17 Jul Skillpower Over Willpower
Toad baked some cookies.
“These cookies smell very good,” said Toad. He ate one. “And they taste even better,” he said.
So begins one of Arnold Lobel’s most memorable Frog and Toad stories.
Toad runs to Frog’s house with his freshly baked treats, and before long, the two of them are eating one cookie after another.
“I think we should stop eating. We will soon be very sick,” said Frog, with his mouth full.
“You are right,” said Toad. “Let us eat one last cookie, and then we will stop.”
They eat one last cookie. Then one very last cookie. Then another.
Finally, Frog, reaching for another cookie, says:
“We need willpower.”
“What is willpower?” asked Toad.
“Willpower is trying hard not to do something you really want to do,” said Frog.
So they try.
Frog puts the cookies in a box.
“There,” he says. “Now we will not eat any more cookies.”
“But we can open the box,” says Toad.
Frog ties string around the box and puts it on a high shelf.
“There,” he says.
“But we can climb the ladder, take down the box, cut the string, and open it,” says Toad.
Frog and Toad stand together, staring up at the box on the shelf, thinking about the cookies.
Finally, Frog carries the box outside and calls to the birds, who swoop down and carry all the cookies away.
“Now we have no more cookies to eat,” says Toad sadly.
“Yes,” says Frog. “But we have lots and lots of willpower.”
“You may keep it all, Frog,” says Toad. “I am going home now to bake a cake.”
Poor Frog and Toad — busy building cookie defenses and still completely fixated on the cookies.
Willpower is a limited resource. And the more we’re reminded of what we’re resisting, the faster it runs out.
What works better is situational modification, a strategy from behavioral science where you arrange your environment so what you want to resist is out of sight and what you want to choose is right there in front of you.
Like Frog and Toad, we can keep making the cookies harder to reach, but if we’re still standing there staring at them, it’s only a matter of time before we give in.
Shaping your environment in this way means stepping back and asking: What would make the better choice easier next time?
Maybe that means we plug our phone in out of reach at bedtime with a good book on the nightstand. Or arrange our refrigerator so the healthiest foods are front and center. Or keep a donation bag in our closet so it’s easier to let go of what we no longer need.
It’s not about fighting harder. It’s about making the fight smaller.
Willpower runs out. Skillpower sets you up to succeed anyway.