For those who watched the video or are familiar with her work, did it strike you as strange that both of these things are correlated with increased willpower in the future: (1) forgiving yourself and not being critical of failures of willpower and (2) being pessimistic and envisioning failures for the future? Just trying to work out in my mind why they would both be effective.
Let
I haven't watched the video and am not familiar with her work, but I have experimented with both strategies in the context of mood management, which might be similar, and I have indeed found that both strategies can work in that context. I've also found that envisioning failure doesn't work this way when I end up obsessing over it; it only works when I can accept that OK, I might fail, this is what failure would look like, I can live with that.
My own tentative theory is that the important part is accepting, rather than avoiding thinking about, the potential consequences of failure. (Or, come to that, of success.) I have no data to support this, though.
the video
I'm posting this because akrasia, procrastination and willpower are often discussed on LW. I haven't read the book, but for those that are interested "The Willpower Instinct" and "Maximum Willpower" are, from what I can tell, exactly the same books.