The Art of Discipline

Cultivating Clarity and Conquering Procrastination

We all have a dream waiting inside of us to manifest; something we’ve been yearning to accomplish. And yet, we also notice in retrospect that we aren’t playing our cards correctly. I’ve noticed that dream actualization depends on a string of skills, and it goes something like this:

Ambitious dreams require productivity

Productivity requires the skill of time management

Time management requires cultivating good habits

Good Habits require an identity shift

Identity shifts requires the art of eliciting emotions

Eliciting Emotions requires discipline

The crux of the matter is that your ambitious dreams hinge on how disciplined you are. Yet, I also find that this is a huge misunderstanding on what discipline actually is.

Why People Burn Out

Unfortunately, people confuse discipline with willpower.

Willpower is the act of exerting force upon yourself in order to override your impulses and get things done.

Don’t get me wrong, willpower is a valuable resource and has it’s own place, however relying on sheer willpower to get things done is the quickest way to your burn yourself out.

Think of willpower alike the first gear on a car’s transmission. At best it should be used to get you moving. However if you’re not able to upshift into something more appropriate you’ll destroy your vehicle, or in this case yourself.

So What is Discipline?

If we remove willpower from the discipline equation, what exactly is left of discipline?

After careful reflection, I find that discipline is the art of balancing two skills: maintaining clarity and mitigating friction. When the clarity and friction are balanced correctly, productive action happens automatically. Contrary to popular belief, it is discipline ignites fun. And it’s fun that pulls us towards our dreams.

Clarity: Knowing your Why

Neglecting your ‘why’ destroys momentum and makes you susceptible to all distractions and noises in your vicinity. When you aren’t clear on why it’s important to get the task at hand complete, it doesn’t take much to break your focus.

Your own general curiosity will betray you and all it takes is a noisy digital ping on your phone, someone asking for your attention, or even a hunger cue.

Snap! Just like that you’re sucker punched out of your flow state. Anytime a new context is thrown at you, you’ll allow yourself to be repurposed.

On the other hand, the more clear you are about why the task at hand is important, the more likely you are to remain focused and prioritize what you want despite what your environment, habits, or inner world have to say.

Clarity: Knowing your What

Neglecting your ‘what’ is the number one cause of procrastination. Even if you’re clear on why you want an outcome, being unclear on what needs to be done next is the quickest way to drop the ball. This is especially true when you’re overwhelmed by many tasks that compete for your attention. It’s known as paralysis by analysis.

On the other hand, having a clear idea of what needs to happen next keeps your momentum going. Having a list of things that needs to get done is what allows you to keep the momentum, and keeping knocking things out one after the other. It’s also very satisfying to cross things off your list, which builds more momentum and anticipation to cross the next one off too. If managed correctly, this is where gamification begins and one can truly enjoy the proces.

Clarity: Knowing your How

Neglecting your ‘how’ is the number two biggest cause of procrastination. Here’s a couple ways that

• Avoidance: not knowing how to do something causes a sense of pain and results in avoiding the task.
• Rabbit holes: not knowing how to do something often requires research. And if you don’t take the right safety measures, you’ll easily fall into overeducating yourself, or worse, find yourself with shiny object syndrome.

On the other hand, one of the prerequisites of enjoyment is mastery. We don’t love all the things we’re good at, but we do get a dopamine hit when we get better. When you know how to do the thing you need to do, it can be a lot of fun. Some tasks do take more reframing than others to turn into challenges. And challenges are great way to get back into the flow state, it’s also why the pomodoro technique works for many people.

Mitigating Friction

Neglecting friction is a surefire way to come to a screeching stop. Friction comes in many forms and usually has something less important disguised as urgent.

These lesser important things screaming for attention can come in many forms. They can show up as loved ones asking for your attention, people finally replying back to you to get something done, reminders of something else you would like to do, and even requiring to wait for something else to be done in order for you to proceed.

When you don’t mitigate friction, you are allowing the momentum of other things to hijack your life.

On the other hand, when you mitigate friction you create space for yourself to smoothly move towards your goals. You go from putting yourself last to prioritizing what needs to be done so that when you look back in time you don’t feel like you’re behind and that you could have been so much more ahead.

In short, discipline is the art of managing your inner and outer worlds in a way that opens you up to productive action. It makes life a lot more engaging and fun. Willpower may be required to get the ball moving every now and then, but if you’re exercising discipline correctly, you should be looking forward to a live that is exciting and meaningful.

Originally published at https://mentalchai.substack.com.