From Graham.  I need to try something like this. 

Here is the next installment on Pavlina's Self-Discipline series.  (To note again, any integral practice is predicated on, at a minimum, two things - an opening to spiritual truth, and the discipline to practice to be fully functional in the world.  Self-Discipline is one key to this.)

This particular segment on will, I find very useful.   A quote:

Willpower provides an intensely powerful yet temporary boost. Think of it as a one-shot thruster. It burns out quickly, but if directed intelligently, it can provide the burst you need to overcome inertia and create momentum.

This is a better definition, and more realistic, than either of the two extremes understandings - use willpower to go through everything in life, or, willpower doesn't really exist, as all is a function of environmental and social constraints.

And the advice on how to use willpower to SMARTLY change those environmental and social constraints is good as well:

Here’s how to tackle that same goal with the proper application of willpower. You accept that you can only apply a short burst of willpower… maybe a few days at best. After that it’s gone. So you’d better use that willpower to alter the territory around you in such a way that maintaining momentum won’t be as hard as building it in the first place. You need to use your willpower to establish a beachhead on the shores of your goal.

So you sit down and make a plan. This doesn’t require much energy, and you can spread the work out over many days.

You identify all the various targets you’ll need to strike if you want to have a chance of success. First, all the junk food needs to leave your kitchen, including anything you have a tendency to overeat, and you need to replace it with foods that will help you lose weight, like fruits and veggies. Secondly, you know you’ll be tempted to get fast food if you come home hungry and don’t have anything ready to eat, so you decide to pre-cook a week’s worth of food in advance each weekend. That way you always have something in the refrigerator. You set aside a block of several hours each weekend to buy groceries and cook all your food for the week. Plus you get a decent cookbook of healthy recipes. You learn about Weight Watchers, and find out where the closest one is to you, so you can go to the first meeting and sign-up. Setup a weight chart and post it on your bathroom wall. Get a decent scale that can measure weight and body fat %. Make a list of sample meals (5 breakfasts, 5 lunches, and 5 dinners), and post it on your refrigerator. And so on…. At this point all of this goes into the written plan.

Then you execute — hard and fast.

That particular set of advice is welcomingly practical, recognizing both the benefits and the limits of willpower, and how to use the benefits of willpower to, as much as possible, change the environment to a successful one.  

This is one reason why, if you go on retreats of various kinds (exercise, meditation, etc), it simply becomes so much easier to "get in the groove", as the environment and expectations are setup for you to practice, or act, in certain ways.

The thing that isn't touched on, of course, and I've mentioned this before, is the concept of sub-personalities, or fractures of will.  If you really really want to keep eating that sugar, then guess what?  You will.  Your desires are at cross-purposes.  Addictions, or psychological issues (not "severe issues, just normal run-of-the-mill small self-sabatoge), will have you working at cross-purposes.

My own sense is, in terms of "self-initiated growth", working alone to change, without a support structure, that the sub-personalities, lower desires, etc, can act as a major drag for at least 50-70% of the population.

So, while still very good practical advice, and one of the smartest tactical implementations for utilizing will I've read, this particular section on willpower, would end up, if being followed alone, by 50-70% of the population, end up failing.