The Journey of Discipline
Tags: entrepreneurship, goals, productivity, timemanagement
Published: 2020-07-08 07:16:56

---
title: The Journey of Discipline
published: true
date: 2020-07-01 11:01:01 UTC
tags: entrepreneurship,goals,productivity,timemanagement
---

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*bbma2RA0NPt_uHg4t95RCA.png)

Discipline has been considered as a bad word or punishment by many in today’s world that people don’t even consider the value it brings to life. Here, we are going to see why this is really not the case. We will also see what discipline has to offer and what you can do to bring some discipline to your life.

Discipline is a practice which you exert upon yourself to bring about governance, regulations and self-awareness to the activities that you do everyday and allow you to systematically control the outcomes that you are expecting to have.

**But why would you even want to do that?**

To be honest, our life includes a lot of chaos, distractions and un-essential things which become barriers to what you really want to do. And this is where discipline plays a major role. It helps you organize yourself, plan effectively, have the eagle-eyed focus which you really want and more than everything makes it a habit and a routine for you that you don’t even feel the pressure of doing something hard after some point of time.

This is completely different from externally imposed discipline. In military, for instance discipline is externally imposed but then at some point of time it becomes a habit for you thus making it a self-discipline and it is really powerful because you don’t need any external factor to dictate what you have to do. Rather, you dictate your own habits and routines.

**So, what does discipline mean for us?**

It can be as simple as waking up early or going to bed every day at the same time, exercising daily for a fixed duration, working on your goals set for the day in a planned fashion or anything which you think would really help you over the long run if not in the short term.

If you want to really do something great, you might even have to sacrifice your short-term enjoyment for your long-term goals and vision. And that is what discipline is all about. Maintaining a control of yourself. You dictate your mind and not let the mind dictate you.

**So, how do I impose discipline in my life?**

Now that we have talked about what discipline has to offer you, the best way to impose discipline in your life is to maintain a proper calendar.

You need to plan your short-term and long-term goals add a due date and put it out there in the calendar. Now, divide that into steps/chunks and plan your every day activity and put it all in the calendar.

Now, all this was the planning phase. Now, it gets harder. You have to sweat.

Go about every day looking at the calendar, doing exactly what you had planned. Yes, when you start it will be very hard, you will deviate a lot from what you had planned. But atleast, you will improve every day one step at a time.

The beautiful thing about this is that you get clear direction on what you really want to do, when you want to do it and all you have to do is, gear up at that time and “JUST DO IT!”

**Moving to the next step**

If things are working well, great! You have done a good job sticking to a discipline. But if you really want to transform the way you do things, you have to push yourself to the breaking point. Incentivize yourself to everything you achieve everyday to get the real motiviation you need but don’t stop yet.

Humans can do a lot more than what they are doing right now and all you need is passion, drive, discipline and smart work to get there.

Reached the goal for a day? Good. See if you can do a bit more the next day. Keep doing this and suddenly you will see your potential rise to great heights.

**Techniques & Tips to bring in discipline**

**Pomodoro:** Pomodoro really helps when you want to put all your focus on one thing for the next 25 minutes keeping all your distractions away. You can divide your entire day into multiple pomodoros. For instance, I try to divide my day like this:

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/520/1*KDLzCt4giqNX0sENkikiaQ.png)

While I have not been able to completely stick to this, it is a journey and I am trying hard everyday to improve myself and while you need not have a similar schedule, the most important thing is that you should have a schedule.

**Blackbox Model:** If you have something that you want to do, use the blackbox model. You have a certain output that you expect, you have certain inputs or resources with you. Now, all you have to do is focus on that black box to get your work done. This way, you don’t get distracted by anything else but rather put all your attention towards doing what you really need to do.

**One Thing at a Time:** When I work on something specific, I close all the other tabs, windows and applications and just have the respective window/tab open so that I don’t get distracted by anything else but rather maintain focus as much as I can. This helps a lot. And once I am done, I take a quick rest and switch to the next thing.

**Music:** I love music. If I did not have music, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything important. I always have instrumental music and themes echoing and that keeps me really concentrated and focused and chucks away all the external distractions like people talking around me helping me to stay focused and engaged as well. Even when I am running, I like to have my headphones on and I don’t feel the pain of running long distances.

**Motivation Videos:** Sometimes, you do really break down, you do reach a point where you feel that you have drained up. This is when motivation videos really helps. Go to Youtube and look for some motivational video and the thing is I go to such videos for the energy and optimism of the speaker which feeds in the fire in me. The content is secondary.

**Competition & Challenge:** See someone who is better than you and see if you can compete with them. The person you are competing with can be yourself as well. This brings in the much needed energy and enthusiasm which you really need. And when you compete, you always improve and not stagnate at one place which is really dangerous.

There is a lot more that you can do to bring in the self-discipline that you really need. Let us know how you would go about maintaining discipline in your every day life. Maybe it will help someone else as well.While I have not been able to completely stick to this, it is a journey and I am trying hard everyday to improve myself and while you need not have a similar schedule, the most importyouant thing is that you should have a schedule.

See you all in our next blog post. If you like what we have shared, don’t miss to share it with people you know. It may help someone else as well. Cheers!

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