It’s hard to think of a situation in which it wouldn’t be extremely useful to have more willpower. For a start, your New Year’s resolutions would no longer be laughably short-lived. You could stop yourself spending all day on social media, spiralling into despair at the state of the world, yet also summon the self-discipline to do something about it by volunteering or donating to charity. And with more “political will”, which is really just willpower writ large, we could forestall the worst consequences of climate change, or stop quasi-fascist confidence tricksters from getting elected president. In short, if psychologists could figure out how to reliably build and sustain willpower, we’d be laughing.

　　基本上不存在毅力没用的场合。有了它，你能更长久地坚持你的新年计划，你也不会成天刷朋友圈，陷入对世界状态的绝望，同时会通过志愿者活动以及慈善活动召唤起你做事的自律精神。有了来自意念的政治信念，我们就能阻止气候变化最坏的结果，或者阻止法西斯大骗子当上总统。总之，如果心理学家能够找出如何长久地建设和保持毅力的办法，我们会大笑的。

　　resolution

　　Unfortunately, though, 2016 was the year in which psychologists had to admit they’d figured out no such thing, and that much of what they thought they knew about willpower was probably wrong. Changing your habits is certainly doable, but “more willpower” may not be the answer after all.

　　然而，不幸的是，2016年心理学家不得不承认他们没发现这个东西，而且他们自以为对毅力的了解很可能都是错的。改变你的喜好当然是可行的，但是让你有更多的毅力怕是难办。

　　Thus was born the theory of “ego depletion”, which holds that willpower is a limited resource. Pick your New Year resolutions sparingly, otherwise they’ll undermine each other. Your plan to meditate for 20 minutes each morning may actively obstruct your plan to learn Spanish, and vice versa, so you end up achieving neither.

　　因此“自我损耗”的理论诞生了：毅力是一个有限的资源。少列几条新年计划，否则他们会削弱彼此的。计划每天早上用20分钟时间来做治疗也许会阻碍你学西班牙语的计划，反之亦然；因此你两个都做不成。

　　The willpower probably isn’t like a muscle after all. It's not emotion, either.

　　毅力不像是肌肉，也不像是情感。

　　Lurking behind all this, though, is a more unsettling question: does willpower even exist?McGonigal defines people with willpower as those who demonstrate “the ability to do what matters most, even when it’s difficult, or when some part of [them] doesn’t want to”. Willpower, then, is a word ascribed to people who manage to do what they said they were going to do: it’s a judgment about their behaviour. But it doesn’t follow that willpower is a thing in itself, a substance or resource you either possess or you don’t, like money or muscle strength. Rather than “How can I build my willpower?”, it may be better to ask: “How can I make it more likely that I’ll do what I plan to do?”

　　潜伏在背后的，是一个更让人心神难安的问题：毅力真的存在吗？McGonigal将毅力定义为“一种做最重要的事——即使它很困难，或者有一部分是我们不想做的——的能力”。因而毅力就是一个归因于那些说到做到的人的词，它是对这些人的行为的判断，但这并不意味着毅力是一种像金钱或者肌力一样的你拥有或不拥有的物质或者资源。与其问：“我能构建自己的毅力吗？”不如问：“我怎样才更可能做我计划要做的事情？”

　　The most important boost to your habit-changing plans, though, may lie not in any individual strategy, but in letting go of the idea of “willpower” altogether. If the word doesn’t really refer to an identifiable thing, there’s no need to devote energy to fretting over your lack of it. Behaviour change becomes a far more straightforward matter of assembling a toolbox of tricks that, in combination, should steer you well. Best of all, you’ll no longer be engaged in a battle with your own psyche: you can stop trying to “find the willpower” to live a healthier/kinder/less stressful/more high-achieving life – and just focus on living it instead.

　　尽管对提升你的改变兴趣的计划最重要的不仅是个人的策略，而且是集体摆脱“毅力”这个观念。如果这个词真的是虚无缥缈的，你就不必焦虑自己缺少它了。行为习惯上的改变成为了一个关于能够很好地操纵你的小把戏工具箱的更加直接的问题。最好的是，你将不会再忙于与自己的心灵作战了：只需要关心生活本身，你可以停下寻找“毅力”的步伐，过上更健康/善良/高成就而压力更小的生活了。