Three sections and fourteen chapters of organizational psychologist Benjamin Hardy‘s book Willpower Doesn’t Work: Discover the Hidden Keys to Success provided me an interesting theory that at first seems to defy common sense. Hardy argues, as the description of the book on the Barnes & Noble website says, that “…willpower is nothing more than a dangerous fad-one that is bound to lead to failure…” The book goes on to show the reader how to change his/her surroundings to overcome the failed approach of willpower.
(Benjamin Hardy wrote the book Willpower Doesn’t Work).
The opening section spends three chapters making a case that your environment shapes you. Chapters four through eight cope with the means of making willpower irrelevant. The third section, which suggests outsourcing high performance and success to your environment, exists in chapters nine through fourteen of the book. The prescription largely makes a logically appealing case that changed outcome works best through support, modeled behavior, and the removal of temptations that tend to be stronger than the mere power of will. Specific examples raised in Willpower Doesn’t Work make for anecdotally convincing means for applying change through environment more than willpower.
(An image of the book Willpower Doesn’t Work).
In a sense, Willpower Doesn’t Work feels in some ways a condensed and repackaged telling of the Stephen R. Covey book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. The one central, effectively communicated message of Willpower Doesn’t Work for me was that personal change is a matter of setting up your environment to match the change you are looking to make. My overall rating for Benjamin Hardy‘s work is 3.5-stars on a scale of one-to-five stars.
Matt – Wednesday, June 12, 2019
Matt Lynn Digital 