Self-control is commonly defined as the ability to restrain one’s impulses in the service of greater goals and priorities, and has been viewed by scientists and media alike as a key ingredient for personal goal attainment. According to popular wisdom, self-control brings about the good life, helping people reach their longstanding goals. But is self-control, and specifically restraining powerful desires, really all that it’s cracked up to be? Does resisting temptations actually lead people to accomplish their goals? This seems self-evidently true, but the connection between effortful restraint and goal attainment has been curiously unexamined. Using experience sampling methodologies where participants reported on the desires and temptations that they experienced and the self-control that they used in real-time through the day for 7 days, we found that it is the frequency of experiencing temptations, rather than the amount of self-control exerted, that contributes to successful goal pursuit (assessed 3 months later). This study also found that simply experiencing temptations led people to feel depleted. Depletion in turn mediated the link between temptations and goal attainment, such that people who experienced increased temptations felt more depleted and thus less likely to achieve their goals. Critically, using Bayesian analyses that allowed us to confirm null effects, we found that effortful self-control was consistently unrelated to goal attainment. The best way to attain your goals, then, is not to exert effortful self-control, but to set up your life in such a way that temptations are minimized and the use of self-control is not necessary.