Discipline yourself
I’m a fan of Quora. It lets you tap into a pool of knowledge that is otherwise difficult to stumble upon. Guess how many people ask about, “How can I be more successful?” “How can I improve my position in life?” “What things must I do to get a promotion?”
Easy answer—become more disciplined.
We are a society of "treat yo-self". Discipline is that un-sexy topic, but I decided to go there anyway.
It’s not about working longer hours. It’s about being extremely disciplined with the hours in a day. We all live by the same clock. 168 hours in a week.
Get up on the first alarm
“I’m so glad I hit snooze five times, tossing and turning in a state of semi-sleep”. Said no one, ever.
It’s not a coincidence that the people you idolize (Bezos, Cook, Nooyi, Dorsey, Branson) rise between 3:45 and 5:15. Every day.
The common sentiment amongst the early risers is that they value time without distraction or interruption more than the extra bit of sleep. They use this time to meditate, workout, or write their list of priorities for the day. They’re not waking up early to waste it on frivolous activities.
This needs to be said—waking up early is not easy. It does not come naturally when you are already tired or putting yourself in a large amount of sleep debt. But this is where the discipline is so important. You need to power down the electronic device, get off Instagram, and hit the sack at a decent time to give your body what it needs.
If you power through the urge to hit snooze, you have just subconsciously created your first win of the day.
I just listened to a podcast where JT McCormick describes how he mentally revs himself up for his 4 am wakeups. He says, “there are people in the world who are ill, fighting wars, and living through terrible hardships. It becomes very easy to wake up early to work out and improve your skills when you consider that all you have to do is step out of bed”. Ok, maybe a little bit like your mom telling you to finish your dinner because of the starving children all over the world, but what he’s saying is—this is the simplest thing you can do today to be successful, so just do it.
Tell yourself whatever story you need to make this the easiest thing you do today.
Ritual is powerful in our lives
Rituals can be created. They’re called habits. Your life is governed by habits—good or bad. You can use discipline to shift these habits for the better.
While you may not even notice it, days where you act out your favorite rituals are probably the best days you have.
For example, when I’m travelling— and I’m not talking luxury travel to an urban metropolis, I’m talking Chetwynd BC—my ritual goes to shit. There’s no good coffee, no gyms open, the breakfast is about as processed as it gets, and it’s probably minus 30 out so I’m forced to actually scrape a window instead of enjoy the comfort of underground parking. I can either be bothered by this, letting it ruin the start to my day, or I can plan for it.
Good coffee—easy. Starbucks Via and some hot water.
Healthy breakfast—single serve packs of Vega and some water plus a piece of the fruit that no one ever eats in those continental breakfasts. They won’t care if you take a handful for your bag either.
No gym—don’t skip your investment in your health. Trade it, if necessary. If pounding out a 10 k run sounds awful, trade it in for a walk outside to get fresh air. But don’t take it off the roster entirely.
I'm simplifying my ritual here, but the point is that nothing can shake you from having a fantastic day, or being your best self, if you simply look at your life as a series of habits. Prioritize the good ones, develop alternatives for the bad ones, and all of a sudden you have dramatically improved your life.
If anyone is looking to delve into the science that describes how powerful habit and ritual is to our overall health and happiness, check out The Power of Habit by Charles Munger. Loved this book.
Air tight work windows
Do this: swipe up on your iPhone, open clock app, set timer, begin.
I cannot think of a single time I’ve had “enough time” for a big proposal. It’s intentional that they give you 5 less days than you need to get it done, and it’s not going to change.
So, when this becomes the norm, you can choose to procrastinate and be miserable, or you can carve out blocks of time where your attention will be focused on one thing only.
Close your non-related apps (email is the worst for me) and signal to the rest of the world you are not to be disturbed. Once the timer starts, nothing, and I mean nothing, is to prevent you from getting this task done.
Repeat until major project is complete.
It’s astonishing how much you can get done in this fashion. I believe it serves a second purpose for me, which is to alleviate the anxiety of perfection. I give myself one hour to hit the send button on the proposal, even if I have four before the deadline. The marginal return on those four hours of fluff is not worth the time spent. Check for formula errors in the spreadsheet, spell check, proofread, send.
Discipline is 100% mental. And I think it's the easiest thing you can focus on if you want to dramatically improve your life.
