A goal that depends entirely on willpower is fragile. The pursuits that last are designed to persist without relying on willpower at all. How to build the structures that carry effort forward through months and years of ordinary work.

Every morning a person wakes up and decides whether to do the work, that person has created a system with a failure point built into every day. The decision may go well on Monday. It may hold on Tuesday. By Thursday, when sleep was short and the week has accumulated, the decision becomes harder—not because the commitment has changed, but because the conditions have.