Freedom by Design

Imagine you’re trying to eat healthier. You’re working from home, and there is a box of cookies sitting right next to your desk. You tell yourself it’s good to build discipline—that resisting temptation will make you strong. So you leave them there.

Between emails, your eyes drift toward the cookies. “Eat me!” they call out to you. Sure, you may not be indulging in the cookies, but they have still captured your attention.

Source: ChatGPT/OpenAI

Here’s the thing: Relying on willpower alone is often a losing battle. In fact, it might be time to let go of the idea that you need to “strengthen” your willpower at all. This might sound like a cop-out, but decades of psychological research suggest otherwise.

Study after study shows that the best way to overcome temptation is not to face it in the first place. Our behaviors are powerfully shaped by our environments—what’s within reach in the pantry, how easy it is to scroll through social media, whether our phone is across the room or right next to us. Even seemingly unrelated things affect our decisions, like whether it’s raining can influence whether we vote.

When we take steps ahead of time to design our environment more intentionally—what psychologists call “precommitment”—we’re much more likely to follow through on our goals. For example, we are less likely to be distracted by our phones at work if we’ve downloaded web-blocking apps or put our phones on grayscale. If we put candy in opaque containers instead of clear bowls, we’re less likely to overindulge.

Despite their effectiveness, these strategies are used by surprisingly few people. That’s the puzzle that fascinates me. Why don’t more people take advantage of tools that clearly work?

In my own research, I’ve found it’s not because people don’t know about these strategies or because they doubt their effectiveness. Instead, many of us face psychological and social barriers that get in the way.

One key barrier is judgment from both others and ourselves. In a recent paper, we found that people who use precommitment tools are seen as having less integrity and less willpower than those who “power through” using internal discipline alone. The person who needs the web-blocking app or who is incapable of keeping cookies in her house without eating them all seems like they have low self-control.

But we’re thinking about this all wrong. The person who downloads the web-blocking app or arranges their kitchen to make healthier eating easier isn’t cheating—they’re being strategic. They’re choosing not to be at the mercy of their environment. By removing the need to constantly resist temptation, they’re freeing their energy and attention for the things that really matter.

So go ahead. Toss the cookies. Block social media. Let go of the outdated idea that self-control requires a constant struggle. Instead, embrace a new kind of freedom that results from designing a life where the best choices happen effortlessly.