Excellent question!
Whether you’re aware of it or not, you already are self-disciplined in some areas of your life. Maybe you have your breakfast at the same time each morning, or you set aside a few hours last night to prepare for an important work meeting. The question is how important is self-discipline to you, and what are some ways to boost it in your daily life.
I found it helpful to think of it like this: you can increase self-discipline if you:
Limit your excuses. It’s something we all do. There isn’t enough time in the day, I woke up too late, I need to treat myself after a long day at work. If you want to get serious about self-discipline, treat your excuses as your enemy. They are what’s standing between you and taking action, between you and seeing results. Are they really worth it? Identify what is preventing you from moving forward and assess whether that reason is big enough (or important enough) to derail your day. Once you make the time to look at your excuse calmly and rationally, you’ll figure out how to reduce it and pay less attention to it.
Find a SME (subject matter expert). This can be anyone, from someone you know in your social network to a well-known person like a podcast host, public speaker, or athlete. The key to finding the right SME is to look for someone whose traits, habits, and lifestyle you admire. It should be someone who is a thought leader, someone who has achieved mastery in their field, and someone who has more experience under their belt. Then start reading and listening to what they have to say. Subscribe to their blog, Twitter account, Quora profile, or podcast — and follow what they say every day. By absorbing their learnings and life experience, you’ll set yourself up to get on the same path.
Identify what you want and write it down. More often than not, we make grand statements like, I want to have a million dollars or I want to be an expert in my field or I want to win this competition. But those statements are too abstract; it’s as if we are chasing a vague image that’s somewhere on the horizon, but we don’t actually know what it is. Make your goals reachable by tightening them up. Start with a list where you brainstorm all the possibilities. Be as specific as possible. If you want a higher-paying job, write down the role you want and a specific number for a salary (“I want to work as a senior data analyst at company X and earn an annual income of… “). If you want to get fit and lose weight, write down what that will take (“I want to lose 20 pounds by October, which means I’ll change my diet and work out Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays.”).
Start small. If you are feeling overwhelmed with the amount of things you need to do to reach a goal, you’re not alone. Most of us feel this way. This is why it is so important to start the journey with a very small habit — the smaller it is, the greater the chance it will stick. A good way to do this is to select one of the goals from your list and start there. This doesn’t mean you’ll ignore everything else, but rather that you’re helping your brain focus on the goal most important to you right now. Next, find a small block of time where you’ll do something to get you moving in the direction of the goal. For example, if your goal is to lose weight, start by turning on the timer for 15 minutes and going outside for a brisk walk around your neighborhood.
Turn your timer into your best self-discipline tool. Locate the timer on your mobile phone (usually it’s in the built-in clock app). Or, get a multi-timer app which you can customize for different recurring habits (working out, meal prep, house chores, reading, cooking, etc.). Make it a point never to start working on anything without setting a timer. It’s an excellent tool to keep you focused, better manage your time, strategize the day by prioritizing tasks, and even help you feel more relaxed and less worried about “all that work you must do.” Have to clean the house? Set the timer for 15 minutes and see how much you can do in one go. Want to review for your exam? Set the timer for 25 minutes (that’s the length of one Pomodoro session), then take a break.
Keep the same schedule every day. You won’t achieve greater self-discipline if you work early one day, then leave the same work for the evening of the next day. If you’re going to build better habits and make them stick, train your brain to do the same type of work at the same time. Learn more about the circadian rhythm (our natural biorhythm) to maximize your morning, afternoon, and evening. For example, most people reach their peak cognitive performance up to 4 hours after waking up, which may be the best time for complex cognitive activities like studying, reading, writing, and problem-solving. If you typically spend mornings answering emails, you may want to rethink how you’re using that time and if you can save email checking for later in the day.
Track everything in a bullet journal. It’s one thing to say you’re making progress on a goal or improving a habit. But how do you actually know that you are? Let’s say that three years from today you’ll find yourself struggling to make progress on a goal very similar to the one you’re working on right now. Wouldn’t it be great if the recipe for success were right there, written out like a formula in a notebook? That’s where the bullet journal comes in handy. It is a dedicated journal where you track what you’re doing every day. You can create a monthly and weekly grid, and then map out your time into the smallest increments (hourly or less). This is something you can prepare for the month ahead on a Saturday morning before the new month begins. When you have your plan written out, all you need to do is stick to it, mark everything, and even jot down a few notes on what went well that day, or what didn’t go as planned. That way you are documenting every step to learn from it, and to show your future self how exactly to achieve the result you want.
⏱🏃🏾♂️🗓 If you are interested in this topic, I put together an e-book package called My Complete Self-Discipline Kit (Workbook + Journal). You can learn more about it here.
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