Activation Energy

Doing activities requires will power, addictions and procrastination require negative will power, while positive habits, especially new ones require high will power. Here’s a model for these things.

Note: All 'units' of willpower in this post are illustrative and not based on scientific measurement. They're meant to give a sense of relative magnitude and direction.

Activation Energy

To begin an activity, we need to stop the current activity, and start the new one. E.g.

$$ \text{Energy}_{\text{activation}} = \text{Energy}_{\text{Stop}}\!\left(\text{Activity}_{\text{current}}\right) + \text{Energy}_{\text{Start}}\!\left(\text{Activity}_{\text{new}}\right) $$

Starting Energy

The amount of energy required to begin an activity. Addictions are negative, habits are neutral, and new positive habits are positive. Things you are avoiding, your mental quick sand, can be very high positive.

Stopping Energy

The amount of energy required to stop an activity. This usually varies over time. Movies have a natural drop in stopping energy at the end of the movie, but the magic of TikTok and Casinos is they are designed so their stopping energy never declines.

Will Power

For me, will power is very strong in the morning, but drops over time. Doing my morning habits really charges up my will power, but you can see why I can never get to the gym after work, my gym starting energy exceeds my remaining will power.

Habits and addicitions

Habits are tools to help us reduce the starting energy for things we want to do, and increase the starting energy (and decrease the stopping energy) for our addictions.

Choices, Excuses and Energy Leaks

In the moment choices are very bad for achieving desired results, each time there is a choice the resistance gets another chance, and it’s already very strong.

In strength training there is a notion of energy leaks, places where you’re unstable where you “leak energy”, I think choices might be like that, they are chances to leak will power

Willpower as a bunch of guys lifting a log

Imagine a group of people trying to lift a heavy log together. When everyone lifts in sync, the log rises easily. But when one person drops out, the remaining lifters must strain harder. If another quits from the extra strain, the rest face an even greater burden. Eventually, the remaining lifters can’t hold the weight and the log crashes down.

This is exactly how muscle fibers work in strength training - multiple fibers must fire together to lift a heavy weight. No single fiber can lift the load alone - they must work in coordination. Willpower works the same way: it’s not a single reservoir that depletes, but a distributed system across all your life roles, each contributing their own “muscle fiber” to help you overcome activation energy.

Think of each role in your life as a muscle fiber contributing to your total willpower:

Professional Fiber

Provides structure, deadlines, external accountability
Includes traditional work, skill building, creativity, and helping others
Strongest during productive hours, depletes by evening
When missing (weekends, vacation, gap year), total capacity drops dramatically
Vacations can go two ways: vegetating weakens this fiber, but professional development and creative projects strengthen it (see /timeoff)
Doing a poor job at work also drastically weakens it

Physical Health Fiber

Provides raw energy, endorphins, self-efficacy
When weak, even basic movement becomes difficult, pain increases, fatigue dominates
Creates brain fog that impairs all other fibers
Morning workouts can boost this fiber for the entire day
The foundation - without physical energy, nothing else functions

Emotional Health Fiber

Provides resilience, emotional regulation, inner peace
When depleted, anxiety and rumination drain other fibers
Can turn negative when overwhelmed, actively subtracting from total willpower

Family Fiber

Provides purpose, love-based motivation, emotional grounding
Varies based on relationship state and family needs
Strong family connections make hard things feel worthwhile
Conflict or guilt here can drain all other fibers

Creative Fiber

Provides flow states, intrinsic motivation, identity beyond roles
Strongest during unstructured time
Needs regular feeding through creative expression
When neglected, you lose access to your deepest energy wells

Total Willpower = Sum of All Active Fibers

When all fibers are healthy and aligned, you might have 85+ units of willpower - easily clearing the 40-unit activation energy for the gym. But remove your professional fiber (gap year), and suddenly you’re down to 45-50 units. Now the gym feels impossible, not because you’re lazy, but because you’ve lost a major muscle group.

Each fiber also builds its own “memory bank” - repeated success in a role creates identity-level strength that persists even during temporary weakness. When you shift from just doing tasks to embodying an identity (“I am a runner” vs “I run”), that fiber gains reserve strength it can draw upon during difficult times.

Danger Zone and Death Spirals

When one fiber weakens, the damage compounds:

Redistribution Stress: Remaining fibers must work harder to compensate, accelerating their depletion
Misalignment Waste: Without professional structure, fibers pull in different directions, wasting energy
Cascade Failure: Weak physical health → less emotional regulation → family stress → less creative energy → professional struggles
Activation Threshold Crisis: Eventually, even low-energy activities (reading, walking) exceed available willpower

This is why a “lazy Sunday” can spiral into a “lost week” or even a “lost year” - once multiple fibers weaken, the system struggles to recover. (See /gap-year-igor for how these death spirals threaten major life transitions.)

The Addiction Doom Loop is a special type of death spiral. Addictions attack multiple fibers simultaneously:

TikTok at 2am → Poor sleep → Weakened physical health fiber
Shame about wasted time → Weakened emotional health and professional fibers
Missing family time while scrolling → Weakened family fiber
No energy for creative work → Weakened creative fiber

Now all your fibers are compromised, making it even harder to resist the addiction. You need 50 units of willpower to stop scrolling, but you only have 20 left. The negative starting energy of the addiction (-50) means you’ll default back to it, further weakening your fibers.

Why Morning Habits Supercharge Your Willpower

Look back at the willpower chart - morning habits boost willpower from 70 to 90 units. This isn’t just adding energy; it’s activating multiple fibers simultaneously:

Exercise fires up your physical health fiber
Journaling engages your emotional health and creative fibers
Family breakfast strengthens your family fiber
Review daily plan pre-activates your professional fiber

These habits create a “pre-activation” state where all fibers are warm, aligned, and ready to work together. It’s like a dynamic warm-up before lifting - you’re not just stronger, you’re more coordinated.

Remember: You don’t need more willpower - you need better fiber coordination. When your roles work together, pulling in the same direction at the right time, even the hardest activation energies become manageable.

Peer Pressure and Shared Willpower

We become the average of our peers, your peers pull you towards them, and you pull them towards you. If your peers are sitting around doing nothing so will you, and if they’re all super busy, you’ll either become busy too, or find new peers.

Are you becoming your peers, or are they choosing you?
Peers give us a chance to latch on to each others will power (or lack thereof)

Schedules

The calendar is a simple tool to reduce stopping and starting energy. If you think about going to the gym, but then need to think about when to go the gym, there’s an excellent change you won’t go. However, if you know you go to the gym after your morning coffee, the come home and take the kids to school - it’s way easier to get it done.

Sleep and activation Energy

Sleep is something we need to activate every day, and has a huge impact on our mental health, so it’s important to know how to optimize for this. First, decrease the starting energy by making consistent bed time a habit, and reducing caffeine intake. Also, don’t engage in high stopping energy activities before bed. TikTok will keep you up, but reading a boring book will get you down for the count.

Quoting Brian Johnson a good night’s sleep is like putting life into “easy mode”.