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Discipline: the missing link between mediocrity and mastery.
Discipline. Few words elicit such mixed emotions.
For most of us, discipline represents an unfair battle. Pitted against our dutiful adult self is an often petulant inner child. The adult is willing to hold its nose and drink the bitter medicine; the child kicks and screams until it gets its hands on a Capri Sun. The child often has the tactical advantage, but the adult has the strategic edge, at least as long as it's willing to accept short-term discomfort for long-term gain.
Discipline vs self-control
To reach any level of excellence, we're usually required to do things that take us past the edge of our comfort. That ongoing discomfort is tiring, which is why we get tempted by the path of least resistance: we procrastinate, give in to short-term gratification, or postpone endlessly. The result is a cognitive dissonance between wanting to be successful and knowing we're not doing what success requires. That dissonance can trap people for years.
The way out is self-discipline, and it helps to separate it from self-control. The difference is subtle. Self-control is about saying no to temptation and unhelpful behaviours. Self-discipline is about saying yes to the actions that move you closer to your goal. For example, discipline gets you out of the house at 6.30am for your run; self-control stopped you binge-watching Netflix the night before.
So where does willpower fit in? Willpower is self-control on steroids, the focused burst of energy we draw on when our self-control runs low. It helps us override what psychologists call our 'hot' emotional system (impulses and urges) with our 'cool' cognitive system (the rational, consequence-weighing part). The ability to self-regulate between the two is essential to a productive, healthy life.
The myth of ego depletion
A persistent idea says willpower gradually depletes as the day goes on, the so-called ego depletion theory: easy to refuse a doughnut at breakfast, much harder at 7pm after a rough day. Recent research suggests this is outdated, and some studies conclude it might not exist at all.
A study by Stanford's Carol Dweck only found signs of ego depletion in people who believed willpower was finite. Those who didn't see it as a limited resource showed no depletion at all. Believing willpower runs out appears to have a nocebo effect: convince yourself you'll have none left by 7pm and there's little point even resisting. The psychologist Michael Inzlicht suggests we stop treating willpower as fuel in a tank and instead treat it as an emotion, something we can manage and train. And just as you never 'run out' of anger or joy, you never really run out of willpower. You can generate it by changing your internal or external environment. Here's how.
1. Optimise your mind and body
The time of day has little impact on your willpower. Tiredness, on the other hand, has plenty. As the American football coach Vince Lombardi put it: "Fatigue makes cowards of us all." Prioritise sleep above almost everything, because even one bad night can make you quit early. Add regular movement, whole foods, and a little meditation or mindfulness, and you become far less likely to act on impulse.
2. Build internal credibility
Unless you believe you're the kind of person who does what they said they'd do, you'll never quite respect yourself. Build that credibility by setting one small goal that matters to you and that you genuinely believe you can stick to, fifteen minutes of stretching after you wake, or five minutes planning tomorrow at the end of the day. Then do exactly what you agreed, and repeat it until it's frictionless. Only then expand it into something more challenging. This is how your words start to match your actions.
3. Make your environment more favourable
One of the best ways to regulate yourself is to set up your environment so it nudges you towards the right things and away from the wrong ones. Trying to eat better? Don't keep junk in the house. Building a morning routine? Lay the mat out the night before and decide your stretches in advance. The social scientist Jon Elster called these pre-commitment devices: we commit in advance so our future actions match our current intentions.
4. Aim for things you care deeply about
A common reason we don't achieve as much as we'd like is that many of our supposed goals were never really ours. It's easy to get caught up in someone else's dream. Get into the habit of checking why you agreed to something and whether it fits your values. The energy you get from working towards something personally meaningful is often enough to keep you going when it gets hard.
5. Build discipline into your identity
Ever since you became self-aware, you've been constructing your identity, partly from the messages you repeat to yourself. "I'm not a morning person." "I'm hopeless at being organised." Whatever you repeat often enough is what you become. So develop more useful identity statements instead: "I'm the kind of person who goes to the gym three times a week," or "I'm someone who does what they say they'll do." Combined with the evidence you build in step 2, this dissolves the internal conflict.
6. Trap yourself with congruence
To be genuinely effective, your thoughts, emotions and actions need to align. There's a simple way to hold yourself to that: tell other people about your goals. It creates another pre-commitment device, because most of us are less willing to disappoint others than to disappoint ourselves.
Discipline, the Cinderella of life skills
Your willingness to self-regulate is a vital life skill. The adult self's ability to push past discomfort is often what separates people who live up to their potential from those who never quite do. Get there by resolving the dissonance between wanting the goal and not wanting to do what the goal requires, cultivating the belief that willpower never runs out, and building an identity that thrives on congruence.
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