How to Develop Self-Discipline

This article gives a broad overview of how to begin to develop self-discipline.

Including why motivation alone isn’t enough, how to form good habits, how to break bad habits, and how to stop procrastinating.

Side note, this is an older article. While still useful, you may want to check out this page for my very best and latest resources on how to build self-discipline

There are three fundamental things you need to do to build self-discipline:

1. Form good habits
2. Eliminate bad habits
3. Stop procrastinating

But first, let’s get something out of the way that is often overrated when it comes to getting things done: Motivation.

Why Not to Rely on Motivation Alone

Many people think that the key to developing self-discipline is to make sure you are motivated at all times.

The problem is, people are terrible at motivating themselves.

Sure, you can motivate yourself some days.

• When you are feeling well-rested.
• When you don’t feel drained by everything else that is going on in your life.
• After you watch the movie Rudy and channel Sean Astin.

But what about those other days? Those millions of other days you wake up and are not motivated?

What do you do then?

Well, if you rely on motivation alone, then you are in trouble.

It doesn’t matter how many motivational quotes you hear, or how much you try to hype yourself up. Motivation is just not reliable. One moment it’s there and the next moment it’s gone.

Instead, you need to go beyond motivation, and start forming habits.

How to Build Good Habits

Forming good habits is so much more important to becoming self-disciplined than motivation that it is not even a close match.

Here is the key difference between motivation and habits:

• Motivation only works some of the time.
• Habits work all of the time.

Habits are about getting things so ingrained into your routine that you consistently do them without giving them a second thought.

Good habits will power you to keep going even when you are tired, drained, or not inspired.

And consistently doing what you need to achieve your goals, no matter what, is what self-discipline is all about.

There are several keys to developing good habits:

How to Build Good Habits – Tip #1: Start Small

You are much more likely to follow through with something if you start small.

There is always this tendency to want to go all-in when you have a new goal, because you want to accomplish your goal as fast as possible.

But pushing yourself too far will actually be counterproductive.

If you start doing something with an unreasonable level of intensity, you often get overwhelmed. Which can lead you to give up that goal entirely.

But if you start small, you are more likely to follow through with your goal for the long run. And following through on a regular, consistent basis is the key to forming a habit.

For example, instead of trying to meditate an hour a day at first, just start with 5 minutes a day.

Don’t try to study every day of the week, just pick 1 or 2 days of the week you devote to studying.

After you have formed a strong habit, then you can consider gradually increasing the intensity. But starting small is going to massively increase your chance of success when you are first starting out.

In the long run, those small things are going to add up and help you achieve big results.

How to Build Good Habits – Tip #2: Create a Schedule

You need a plan in place for exactly WHEN you are going to do things.

Especially at first.

Otherwise, you will end up only doing things when you are motivated to do them. And as I discussed previously, motivation alone is not reliable because we have to do things even when we are NOT motivated.

A schedule ensures you at least have a plan in place so that you are in theory supposed to do certain tasks at certain times of each day no matter whether you are in the mood to or not.

How to Build Good Habits – Tip #3: Stick to Your Schedule (But Don’t Be Too Harsh If You Slip Up)

Of course, a schedule is only helpful if you actually stick to it!

It is especially important to stick to your plans when you first form a habit.

Every early step is a critical foundational element. Each step builds upon each other until the habit is solidified.

That said, if you do end up missing a step, don’t feel too guilty about it.

It happens to everyone, and you are better off continuing to move forward and not getting discouraged.

PS: If you are having a particularly hard time sticking to your schedule, then your expectations might not be realistic enough (see Tip #1).

How to Build Good Habits – Tip #4: Make Things as Convenient as Possible

The more convenient it is for you to work towards your goal, the higher your chance of forming a habit.

For example, if you want to get in better shape, you may be better off doing something incredibly convenient and simple to start. Something like doing 10 push ups a day – which you can do at any time or place. (Note, this is not a specific recommendation, just a general example).

As opposed to traveling to a gym that is far away. Or spending hours researching a bunch of fancy equipment to buy, or complex routines to do.

When first forming a habit, you want to reduce the amount of initial obstacles to a bare minimum.

Once you’ve formed a strong habit of exercising, then you can consider gradually moving on to things with more barriers involved.

But if you make things inconvenient before a habit is formed, you increase the risk of failure because of the intense motivation required.

And we know that motivation is not reliable.

How to Build Good Habits – Tip #5: Reward Yourself for the Small Achievements

Make sure to reward yourself along the way.

ESPECIALLY when trying to form a new habit.

Rewards incentivize you to keep going, which is critical to prevent you from giving up.

The best way to reward yourself is to continuously give yourself credit for the little successes.

Don’t just wait to reward yourself for the final outcome, because you may get discouraged that progress is taking longer than you expected and give up.

And then you won’t ever make it to that final outcome in the first place.

If you are interested, check out this article to learn how to focus on the process (and not just the outcome).

How to Break Bad Habits

The flip side to the power of good habits is the terrible destructiveness of bad ones.

At their worst, you have addictions.

At their best, you have aspects of your life that get in the way of you doing what you really want to do.

You need to get rid of your bad habits in order to develop self-discipline. If you don’t, they will constantly get in your way.

Note: Severe addictions would require a separate article to cover fully, but even just plain old bad habits can be incredibly hard to change and can have an enormously negative effect on our lives.

Take This Example:

Derrick’s goal: Start exercising regularly.

Derrick’s bad habit: Staying up late at night playing video games

They seem unrelated, right?

Wrong. Here’s what happens:

1. Derrick’s video game obsession leads him to oversleep.
2. He wakes up every day with just enough time to catch the bus to work, so he can’t exercise in the morning.
3. After work, he is exhausted, so he doesn’t have the energy to exercise in the afternoon.

The result: Derrick ends up giving up and continuing to live an unhealthy life with no exercise and inadequate sleep.

In this example, Derrick’s bad habit of playing video games late at night is leading him to live a less healthy lifestyle.

Of course, playing video games is totally fine if he could fit it in his schedule, but in his case, it is affecting his life negatively.

Think about yourself and how many little bad habits you have that prevent you from accomplishing everything you want in life.

Imagine how much better it would be if you stopped doing those destructive behaviors.

Here are a few keys to breaking your bad habits:

How to Break Bad Habits – Tip #1: Avoid Temptation

Don’t put yourself in a position to fail.

If you snack too much and it’s making your health suffer, then don’t buy snacks. Or put the snacks out of sight.

Similarly, don’t put yourself in environments where your bad habits typically occur.

If you tend to make bad decisions when you are up late at night, consider going to bed earlier.

If you get in heated arguments with people when you are hungry, make sure to eat before engaging in conversations that have the potential to get you angry.

It takes some self-awareness to uncover those kind of insights about yourself.

But if you reflect on things, you can start to find ways to uncouple your bad habits from the situations which tend to lead to them.

How to Break Bad Habits – Tip #2: Identify the Root Cause of Your Bad Habit

Think back to when you started your bad habit and why you started it.

If you can recall the origin of your habit, you can help determine the underlying cause. Then, you can better address your internal rationalization for continuing.

For example, I used to always do everything at the last second. If I had a paper to write for school, I’d do it the night before.

This worked great through high school, and even through college and grad school to some extent. Somehow or another I got lucky and made it work.

But then when I hit the real world and got a job, I finally began to feel the consequences of my bad habit. It was one thing to write a 10-page paper in a day, but another thing entirely to do a 3 month-long project in a night.

It just wasn’t feasible, and I started missing deadlines because of it.

But then, I realized why I was doing everything at the last second – because I thought it was cool.

Back in high school, all my friends thought it was much cooler to pull something off in a crunch than preparing ahead of time. And that’s when my bad habit first formed.

Once I realized the rationale that initially led me to do things at the last second, it became easier for me to start changing my ways. And slowly but surely, I learned how to prepare better ahead of time.

How to Break Bad Habits – Tip #3: Replace Your Bad Habits with Good Habits

You can’t just stop something and replace it with nothing.

Especially if your bad habit is providing you some sort of benefit. For example, if you are addicted to looking at your phone and it keeps you up at night.

One of the reasons it is so hard to stop using your phone is because there are many things which you can do on your phone which are productive.

For you to really stop doing something, you have to replace that bad habit with something else to fill the void left behind.

In the case of your phone keeping you up, perhaps instead of reading articles online late at night, you save the virtual articles for the day and read a book at night.

Side note – I’m totally fine if you save this article for the daytime if it helps!

How to Break Bad Habits – Tip #4: Create a Short-Term Incentive for Stopping

One thing that makes breaking bad habits particularly difficult, is that there are often positive benefits of those habits.

And in many cases, the positives effects pay off in the short-term and the negative effects don’t show up until farther down the road.

One example is drinking too much. It provides short run pleasure at the expense of a hangover the next day.

What’s especially problematic is that humans are often biased towards short-run benefits, even if they are worse off in the long-run because of them.

In order to truly get yourself to quit something, you need to create a short-run reward for quitting.

For example, let’s say you often drink too much when you go out with your friends.

One strategy to preventing that from happening would be to decide that you will treat yourself to your favorite restaurant if you can stop at three drinks.

By creating this short-run incentive, you align your short and long-run interests to not drink too much. And increase your chances of preventing your bad habit dramatically.

How to Break Bad Habits – Tip #5: Start Breaking Your Bad Habit Right Away

This tip may seem obvious, but in practice is rarely applied.

The longer time goes on the more ingrained it will get, which will make it even harder to stop.

Sometimes the best thing to do is to quit cold turkey. Other times, you may need to slowly ween yourself off the bad habit.

Either way, there is no reason to wait!

How to Stop Procrastinating

Speaking of not waiting, another critical aspect of building self-discipline is the ability to stop procrastinating.

Procrastination is something almost all of us have dealt with at some point in our lives.

And I used to be the biggest procrastinator in the world, so believe me, I am no exception.

But about 10 years ago I started to turn things around, and although I’m certainly not perfect, I rarely procrastinate anymore.

Here are some of the best ways to stop procrastinating:

How to Stop Procrastinating – Tip #1: Start Small

A lot of times we procrastinate because the goal we have in mind is really big or difficult.

Getting in better shape, writing a novel, studying for a midterm, or regularly meditating every day.

When we try to imagine completing those goals all at once, it seems incredibly daunting.

But if we break those goals into small steps, things become more manageable.

Sometimes when I’m really struggling with procrastinating something, I’ll start by doing something INCREDIBLY simple and easy.

Like if I need to create a project for work, I’ll just open a word doc and fill out my name, date, and anything else that doesn’t involve having to think deeply. And often that’s enough to build some momentum and get me to get even more done than that.

How to Stop Procrastinating – Tip #2: Reward Yourself for the Little Things

Sometimes we just reward ourselves if we make our biggest goal.

Let’s say we want to start exercising to get in shape. We tell ourselves our ultimate goal is to look like some fitness model we’ve seen in a YouTube video.

Then, we spend one week working out every day and eventually start to lose hope because we still don’t look like that fitness model.

We start procrastinating and the workouts become less frequent as we start to realize our unrealistic expectations are not being met.

So instead of going this route, reward yourself for the little achievements along the way.

Maybe by day five of working out you get tired a little less quickly than you did on day one. That’s progress, and you should reward yourself for it.

Not only because you deserve it, but also because if you don’t, you risk losing hope and giving up altogether.

How to Stop Procrastinating – Tip #3: Create a Schedule and Stick to It

Just as a schedule is helpful in developing good habits, a schedule is also incredibly important in helping you stop procrastinating.

Why?

Because if you put together a to-do list and have your schedule planned out, you are much more likely to follow through with your goals. As opposed to putting them off forever.

How to Stop Procrastinating – Tip #4: Don’t Overthink Things

Sometimes we focus too much on consuming information and not enough time on applying that information.

Believe me, I am guilty of that.

For example, I recently started regularly meditating. But for years before I tried meditating, I spent countless hours reading about it.

Don’t get me wrong, reading about it was helpful, but until I actually started to meditate, I wasn’t reaping any of the benefits.

I would had been better off if I had spent less time overthinking things and more time taking action.

How to Stop Procrastinating – Tip #5: Make Your Future Self Happier

One strategy to stop procrastinating, is to imagine that your future self is a real person.

A lot of times we are kinder to other people than we are to ourselves. So if you personify your future self, it can sometimes get you to treat it better.

Think through what it will mean for your future self if you don’t get something done.

For example, video games might feel good for you in the moment, but studying your coursework will make your future self a lot happier.

Don’t you want to be nice to your future self?

How to Stop Procrastinating – Tip #6: Don’t Underprioritize

If you have anything you keep putting at the bottom of your list, and never get to it because of that, consider giving it a higher priority.

For the longest time, I kept putting off making this blog.

I kept telling myself that there are other more pressing things I need to take care of first.

But then I realized that I was never going to find the perfect time to get started. I just had to make my blog a higher priority and forge ahead.

Now, if it’s not worth prioritizing, that leads to the next tip…

How to Stop Procrastinating – Tip #7: Ask Yourself if This is Something You Really Want to Do

Is this really something that you even want to do?

Usually, the things we procrastinate are very important, and not following through with them has huge negative consequences on our lives.

But every so often, there are things we are procrastinating that really aren’t high priorities.

For example, let’s say you always talk about joining a kickball league.

For some, playing kickball may be an important goal. Perhaps they played kickball when they were a kid, so it would bring back childhood memories, get them in better shape, and help them make connections with new friends.

But for others, the idea of being part of a kickball league might sound better than actually joining one. And that’s the reason they aren’t doing it.

Deep down they really don’t want to.

Make sure to separate out the things which are truly important to you from the things which deep down you don’t really want to.

Take the unimportant things off your list entirely, stop stressing about not being able to get to them, and focus on other areas of greater significance.

Conclusion

The secret to developing self-discipline is to form good habits, get rid of bad habits, and stop procrastinating.

If you can master these three areas, you will have a lot more success in life.

PS:

If you want an even deeper dive into procrastination, check out my full article on why you procrastinate important things (and how to stop).

If you want more information on how to form good habits, I have a more in-depth article where I share 11 secrets to forming good habits that stick.

And if you missed it, check out Part 1: Why is Self-Discipline Important?
This article talks about what self-discipline is and why it is so important to develop.