Are you strategic with your willpower?

To increase your strategic capacity, start with your willpower.

→ This is the third in a 7-part series on building strategic capacity in your organization. Part 1 here. Read Part 4 here.←

THINK ON IT: Are you strategic with your willpower? 

Last week, I asked if you have enough strategic margin. That’s the margin you need to think strategically about your business. In an equation form, it looks like this: 

MARGIN = LIMITS - LOAD

Your strategic margin is the difference between your capacity (LIMITS) and the demands upon you (LOAD). Over the next few weeks, I will be sharing some ways you can grow your strategic margin.

Today’s focus is on your willpower. Specifically, how well you deploy your willpower to advance your strategy. 

Let me explain.

Willpower is our determination to do something, or to resist something. I, personally, have to exercise willpower, for instance, to avoid eating ice cream late at night.

Willpower is the thing we often think is most lacking in our lives. In fact, when researchers asked over one million people to name their personal strengths, willpower came in dead last. And respondents to the Stress in America survey conducted by the American Psychological Association cite a lack of willpower as the number one factor that is derailing their ability to make healthy lifestyle changes.

Willpower isn’t just about resisting temptation, though. There are largely four areas where we willpower comes into play: 

• Emotional control: your ability to control your own moods, anger, etc.

• Impulse control: your ability to resist temptations, like eating a cookie or checking social media, etc. 

• Performance control: your ability to dig in and learn to accomplish something, even when it’s hard. We often think of this as perseverance. 

• Thought control: your ability to correct the way you think, i.e. challenging your own presuppositions, paradigms, etc. 

Here’s the important point in all this. We only have so much willpower in the day and every little decision drains our daily supply. In fact, researchers have suggested that we spend as much as 4 hours a day resisting desires. That’s a big hole in our reservoir of willpower. 

So, how are you spending the willpower energy you have today? Are you fighting battles, reacting to circumstances, or are you spending it on the most important thing that you can do to advance your mission?

Becoming strategic with your willpower is the first step in reclaiming your strategic margin — for your life and for your business. The good news is that you can actually take steps to grow your willpower.

Want to learn more about how willpower works, and how to increase yours? Paid subscribers, read on to learn the characteristics of willpower and how to conserve it. (Become a paid subscriber.)

“It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.” — Lou Holtz

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