Remember when willpower was enough?

A few weeks ago, while speaking to my co-editor and good buddy EJ Davies, he told me about something called the Pavlok.  If you haven't heard of it, go ahead and google it.  I'll be right here, no worries.

For those who can't be bothered to google it, the Pavlok is a wrist band which is marketed as a 'personal coach on your wrist'.  It is a wristband that delivers electric shocks to the wearer, and is designed to do so whenever they are in danger of doing (or not doing as the case may be) whatever thing it is that they shouldn't (or should) be doing.  Basically, it is a negative reinforcement device, designed to apply something unpleasant in order to force the user into compliance.  Hence the clever pun-name 'Pavlok'.

My instant reaction, as a 34 year old man-child who is self employed, works from home and suffers greatly at times with regards to motivation, was that I would gladly have one.  Then I thought about it a bit more, and about the kind of pattern it represented, and I began to realise something - willpower has become something of an old-fashioned concept in modern society.

Sure, that may seem like a sweeping statement, but think about it for a second.  We don't tell smokers to quit cold turkey anymore.  We tell them that help is at hand with 'nicotine replacement therapy' and 'e-cigarettes'.  Many of the commercials aren't even subtle anymore - they flat out disparage the 'willpower method', consigning it to the dustbin of certain failure before it has even been tried.  You can see it elsewhere too.  Companies that will send you your ready prepared 'healthy meals' to your door if you want to lose weight, counting the calories so that you don't have to.  Finance that enables you to have that latest, newest shiny thing that you absolutely must have without the inconvenience of actually saving up to pay for it.

I fully accept (and in many ways appreciate) the fact that we live in an age of technology that allows us many luxuries.  We can shop, bank and transact business of all kinds without actually having to leave the house.  We can research complex subjects without the hassle of leafing through thousands of pages of dusty textbooks that may or may not be out of date.  And we can provide a crutch for those who need it, using the benefits of technology to help them overcome otherwise insurmountable personal mountains.

But are they even trying?  That's my real question.  I might have reflexively joked that the Pavlok was just what I needed in my life, but I am a grown man and I am capable of actually sitting my ass down and doing the things that I need to do if I put my mind to it.  I can even eat more healthily after a lifetime of not doing so.  I quit smoking with nary a whiff of nicotine gum, e cigs or anything else - ok so I read a book, but I hardly think that counts to the same level.

I'm not trying to bash people here.  I know better than mos the struggles that some people can have with weight loss and comfort eating and other forms of addiction.  But I worry about a society where a band that gives you electric shocks if you aren't doing whatever the thing is that you think you should be doing is the solution - surely if the thing itself is not motivation enough, that speaks to a deeper problem? I WANTED to quit smoking when I did, and so I damned well did and haven't looked back.  But all the other times, the times when I thought I probably SHOULD quit because friends and family were nagging me, I would spend a torturous few days/weeks/months without cigarettes, making everyone else's lives miserable, and then inevitably fold and light up once again.

So my point is, if you want to do more exercise, or lose some weight, or quit smoking or whatever, I think that the first thing that you really NEED to do is think really hard about whether the goal is something that you WANT or just a thing that you feel compelled to do for some other reason.  If you WANT to eat more healthily, then you will.  If you WANT to stop smoking, you will find a way.  If you WANT to lose weight, then you will look at ways of doing it, be that portion control, exercise or whatever mixture of both suits you (NB I realise that weight loss is a tricky one - again, I have experience enough to know that some people can eat as little and exercise as much as they like and still find themselves unable to shake excess weight, but my point here is that if they WANT to then they should be able to do the less eating and/or more exercising without a portable bloody generator delivering shocks to them if they don't).

Willpower alone can be tough - of course it can.  And help is not something that anyone should ever feel ashamed to seek - I speak there as someone who has suffered personally with mental issues and physical ones.  But I think the key differentiator here is 'help'.  Help to achieve some goal that you are setting yourself is one thing.  Strapping a band to your arm that will FORCE you to set off for that goal on pain of receiving an electric shock strikes me less as seeking assistance and more as just accepting from the start that you can't possibly do it and therefore abstaining all responsibility whatsoever.  And that can't be right, can it?