By Design — Future You Doesn't Need More Willpower

Hi Reader,

A few weeks ago, someone asked me a thoughtful question.

"Dami, can you help people build more willpower?"

I understood what she meant, and it was a tough one to respond to, because willpower always so easily presents as the first problem to solve, but it is usually the wrong one.

Be more disciplined. Be more motivated. Want it more. Try harder.

As someone who spends her days helping organizations build products, I can categorically say that product teams don't design products based on the assumption that users will always make the right decision.

In fact, it's the opposite.

We know that people will get distracted. They will forget. They will choose convenience. They can get interrupted. Life will happen.

So the question we solve for is: "How do we design the experience so people naturally move toward the outcome we want?"

Think about Amazon's one-click ordering, Netflix's autoplay, Spotify's recommendations, and Google Maps' rerouting. They are all examples of systems designed to reduce friction. Not increase willpower.

The best products don't rely on users. They are designed for real people and real life.

I truly believe we can do the same with our life goals, which is why I'm pouring my energy into By Design with Dami.

And that brings me to today's newsletter topic: Future You.

Most of us imagine Future Us as someone who is twenty years away. Older, wiser, finally has it all figured out. That's not wrong, just incomplete. Future You is also waiting two weeks from now, two months from now, at Christmas, and so on.

All those versions of you will inherit the decisions you're making today. Not your intentions, your decisions. Every day, we cast dozens of big and tiny votes for which version of us will arrive in the future.

The small decisions we overlook, like going to bed when you said you would, taking a walk, starting that project, or reaching out to that person. None of those decisions feel life-changing on their own, but they aren't isolated. They accumulate and compound to deliver a future version of you.

Just like they do in product development.

A successful product doesn't come from one brilliant decision. It is the accumulation of hundreds of ordinary ones. A collection of all the decisions made throughout the product's life cycle that ultimately determine its future.

This is why my work isn't really about building stronger willpower.

It's about building better decision systems.

• Knowing your North Star before you arrive at the fork in the road.
• Deciding your priorities before Monday morning becomes noisy.
• Making intentional trade-offs instead of accidental ones.
• Designing your environment so Future You isn't constantly relying on Present You to win another internal argument.

Take calendar blocking, for example. Most people use their calendar the way they use a waiting room. Things show up and fill the space. Meetings get added. Deadlines appear. By Friday, the week has happened to them.

But what if you made one decision on Sunday evening or Monday morning about what this week is actually for? You block the time before the noise arrives. Not because you have more discipline than everyone else. Because you designed the decision in advance.

You, at 9 am on a quiet Sunday, are a much better decision-maker than you at 8 am on a noisy Wednesday.

The Present You being asked to choose between your priorities and the loudest thing in your inbox (or doomscrolling) is not the version of you that should be making that call.

To be clear, willpower is incredibly valuable. I'm just saying it is a terrible long-term strategy, because it gets tired, emotional, and interrupted. It has bad days.

Life eventually finds a way to exhaust it.

Good design doesn't eliminate the need for willpower, but it doesn't ask willpower to do a job that it was never meant to do alone. It designs systems that kick in when willpower fails, as it will.

The version of you who wakes up two weeks from now is already being designed. So is the version of you who finishes this year.

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This week's question:

Where are you currently relying on willpower, when what you really need is a better-designed decision?

Intentionally,

Dami