For the John Templeton Foundation, I wrote about how developing good habits may be more crucial to self-control than sheer willpower.
What is the difference between people who are productive, focused, healthy eaters, frequent exercisers, and thrifty spenders and, well, the rest of us? For most people, the story we tell about these sorts of successes or failures comes down to a matter of self-control. People who succeed seem to have it in spades, and the rest of us do not. But what if that narrative is incorrect, if people make the right choices not because they are masters of willpower but rather creatures of habit?
Wendy Wood, a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, thinks that habit has gotten a bad rap — saddled in popular conception with the negative connotations of thoughtlessness and largely ignored in the philosophical literature. Bad habits are what we fall into when we aren’t taking enough care, while good habits are just the outward signs of vigilant self-denial.