Willpower is an estate

I was once walking on the Anděl square in Prague, when I was suddenly stopped by a Hare Krishna monk. He showed me the Bhagavad-gita and pointed to a picture of demons playing with people on strains as if they were mere puppets. "In the morning the good Gods control you and in the evening the bad ones take their place," he explained to me. "Why do you think all nightclubs are run at night?" he added with emphasis. I said my thanks to him and went on my way, but I couldn't get the picture out of my head.

I don't know about "bad gods" but isn't it true our willpower decreases over time? Think about the last time you watched a naughty video, ate junk food, binge-watched a series or made any other little miss you regretted? Was it in the morning, right after you've woken up? Chances are it was at night. Some people have more problems with self-control than others throughout the day. But this doesn't mean their life should be any worse. They just have to create the right strategies.

 These days I realized the only way out my chronic repetition of habits I don't like is by seeing willpower as pocket money you only have a concrete amount of set for the day. And for it to not be that simple, their value also decreases with time, being highest in the morning! Don't try to train your "willpower muscle" Create a life where you need to use your willpower as little as possible, as if it was a bottle of water you carry with yourself in the desert. It's better to not put the cellphone next to the bed if one succumbs to binge-watching YouTube at night. Same goes for sweets in the fridge when we don't really want to eat them. For some people, it's easier to get through a book by listening to its audio version while walking, so they can't look away from the book and start doing something esle.

Those are just some of the ideas I thought up to get us a feeling about this technique. A day with fewer obstacles for your will power to tackle is something you need to create and write like a music-sheet for you to play. This can be achieved by being conscious of the present moment in our everyday life so that we notice when our instincts are challenged the most. What places and at what time are the ones, that make the reason fight with craving the most? Its power to do that goes down throughout the day and we need to keep that in mind.