We all go through periods of life when we’re unusually busy.

Whether it’s a few hectic days around a deadline at work or a few sleepless months after the birth of a child, there are stretches of time when our normal routine is disrupted and we’re left scrambling, trying to get everything done in far less time than we’re accustomed to.

Invariably, we neglect some area of our life: diet and exercise, family time, a hobby or three, our finances, or keeping a clean house. And most of us feel bad about it. We should be able to do everything, right?

Willpower ain’t that great.

There’s plenty of research showing that willpower isn’t something to rely on when you’re trying to meet your goals. Most people who seem to have iron willpower have actually just set up their lives in ways that don’t force them to rely on it.

Here are three ways to align your behavior with your values without relying on willpower.

Shape your environment

App designers know that we’ll tap on a red icon.

As I’ve become an evangelist of daily and weekly planning over the last couple of years, I’ve chatted with many people about the idea.

Many are interested, but few adopt the practice. It strikes most folks as just one more thing to shoehorn into their already busy lives, and it’s true that planning takes time. It’s time well-spent, though, and the world of professional sports can teach us why.

Jim Rohn once pointed out that no professional sports team in the world ever starts a game without a game plan. Not one.

Whom do you enjoy doing business with?

I visited a DMV recently, and it was a classic DMV experience: mildly unpleasant throughout. While nothing about the place seemed designed around customers’ needs or comfort, I was particularly struck by the hours.

Closed 11:30-12:30 for lunch. Closed Saturday and Sunday.

In other words, if you work standard hours and need to visit this particular DMV, you’ve got to take time off work. I’m fortunate to have the kind of job where I can slip out of the office for an hour during a quiet afternoon, but many folks aren’t so lucky. Their hours alone made it clear that this DMV was not trying very hard to earn my business, and I certainly would have preferred not to give it to them.

At Disneyland, there’s a trash can every 30 feet.

Walt Disney was obsessed with the park’s cleanliness, and in the 1950s, he determined that Disneyland guests would carry trash about 30 feet before dropping it on the ground.

Pretty pathetic, right? 30 feet? Not exactly humanity’s proudest moment.

We don’t know if Disney, faced with his findings, railed against the laziness of modern man or bemoaned the cost of installing hundreds of extra trash cans because a bunch of overgrown children couldn’t be bothered to use one of the park’s many existing trash cans.