#174: Managing Willpower for What Matters Most

Willpower is the ability to control yourself to determine your actions. It allows you (and your team) to accomplish what matters most to you — solving a business problem, losing weight, cornering the market, getting out of debt, etc. To control many of your actions, you can use selected discipline to build a powerful habit. But to control other actions in any given day, it requires the power of will — a vital part of the self-management that's necessary for leadership and personal success. You and your team need your willpower at full strength to ensure that when you're doing the right thing, you don't let anything distract you or steer you away from it. Then you need enough willpower the rest of the day to either support or avoid sabotaging what you've done. Unfortunately, willpower it not on will-call. All of us have a limited supply of willpower each day. Putting it to its best use requires you to manage it. To put your willpower to work, you need to think about it. Pay attention to it. Respect it. You make doing what matters most a priority when your willpower is its highest. In other words, you give your ONE Thing the time of day it deserves.