But my favorite model is that willpower is a story. People do what they enjoy, and then narrativize it as self-discipline after the fact. When we see someone with high performance we desire, we extrapolate from the immense amount of effort it takes for us to perform even at a low level, and conclude that if they perform at 10x our level, it must require 10x the willpower. But this ignores the critical fact that they enjoy doing it. It doesn’t take willpower for a hard-core runner to get up at 5 in the morning. It takes willpower for them not to. The hard truth is that no one really does
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