I think in order to understand what willpower is and what it is useful for, it is important to understand that people want more than one thing. For example, I want to read Internet news. I also want to improve my math abilities, increase my programming skills, read novels, learn more physics, improve at my job, draw more pictures, bicycle more, spend more time in nature, and bake more delicious strawberry-rhubarb pies of which I will place one scoop of vanilla ice cream on each slice I eat. That’s not even close to an exhaustive list of all the things I want.
Multiple wants will often come into conflict with one another. All of the things I’ve mentioned take time. My time is limited. So I have to put some kind of priority ordering on them. Sometimes I should do something where I will only accomplish what I want in the long term. Sometimes I should do things that can be quickly or easily accomplished with little mental effort in the short term. Mostly people talk about willpower when they’re having trouble doing the long term or high effort things they want to do, not the short term or low effort things they want to do.
So the need for willpower mostly arises when people are trying to maximize attainment of various wants which compete for their time and energy. Since the longer term wants don’t maximize short term rewards, they take more mental effort to accomplish since you don’t feel automatic and immediate positive reinforcement from them (you want to do them in the abstract, but there are other things that would make you happier right now if you did them instead).
So when someone does something requiring willpower, they want to do it in an intellectual sense, and they have some emotional stake in whether it gets done, but they don’t want to do it in the sense that they are getting a large positive reinforcement from anticipating the task. Possibly they feel bad when they anticipate not doing it, or it just doesn’t generate as much excitement at the moment as the other task. So they want to do it, but it requires willpower for them to do so. I think willpower is really just a way to talk about the mental effort required to do something a person wants to do, which differs for different wants. If you want to know more about what might actually affect how willpower works, understanding more about motivation will probably help.
I prefer to minimize the need for willpower in long term goals, however. If I can find a way to give myself short term positive reinforcement for doing something that achieves a long term goal, I will. Anyway, I hope that helps explain it.
I think in order to understand what willpower is and what it is useful for, it is important to understand that people want more than one thing. For example, I want to read Internet news. I also want to improve my math abilities, increase my programming skills, read novels, learn more physics, improve at my job, draw more pictures, bicycle more, spend more time in nature, and bake more delicious strawberry-rhubarb pies of which I will place one scoop of vanilla ice cream on each slice I eat. That’s not even close to an exhaustive list of all the things I want.
Multiple wants will often come into conflict with one another. All of the things I’ve mentioned take time. My time is limited. So I have to put some kind of priority ordering on them. Sometimes I should do something where I will only accomplish what I want in the long term. Sometimes I should do things that can be quickly or easily accomplished with little mental effort in the short term. Mostly people talk about willpower when they’re having trouble doing the long term or high effort things they want to do, not the short term or low effort things they want to do.
So the need for willpower mostly arises when people are trying to maximize attainment of various wants which compete for their time and energy. Since the longer term wants don’t maximize short term rewards, they take more mental effort to accomplish since you don’t feel automatic and immediate positive reinforcement from them (you want to do them in the abstract, but there are other things that would make you happier right now if you did them instead).
So when someone does something requiring willpower, they want to do it in an intellectual sense, and they have some emotional stake in whether it gets done, but they don’t want to do it in the sense that they are getting a large positive reinforcement from anticipating the task. Possibly they feel bad when they anticipate not doing it, or it just doesn’t generate as much excitement at the moment as the other task. So they want to do it, but it requires willpower for them to do so. I think willpower is really just a way to talk about the mental effort required to do something a person wants to do, which differs for different wants. If you want to know more about what might actually affect how willpower works, understanding more about motivation will probably help.
I prefer to minimize the need for willpower in long term goals, however. If I can find a way to give myself short term positive reinforcement for doing something that achieves a long term goal, I will. Anyway, I hope that helps explain it.