Train Agency, Not Willpower: A Practice for Deliberate Choice on Hard Days
How one small action a day rebuilds the sense that you still get to decide
This is a paid companion for The Real Point of Making Your Bed
🧭 The Struggle
The day runs you. You wake up already behind, take hit after hit, and tell yourself you will reset later. Later never comes. You were not lazy. You were reacting. And somewhere between the first obligation and the last notification, the steering wheel disappeared.
Then comes the moral tax. You missed the thing you planned to do, and now you are paying twice: once for not doing it, and once for what it means about you. “I am the kind of person who does not follow through.” That story does not stay in your head. It changes your expectations, and your expectations change what you do next.
The problem is not willpower. You have not run out of it. You have stopped treating your actions as choices and started treating them as tests you pass or fail. That shift is what makes return feel heavy.
👉 Context Overview — A map for understanding what shapes your capacity to direct yourself
🎯 What You’re Training
You are training agency. That means you can make one deliberate choice, on a tired day, in a messy week, without needing a perfect moment or a full reset first. Agency is not about controlling every outcome. It is about knowing that you are the one deciding, even when the conditions are not ideal.
In practice, the katas below do two things. First, they give you a structure to pre-decide the action before the moment of lowest capacity arrives. Second, they reduce the cost of returning after a miss so the next rep does not start from zero.
There’s also a second benefit: evidence. Every time you follow through on a small pre-decided action, your brain updates its model of who you are. You build a track record — not of perfection, but of return. That track record is what self-efficacy is made of.
In our latest reflection (The Real Point of Making Your Bed), we explored how the same action — making your bed — does completely different things depending on the story you attach to it. Willpower frames it as a test. Agency frames it as a choice. This companion turns that shift into a practice you can repeat.
👉 Minimum Viable Day — Keep momentum alive when the full plan cannot run
⚡ The Katas
Katas are short, named practices. Each one takes 30–120 seconds. Practice them on easy days so they’re automatic when stress hits.
1️⃣ Implementation Intentions
Developed by Dr. Peter Gollwitzer (NYU)
This kata trains deliberate choice. Use it at the start of the day or the night before, when you have not yet decided what your one deliberate action will be. You will leave nothing up to willpower at the moment it matters least.
