Becoming the Discipline Master of Your Life

When it comes to mastering discipline in order to up your productivity level at work or at home, it is important to go about it the same way that you master any type of subject, whether it’s your multiplication tables or woodworking.

You have to keep practicing. Practice is the key to mastering anything: piano, knitting, the philosophies of physics, cooking, and discipline. If you want to be more disciplined, you’ll need to practice by focusing on being disciplined during your everyday tasks. Just like the piano, just because you practice it doesn’t mean that you’ll get it perfect the first time. You may stumble. You may make a few mistakes. That’s okay as long as you learn from those mistakes. So if you falter, stop, take a breath, look at what happened, and take notes so as to prevent it happening in the future.

You have to learn all the time. There are different ways to stay disciplined. Most of them depend on your personal preferences, not to mention the different tasks. There are various time management tools that can help you stay disciplined: Pomodoro, hardcopy planners, bulletin boards, alarms on your phone or laptop, etc.

You have to be devoted. In order to stay disciplined, you have to be devoted to your cause (what you’re doing and/or working for) in addition to staying focused on the goal of being disciplined. I’ll talk about being devoted to your cause later. For now I want to focus on “the goal of discipline.” You must

You have to care about it. You may not actually care about the task at hand, which is why you keep getting sidetracked with different projects. However, try to see the good in what you are doing. Don’t want to get that report done? If you finish it now, you won’t have to see it again (silver lining). If you do a good job, you could get some extra kudos (bonus points). If you get it done early, you can double check your work before you turn it in (way to be thorough!).

If you need to practice staying disciplined on different subjects while you’re at home, try some of these one for size:

– Go for a walk everyday – even when you don’t want to. It’s good for your health (mental and physical) and will help you practice discipline.

– No matter what activity you are doing, try to find some silver lining it in or try to find an intrinsic reward.

– Pray or meditate for at least 15 minutes a day. It will help you clear your mind and has the same effect as “hitting the restart button.”

Sources:

Zen Habits: http://zenhabits.net/discipline-master/

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