This is a long post, so if you stick with it I promise you 2 things:
- You’ll be well-positioned to build a habit and stick with it.
- I’ll give you a tool that’s worked for me.
Discipline is simple, but it takes time. Below is a typical day (yesterday):
6h34m of software development — for a side project — and I have a full-time job in hardware engineering.
What’s hardware engineering? It’s like software engineering but it’s a lot harder because the coding is a lot more verbose and primitive, and you can’t patch bugs after you ship the product. Further, if you’re in a large company, most people will try to do no work. And if everyone does no work and you’re a competitive, type-A personality (guilty), then you’re stuck doing lots of complicated work.
So, do I need to psyche myself up to do 6h34m of pure coding work? No.
Do I have days where I struggle to put in hours and hours of intellectually challenging and complex work? Nope.
Do I get burned out? Nope.
So How Do I Do It?
Why Patience Is Required.
The answer is simple, but you won’t like it. Because it takes time, and no amount of willpower can get you there quicker.
I want you to picture weightlifting as an analogy to building discipline. No matter how hard you try, you just can’t deadlift 315lb your first day at the gym.
You can force yourself to put an extra 6 hours of intense work every day, but the probability that you’ll stick with it long-term is 0.
Here’s what your output looks like if you try to “force it”:
Here’s what it looks like if you take your time:
Forcing it gives you inconsistent output. Taking your time might make you less productive at the beginning, but your overall output over a long time horizon will be a lot more. And consecutive productivity = compounded outputs. This is because you can leverage lessons you learned in your short-term memory. This means each second of work you do is more productive than the day before. Compare this to the first graph where you work hard some days, but not others. You’ll spend tons of days ‘starting over.’
The Process AKA How To Actually Do New Year’s Resolutions
2 books changed my productivity:
Read those 2 books.
Atomic Habits talk a lot about triggers (things to remind you to do the thing) and rewards (so your brain is happy that you do the thing) and stuff like that to build a habit loop. I don’t think that’s super important as I can build new habits without those, but if you really want to build a habit loop, I’ve in the past just used:
- Use an alarm clock as your trigger to remind yourself to do the thing.
- Do the thing.
- Reward yourself with porn / masturbation / some other vice.
Again, I don’t think it’s super important. So let’s just focus on DO THE THING.
Most habits I do require time. And so is time-based. I use a simple timer like https://www.timeanddate.com/timer/ and I’d ‘progressively overload’ how much time I’d spend doing stuff. Alternatively, you can just use your phone and set a timer.
But here’s how I’d start a new habit.
- Start by having myself do a laughable amount of work (i.e. almost none).
- After a few months, ramp up the work by a little.
- Over a long time, you do a lot of work.
I use this + Excel to track my progress. As an example, I wanted to do 5 habits in 2021.
Note goals in row 1 and note that I measure my accomplishments by time. “1” means done. “0” means I failed to complete that task that day. It is usually accompanied by a comment on the righthand side to root cause the issue so I minimize future failures.
Note also that the times on the first row are the times I want to do by the end of the year. For example, I started cardio OR yoga at 5 minutes a day only.
YES, 5 MINUTES A DAY. NO MORE. NO LESS.
On Feburary 1, 2021, I’d increase it to 10 minutes a day:
15 minutes on March 1st:
And I just keep progressing until I hit 30 minutes a day by July 1st.
Thus, by the end of the year, I’ve done 30 minutes+ of cardio for half the year and will easily continue the habit next year.
Finally, note that I planned out this progression on December 31st, 2020. So building these habits were all premeditated.
You should plan out your habits and their progression a year in advance, so you can just execute.
Too Lazy To Make A Spreadsheet? Free Gift For You
Spreadsheets are annoying to build, so I’ve attached it here for you. It’s the same spreadsheet as the examples above and the one I used myself in 2021. Just change the formulas so dates reflect your year. And change the number of columns and the name of the columns so it reflects habits you want to build.
Download below:
Up Next
Discipline is necessary but not sufficient for success. So you really should master the above because in all honesty, discipline is entry-level shit.