How to Become More Disciplined - A Quick Guide

Ask yourself this question: Are you someone who relies on motivation or discipline to get things done? Maybe you don't know the answer to that question, or maybe your answer is, "Well, a little bit of both." Well, in this video, I'm going to talk about why discipline is infinitely more powerful than motivation and why you should never rely on motivation ever again to get things done.

I'm Joey, and welcome to Better Ideas.

So, I said I was gonna tell you why you should never rely on motivation ever again to get things done, but don't interpret that as me saying that motivation is a bad thing. Motivation is great, and it should be taken full advantage of. But what are you supposed to do on days where you're just not motivated at all? The days where you've forgotten all your original goals, all the reasons why you're excited about improving in the first place, and days where you just don't really want to do anything?

You see, motivation is great, but it's fleeting. It comes and goes. Think about it as a divine gift from above; you know, you're blessed with it every once in a while. It gives you a little kick in the pants, gets you moving, makes you inspired, set new goals, dream big. Sometimes this motivation can last days, weeks, months, but you'll always hit a roadblock. You'll have an off day, an off week. The stress of schoolwork and relationships starts piling up, and you're just not as motivated as you were before. You're in a situation where you need motivation the most, but it's not there for you. Motivation has failed you.

Thankfully, there's hope, and it's called discipline. Discipline operates differently than motivation. Whereas motivation is a divinely inspired gift from above, discipline is a muscle, a mechanical neurological system that gains power and influence through repetition.

A lot of people think about discipline like it's something that some people have and some people don't. You know, "I'm not a very disciplined kind of guy," or "I just kind of go with the flow and I wait till I'm motivated to do stuff." But discipline isn't a character trait; it's a tool that everyone has, just not everyone uses. The truth is, everyone has enough discipline to do at least one thing every single day towards a larger goal. The folks over on Reddit call this having a non-zero day.

A non-zero day is a day where you do at least one thing towards a larger goal instead of doing nothing. For instance, a zero day sounds like this: "Man, last Saturday I was so lazy. Oh, so tired. I really didn't feel like doing anything. I just played Xbox all day long." A something day sounds like this: "Man, last Saturday I was so lazy, so tired. I didn't feel like doing anything. I pretty much played Xbox the entire day, but my larger goal, my bigger goal, is to get fit. So, I promised myself I would walk at least once around the block."

Obviously, overall, that sounds like a lazy day no matter what. But the difference between doing something and not doing something, as I've talked about in a previous video, is the slight edge, the compound effect—whatever you want to call it. It's a subtle difference, but it's a huge difference, and it's extremely important to do that little thing towards a larger goal every single day because it's better than zero.

So, set some goals, some really big goals, life goals, and convert it into a little tiny action that you can do every single day. Stick with it for a month, because after a month, it'll become a habit, and habits have momentum. Pretty soon, that habit will become just a well-oiled machine that's ingrained into your daily lifestyle, and eventually that healthy thing will become easier to do than it is not to do because it's a habit—like chewing your nails or picking your nose—except it's actually really good for you, and it's making you better every single day without you having to think about it.

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For more information on building discipline and habits in general, a great and award-winning book—I don't know if it's award-winning, I just made that up—a highly reviewed book is "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg. I'll put a link in the description for that book.

Thanks a lot for watching, and we'll catch you in the next video.