In 2011, the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion com­mis­sioned a study of stress in North Amer­ica, and as part of a follow-up sur­vey took a deeper look at the role of willpower and moti­va­tion when mak­ing lifestyle and behav­iour changes.

Here is a sum­mary of key find­ings. More infor­ma­tion can be found on the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion website.

1. Almost every­one (93 per­cent) sur­veyed reported mak­ing a res­o­lu­tion to change some aspect of their behav­ior in 2012. Yet peo­ple con­sis­tently report that a lack of willpower is the top rea­son they fall short of their goals to lose weight, save more money, exer­cise or make other lifestyle changes.
2. The most fre­quently reported goals that peo­ple set for 2012 were those aimed at improv­ing health (57 per­cent reported a goal to lose weight, 50 per­cent reported a goal to eat a health­ier diet, and 41 per­cent reported a goal to start exer­cis­ing reg­u­larly) or finan­cial sta­tus (52 per­cent reported a goal to save more money, and 37 per­cent reported a goal to pay off debt), accord­ing to the follow-up sur­vey. For adults try­ing to make a lifestyle change, how­ever, willpower is an impor­tant factor.
3. The annual Stress in Amer­ica sur­vey found that one in four reported that lack of willpower (27 per­cent) or time (26 per­cent) pre­vented them from mak­ing the change they were try­ing to achieve. Despite dif­fi­cul­ties with willpower, a major­ity of those respond­ing to the annual sur­vey (71 per­cent) believe that willpower can be learned. Good news since psy­cho­log­i­cal research demon­strates that this is true.
4. Over the past five years, most adults have set goals for them­selves to improve their health in some way includ­ing eat­ing a health­ier diet (77 per­cent), exer­cis­ing more (75 per­cent), los­ing weight (66 per­cent), reduc­ing stress (60 per­cent) and get­ting more sleep (58 percent).
5. In the annual sur­vey, when adults were asked to iden­tify bar­ri­ers pre­vent­ing them from mak­ing lifestyle changes they decided to make or that were rec­om­mended to them, the most com­mon bar­rier cited was lack of willpower (27 percent).
6. Despite set­ting these goals, more than half (52 per­cent) say they did not use any strat­egy to help them be successful.
7. Those who reported they track their goals by writ­ing them down or log­ging them elec­tron­i­cally were more likely than those who tracked their goals men­tally to report suc­cess­fully exer­cis­ing more (45 per­cent vs. 34 per­cent) and reduc­ing stress (35 per­cent vs. 23 percent).
8. The most com­mon def­i­n­i­tions of lack of willpower include giv­ing in to temp­ta­tion (39 per­cent), not being moti­vated or car­ing enough (30 per­cent), and not being dis­ci­plined or orga­nized enough (27 percent).
9. Nearly 4 in 10 (38 per­cent) of those who reported that lack of willpower pre­vented them from mak­ing a behav­ior change selected time as the resource they think would help them improve their will power.
10. For those whom willpower has pre­vented them from mak­ing changes, hav­ing more energy (being less tired) (50 per­cent) and hav­ing more con­fi­dence in their abil­i­ties (40 per­cent) are seen as needed to improve willpower.
11. Over three-quarters of those mak­ing changes (78 per­cent) report that all/most of their moti­va­tion is related to their own desire rather than being asked by other peo­ple. Con­versely, 12 per­cent report that all/most of their moti­va­tion is related to hav­ing been asked by a fam­ily mem­ber, friend or health care provider.
12. The most com­mon strate­gies used by adults when they feel them­selves want­ing to give into temp­ta­tion are remind­ing them­selves of the long term goal (55 per­cent), forc­ing them­selves to resist (50 per­cent), and dis­tract­ing them­selves (48 per­cent). Few (11 per­cent) report seek­ing sup­port from a friend or fam­ily members.
13. Among adults who track their progress, when attempt­ing to make a behav­ior change, most (65 per­cent) track their progress mentally.

“Learn­ing” more willpower.

What is a nec­es­sary com­po­nent for achiev­ing objec­tives? Willpower researcher Roy Baumeis­ter, PhD, a psy­chol­o­gist at Florida State Uni­ver­sity, describes three nec­es­sary com­po­nents for achiev­ing objectives:

1. First, he says, you need to estab­lish the moti­va­tion for change and set a clear goal.
2. Sec­ond, you need to mon­i­tor your behav­ior toward that goal.
3. The third com­po­nent is willpower. Whether your goal is to lose weight, kick a smok­ing habit, study more, or spend less time on Face­book, willpower is a crit­i­cal step to achiev­ing that outcome.

If willpower is truly a lim­ited resource, as the research sug­gests, what can be done to con­serve it?

1. Avoid­ing temp­ta­tion is one effec­tive tac­tic for main­tain­ing self-control. One recent study, for instance, found office work­ers who kept candy in a desk drawer indulged less than when they kept the candy on top of their desks, in plain sight.
2. Hav­ing a plan in place ahead of time may allow you to make deci­sions in the moment with­out hav­ing to draw on your willpower. For exam­ple, some­one who’s watch­ing her alco­hol intake might tell her­self before a party, “If any­one offers me a drink, then I’ll ask for club soda with lime.”
3. Oth­ers have also found that flex­ing your willpower mus­cles can strengthen self-control over time. Aus­tralian sci­en­tists Megan Oaten, PhD, and Ken Cheng, PhD, of Mac­quarie Uni­ver­sity in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia, assigned vol­un­teers to a two-month pro­gram of phys­i­cal exer­cise — a rou­tine that required willpower. At the end of two months, par­tic­i­pants who had stuck with the pro­gram did bet­ter on a lab mea­sure of self-control than did par­tic­i­pants who were not assigned to the exer­cise reg­i­men. That’s not all. The sub­jects also reported smok­ing less and drink­ing less alco­hol, eat­ing health­ier food, mon­i­tor­ing their spend­ing more care­fully, and improv­ing their study habits. Reg­u­larly exer­cis­ing their willpower with phys­i­cal exer­cise, it seemed, led to bet­ter willpower in nearly all areas of their lives.
4. The find­ings that willpower deple­tion is tied to glu­cose lev­els also sug­gest a pos­si­ble rem­edy. Eat­ing reg­u­larly to main­tain blood-sugar lev­els in the brain may help refuel run-down willpower stores. (But don’t let the term “sugar” fool you. Healthy meals with­out refined sugar are actu­ally bet­ter than sweets at keep­ing blood-sugar lev­els on an even keel, experts say.) Dieters, who are aim­ing to main­tain willpower while cut­ting calo­ries, might do bet­ter eat­ing fre­quent small meals rather than skip­ping break­fast or lunch.

The evi­dence from willpower-depletion stud­ies also sug­gests that mak­ing a list of res­o­lu­tions on New Year’s Eve is the worst pos­si­ble approach. Being depleted in one area can reduce willpower in other spheres, so it makes more sense to focus on a sin­gle goal at a time. In other words, don’t try to quit smok­ing, adopt a healthy diet and start a new exer­cise plan at the same time. Tak­ing goals one by one is a bet­ter approach. Once a good habit is in place, Baumeis­ter says, you’ll no longer need to draw on your willpower to main­tain the behavior.

Even­tu­ally healthy habits will become rou­tine, and won’t require mak­ing deci­sions at all.

 
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NOTE: The con­tent and opin­ions offered in Healthy Work­places blog posts do not nec­es­sar­ily reflect the for­mal stance of Home­wood Human Solu­tions, unless oth­er­wise iden­ti­fied. We bring this infor­ma­tion for­ward in the inter­ests of openly shar­ing val­ued infor­ma­tion in this time of fast-growing online con­ver­sa­tions and knowledge.