How to Cultivate Discipline

Tear down the unproductive habit and build up a counter-habit whose gravity eventually becomes strong enough to completely overtake the original habit.

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How do you cultivate discipline?

When there’s something that you know you should do, but you can’t get yourself to do, it means some habit is pulling you away from doing it.

So what you need to do is tear down the unproductive habit and build up a counter-habit whose gravity eventually becomes strong enough to completely overtake the original habit.

You try to disrupt your momentum on your negative habit and create momentum towards a positive habit.

And while you might not be able to do this all in one fell swoop, what you can do is iterate on it and gradually ease into a transition one little step at a time.

Here’s a concrete example which may or may not apply to you but hopefully it will illustrate the main idea.

Let’s say you’re having trouble cultivating discipline with exercising every day.

The first question is: what’s keeping you from exercising?

Maybe you plan to exercise after work but then things come up and you always find an excuse.

Okay, so do it first thing in the morning.

Why aren’t you already doing it first thing in the morning?

Let’s say it’s because you have a habit of waking up 15 minutes before you have to leave for work and there’s not enough time for exercise.

That habit is pulling you away from your goal of daily exercise. So you need to gradually replace it with a more productive habit.

Maybe instead of waking up 15 minutes before work, you wake up 20 minutes before and spend 5 minutes doing jumping jacks as soon as you get out of bed.

(Or if 5 minutes is too daunting then maybe you start with just 1 or 2 minutes and gradually build up to 5 minutes.)

After enough days of waking up 5 minutes earlier fkr 5 minutes of jumping jacks, you’ll have created a “new nornal” morning routine, and you’ll find it within yourself to wake up another 5 minutes earlier and replace your 5 minutes of jumping jacks with a 10-minute run.

You keep going this direction, gradually tearing down your habit of waking up just before you have to leave, and building up a habit of waking up earlier and earlier and doing more and more exercise with that extra time.

Eventually you reach your desired fitness routine goal and then you just maintain that habit into the future.

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