As some of you know, I started 2020 with the Daily Discipline Challenge: a one month plan to
MAXIMIZE my motivation, willpower and confidence. Sounds amazing, right?
So did it work?
In terms of what I wanted to get out of it, the challenge was well worth it. I went from procrastinating most big assignments and barely being able to focus on any goal directed tasks to planning my time effectively, and concentrating on work for hours everyday (most other things staying the same). The biggest task I was personally procrastinating was studying for my MCAT exam. Since I started the Daily Discipline Challenge, I have been able to study 3-9 hours every day until last Saturday when I finally sat the 6 hour exam.
Going through this challenge but also through times of low motivation in general, I wanted to share with you the KEYS I learnt to building consistent and reliable discipline. I will also be referencing some research I have read since 2019 and using the book "The Willpower Instinct" by Kelly McGonigal, PhD.
🔑 DISCIPLINE GROWS.
"Beti, how are you so disciplined?"
Whenever somebody asks me this, they phrase it as if discipline is an intrinsic quality I have. Like I was just born with a desire to always be productive, workout everyday and meet all my goals and deadlines. As if I have a special gene that they don’t.
In fact, this is how many people thought (and still think) about discipline.
Over and over again, research has directly contradicted this theory. In one study, college students spent 2 weeks doing self-control exercises like monitoring and improving posture, regulating mood, or monitoring and recording eating. Compared with a no-exercise control group, the participants who practiced self-control exercises everyday were able to use their willpower for longer (on all the tests the researchers had them do like hand-gripping and thought-suppression).
Even before I dove into the recent literature, I knew from my experience that my willpower was something that changed and fluctuated every single day. Discipline is a skill that anyone gains with time and can also lose with time as well. I thought of my discipline as a muscle: the more I trained it, the stronger it would get. That was one of the reasons I came up with the Daily Discipline Challenge. I wanted to give myself an opportunity to work out my discipline every day to see how powerful I could make it.
Thinking about discipline this way will help you in realizing and practicing yours. Instead of one bad day making you think you have no willpower, you can notice the change and say "my willpower was pretty low today, how can I make it better tomorrow?"
In a study done at Stanford university, undergraduates were split into two groups: one that believed willpower is limited and a second that believed a person doesn't run out of willpower. The participants who thought willpower was unlimited performed better on a series of tasks. They also had greater ability to stick to a set of goals during finals week. Those who saw willpower as finite were more prone to procrastination.
Just like working out, exercising self-control can tire your willpower muscle, but over time it improves your strength and stamina.
“What starts out difficult becomes easier over time. New behaviors become habits, temptations become less overwhelming and willpower challenges can even become fun.”
- Kelly McGonial
🔑ENVISION THE BEST VERSION OF YOURSELF. NOW START ACTING LIKE HER/HIM.
"I'll start tomorrow." How often have you said that to yourself? Or maybe you said "next week, next month, next year." Whatever day you said, it was probably because you envisioned yourself as more capable, disciplined and stronger some time in the future.
Actually, studies have shown that this is how most of us think. We all like to imagine we have more time and discipline in the future.
In a study done at Duke University, researchers asked people questions like, how often will you exercise next week? and In an ideal world, how often would you exercise next week? The answers participants gave to these two questions were the same. When they returned the following week, they admitted that they had exercised less than they expected. So when they were given a second chance to predict how much they would exercise the following week, they gave numbers EVEN HIGHER than their first predictions, as if to "make up" for their unusually low performance. These studies showed that envisioning themselves better in the future, was actually hindering people from being the person they said they would be yesterday.
Instead of imagining a future ideal you that has it all figured out and all the resources to succeed, tell yourself that whatever you do today, you will do tomorrow. Even say to yourself that if you make the decision to not study today/not go to the gym today/ [insert not doing the thing that needs discipline] you are thereby committing to not do it everyday of your life from now on as well.
This exercise is powerful. It is based on behavioral economist, Howard Rachlin's approach: to reduce the occurrence of behavior, we should aim to reduce the variability. This basically means, instead of trying to change your habits, try keeping them the same day to day. In another study conducted by Rachlin, smokers who were told to smoke the same number of cigarettes everyday (if you smoke 5 today, you have to smoke 5 tomorrow) began smoking less-even though they were never told to reduce the number, just keep it the same each day. This makes each action a longer commitment and adds weight to an innocent looking cigarette. What would you do if I told you that whatever you do today, you do tomorrow?
Does this mean that you shouldn't be looking to grow and change in the future? No, it just means change NOW. Do the thing NOW. Don't just look forward to being more disciplined tomorrow - for lots of reasons, that ideal tomorrow is not guaranteed.
Focus on being more disciplined today than you were yesterday.
Another problem, with the "I'll be better tomorrow" mindset is that we essentially feel that we are not enough today. This shows in the way we think, talk and treat ourselves. We act like we are doomed to mess everything up and if we don't reward and punish ourselves correctly, we will always be naturally inclined to do the thing that goes directly against our goals and values.
We believe that we are likely to fail UNLESS we do something about it. Even if you don't think like this, if you say something like "I want to be disciplined," you're ultimately saying "I'm not disciplined." Remember, you can only want something you don't already have. To start having discipline you need to stop wanting it. Live your life like you already have it.
You are disciplined. You woke up this morning. You are taking steps towards improving yourself. You're doing everything you are doing because you want to. Achieving your goals brings you joy. Just keep making those disciplined steps. Whatever your willpower challenge is - whether its waking up early, eating healthier or exercising - do it because it's what you do. It doesn't matter if you did something else yesterday - the person you are today is a disciplined person.
See what happens when you treat yourself like you are already enough. Try to really get into the role. What would you do if you were the best version of you? Now do it.
🔑BE SCIENTIFIC
You don't have to study the research or literature on discipline to understand your willpower, but having a scientific approach definitely helps. Here's why.
Whether it's eating healthier, quitting a bad habit or being more productive, most of us tend to make these challenges moral issues when they are not. We have a little too much cake or cave in and then we "feel bad." Although some guilt makes sense, there is really no reason to conflate it to the shame and disdain we usually feel. We can give something like "lying" a moral value but when we assign morality to everything we do, it doesn't work.
Studies have found that alcoholics who drank more than they intended to one night, ended up drinking even more the next night. Giving into temptation once makes you more likely to do it again. These findings were replicated with people who were trying to lose weight. When researchers messed with the scale and made dieters think they had gained 5 pounds, instead of trying to lose it, the dieters responded by eating more calories. But do you know why? What researchers found was that people were more likely to ruin their goals not because they messed up once but because of the guilt and shame they felt afterwards. The dieters hadn't actually re-gained weight - but the belief that they had made them guilty enough to derail their progress.
Giving our habits moral values even ruins our progress when we DO stay on track. If we go to the gym or eat healthy for a day, we get so excited about our progress that we may even let ourselves "be bad" for dinner because we were oh-so-good all day. If God-forbid we overeat at breakfast we spend the whole day on junk food because now we have "ruined" the day by being bad.
When you break it down, the way most of us reason like this can sound ridiculous but it's because we do it in the unconscious corners of our brain where even the oldest conditioning and habits can have influence.
When we behaved appropriately as a child, we were rewarded for being "good." Whenever we do something we weren't supposed to we were "bad." Does eating too much cake make you a bad person? Or does eating healthy food make you a good person? Of course not, but we somehow still let it feel that way. That is what usually trips us up. And it trips us up whether or not we are succeeding at our goal.
The best way I have found around this is to bring our thinking back under the bright examining table in the fore front of our brains. Think consciously and objectively. Think like a scientist: when you have an urge to "cave", observe it first. If you emotionally react without even taking time to understand the urge, you'll always feel stuck in the same loop because you won't be able to see where you're going wrong. Listen to yourself think without engaging and notice the patterns that usually lead you to fail. When you make progress, don't even moralize it. Stop calling it "good" or "bad."
Try the tips in this blog like you are trying an experiment. Record your results either mentally or by writing them down. Find what works and what doesn't. When you're being objective, you can be logical and smart in your approach. You can see the real problems and be kind and compassionate in helping yourself work past them.
You are just trying ways to work towards your goal. Remove the morals and focus on the actual behavior you are trying to develop. Remember, you want to be doing this. You are already here.
🔑BIOLOGY DOES MATTER.
I'm not really talking about your genes here. However, putting on the scientific lens will soon reveal to you that your body's physiological state plays a huge role in your discipline.
Of the physiological factors that deter self-control, sleep is the one most cited. Sleep deprived individuals consistently report lower willpower, lower ability to resist junk food and are at higher risk for developing obesity or diabetes. Imaging studies have associated sleep deprivation with reduced functioning in the pre-frontal cortex - the same area of your brain you use to exercise willpower.
Stress is another factor that can change your physiology and hinder discipline. A highly cited study on drivers has also found that people drive more aggressively and get into more accidents when they do not have air-conditioning or it's a really hot day. Other studies show that stress makes us susceptible to willpower losses. Do you know what most people do when they are stressed about finances? They shop. When binge-eaters are made to feel ashamed of their weight, they eat more food. In another study, when participants were made to feel bad about themselves, they rated chocolate cake as more appealing - even the ones who did not like chocolate cake at all.
When you're stressed, your mind is in a state of emergency. Your brain switches into reward-seeking mode and what matters is feeling better NOW - not later. Your body will convince you to chose something that can make you feel better right away even if it demolishes your long term goals. Pay attention to your stress cues. Next time you're stressed, notice it and make a conscious decision to do something that actually relieves stress. According to the American Psychological Association, effective stress-relievers include exercising, spiritual practice, time with loved ones or art. What makes these things better than shopping, smoking, drinking or eating? They shut down the brain's stress-response and release stress-relieving and calming brain chemicals (like GABA and serotonin) and the hormone oxytocin. When you give into temptation instead, you end up feeling worse after.
I mention the studies to show you how universal these links are, but I could have easily used examples from my own life. After observing my behavior objectively, I know for a fact that after a night of poor quality sleep I eat more unhealthy. When I eat unhealthy, I don't have the energy to workout anymore. If I don't workout, I don't have the endorphin boost that usually makes me feel like being productive.
Our bodies are so much more complicated than we will ever understand. Your brain notes even the smallest changes in your diet and environment. Your hormone levels respond. Unless you're paying attention, you will always think the reason you are motivated or demotivated is something to do with who you are as a person rather than your body's physiological state.
🔑SHARPEN THE SAW
Related to key number 4 but kind of different is the idea of rest for discipline. By rest, I am not just talking about sleep. In the first key, we talked about how discipline is like a muscle that needs to be exercised - but remember that muscles need rest too. They need to be stretched and given time to recover and rejuvenate.
For your discipline, this can happen when you're sleeping - but if you use every waking hour of the day doing activities that require concentration and willpower, you will soon feel exhausted. In my favorite self-help book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey dedicates an entire chapter to the idea of rest. In it, he tells a parabol of a man who spends forever trying to chop down a tree with a dull saw. Another man observes this and tells him he would be much more efficient if he just stopped to sharpen the blade. In response the tree-chopper says, "I don't have time." I remember this story because it reminded me how often I say "I don't have time" when it comes to resting or slowing down to rest.
"Sharpening the saw is the act of preserving and enhancing your greatest asset: you. It means having a balanced program for self-renewal in the four areas of your life: physical, social/emotional, mental, and spiritual." - Meaning Ring
In the same way, rest can sharpen your willpower strength.
As you read this, if you are thinking "I have the opposite problem Beti, I rest way too much!" I want to remind you at there is a difference between procrastinating lazily and actually enjoying time designated for rest.
I now dedicate every Sunday of the week to spending family time, watching a movie, going to church or literally anything else I want to do that won't require much discipline. I take rest wholeheartedly and go through my day enjoying every moment. I don't think about work.
In the famous and replicated Chocolate Raddish experiment, psychologist Roy Bauermeister asked participants to engage in a difficult puzzle. Half the participants had just come from enjoying softly-baked chocolate chip cookies and the other half had been told to resist the cookies and eat radishes instead. The results showed that those who had used their discipline resisting the cookies gave up sooner and had less willpower on the puzzle task. Another study also found that shoppers who had spent hours deciding what to buy were more prone to temptation. Most stores take advantage of this by placing unnecessary candies and sweets near checkout.
So practice your discipline, but take breaks and don't try to use it all the time.
I really hope you have found this blog post helpful. Subscribe below for more posts like this one.
To learn more about the different approaches and theories on willpower, follow this link.
For evidence-based ideas on practices to improve willpower, check out this article.
For the book by Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct.
Have a wonderful time in the world,
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