategies for improving self-regulation. Here’s what actually works:

1. Sleep

Sleep deprivation impairs prefrontal cortex function - the brain region responsible for impulse control. Even one night of poor sleep reduces your capacity for self-regulation. Getting 7-8 hours of consistent sleep is probably the single highest-impact thing you can do for self-control.

2. Environmental Design

People with good self-control aren’t resisting temptation all day. They design their environment to avoid temptation in the first place. Remove the cookies from the counter. Put the phone in another room. Make the good behavior easy and the problematic behavior hard.

This works because it reduces the number of times you need willpower at all.

3. Self-Compassion (Not Self-Criticism)

This is counterintuitive: being harsh on yourself after a slip-up reduces subsequent self-control. Self-blame triggers a “what the hell” effect - you feel bad, so you indulge more to cope with feeling bad.

Self-compassion - treating yourself the way you’d treat a friend - actually restores self-regulation faster. You acknowledge the slip, let go of the guilt, and move forward.

4. Blood Sugar and Nutrition

Your brain uses glucose intensively during effortful tasks. While the “willpower runs on blood sugar” theory has been debated, maintaining stable energy throughout the day (regular meals, adequate hydration) supports cognitive function in general.

5. Exercise

Regular physical activity improves executive function, reduces stress, and enhances mood regulation - all of which support self-control. Even brief walks can restore cognitive capacity after demanding tasks.

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The Problem: Willpower Fails When It Matters Most

Here’s where I diverge from the standard willpower advice.

Those five strategies are real. They help. And they work well for building new positive habits - exercising consistently, eating healthier, maintaining routines.

But they don’t work for the habits people struggle with most: stress-eating at 10pm, compulsive phone checking, anxiety-driven procrastination, emotional eating, or any behavior that’s driven by the reward system.

Why? Because willpower is suppression. It overrides the behavior while leaving the reward value intact (Brewer, 2019).

Think about it: when you “willpower” your way past a craving, your brain still believes the craving is rewarding. You’ve just temporarily overridden it. The moment your capacity to override drops - stress, fatigue, emotional overwhelm - the habit fires right back. Nothing changed in the reward system.

This is why someone can quit smoking for six months using pure willpower and relapse on a stressful day. Six months of resistance didn’t update the brain’s belief that cigarettes provide stress relief.

Research from my lab shows that strategies relying on willpower - resisting cravings, avoiding triggers, substituting behaviors - don’t dismantle the core habit loop. The loop is still there, fully intact, waiting for willpower to lapse.

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What Works Instead: Updating the Reward

If willpower overrides behavior while leaving the reward intact, the alternative is to update the reward value directly.

This is what my lab studies: reward-based learning. Your brain formed the habit because it learned that the behavior was rewarding. The habit persists because the brain’s reward prediction hasn’t been updated. And willpower doesn’t update it - willpower just blocks the behavior.

The mechanism that does update it? Curiosity (Ludwig, Brown & Brewer, 2020).

When you bring curious awareness to a craving - “What does this actually feel like? Is the reward as good as my brain expects?” - your brain collects new evidence. And when the evidence doesn’t match the prediction (the cigarette tastes terrible, the scrolling doesn’t relieve stress, the snack creates guilt rather than satisfaction), the brain updates.

This isn’t a theory. In a study on smoking cessation, participants who used curiosity-based techniques achieved 5x higher abstinence rates than a standard cessation program (Brewer et al., 2013). Not 5% better - five times better. And they weren’t trying harder. They were trying differently.

A separate paper from my lab, published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, examined this directly: self-regulation without force. The finding? Awareness-based approaches can shift the reward value of behaviors without requiring willpower or effortful control at all.

Less effort. Better results. Because the mechanism is different.

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The Three Gears: A Framework That Replaces Willpower

This is the framework I’ve developed for changing habits - and it doesn’t require willpower.

Gear 1: Map the Habit Loop

See the pattern clearly. What’s the trigger? What’s the behavior? What reward does your brain think it’s getting? You can’t change what you can’t see.

Gear 2: Get Curious About the Reward

This is the key gear. The next time the habit fires, instead of resisting it (willpower), pay close attention:

• What does this behavior actually feel like?
• Is the reward as good as my brain predicted?
• How do I feel 5 minutes after? 30 minutes after?

Most people discover a gap between the expected reward and the actual experience. That gap is where the habit starts to break - not through force, but through updated information.

Gear 3: Find the Bigger Better Offer

Once the old reward weakens, offer your brain something genuinely more rewarding. Often, curiosity itself is the bigger better offer - it provides engagement without the downsides.

This framework has been tested in randomized controlled trials. In one study, it produced a 67% reduction in anxiety symptoms (Roy et al., 2021). Not by increasing participants’ willpower - by changing how their brains processed the habit.

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When Willpower IS Useful (And When It Isn’t)

I’m not saying willpower is worthless. It has a role. But it’s not the right tool for every job.

Willpower works well for:

• Short-term resistance: Saying no to one specific temptation in the moment
• Building new habits: Environmental design + willpower can establish routines (exercise, reading, healthy meals)
• Performance optimization: Pushing through discomfort for athletic training, deadlines, challenging goals

Willpower fails for:

• Compulsive, emotion-driven habits: Stress-eating, anxiety-driven scrolling, procrastination
• Reward-based patterns: Any behavior where the brain’s reward system is driving the loop
• Long-term sustained resistance: Any habit where you’re relying on willpower indefinitely (it’s unsustainable)
• Habits that persist despite repeated attempts: If willpower hasn’t worked after multiple tries, the problem is the mechanism, not your effort

The honest distinction: willpower is for building. Awareness is for breaking. If you want to start a daily exercise routine, willpower and environmental design are great tools. If you want to stop a compulsive behavior that’s resisted every strategy you’ve tried, you need to update the reward value.

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What To Do Next

1. Use Willpower Where It Helps

Keep the environmental design. Keep the sleep optimization. These genuinely improve self-control for routine decisions and new habit formation.

2. Map the Habit That Resists Willpower

Pick the one habit that keeps coming back despite your best efforts. Identify: Trigger, Behavior, Reward. That’s Gear 1.

3. Get Curious Instead of Resistant

Next time the habit fires, don’t fight it - observe it. What does the behavior actually feel like? Is the reward as good as your brain expected? Notice the gap.

4. If You’re Ready for Structured Support

If reward-based habits are interfering with your daily life, consider working with a therapist experienced in behavior change and mindfulness-based approaches.

And if you want a program built on the Three Gears framework, with live coaching and daily guidance for the habits that willpower can’t reach, Going Beyond Anxiety was designed for exactly this.

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The Bottom Line

The willpower advice isn’t wrong - it’s incomplete.

Sleep, environmental design, self-compassion, and exercise all improve self-control. Use them. They’re real.

But for the habits that resist everything - the compulsive, emotion-driven, reward-based patterns that fire when you’re stressed, tired, or overwhelmed - willpower isn’t the answer. It overrides behavior while leaving the reward intact. The moment your override weakens, the habit returns.

The alternative: update the reward value. Get curious instead of resistant. Let your brain discover, through direct experience, that the habit isn’t as rewarding as it thinks. That’s not willpower. It’s awareness. And it works.

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Related Articles

• The Science of Behavior Change: The complete guide to lasting habit change
• Why Willpower Doesn’t Work: The science behind willpower’s limitations
• No Willpower? Here’s What Actually Works: How to change habits without self-control

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