Self-discipline is the ability to overcome procrastination and do what needs to be done. Let’s face it, no one likes a bunch of little tasks that need to get done.
You may not get any satisfaction from brushing your teeth or checking your email, but you know these tasks are necessary for a productive day. A busy, productive day makes you feel accomplished at the end of it. And that feeling is priceless.
Unfortunately, not everyone feels this way. Some people will choose to watch another episode on Netflix instead of completing the laundry they set out to do that morning. They’ll spend hours searching Facebook or Reddit when they should be working on their project at work. If you have ADHD or ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), then this is probably an all too common occurrence for you like me.
My life was not always this way. I used to be very productive. I had a great job, drove a nice car, and my apartment was immaculate. Then my life fell apart. My ADHD got worse, and so did my procrastination. And without productivity, everything else went downhill fast.
But I have good news, and you can beat procrastination! You can be successful and productive. You can take on a task and finish it. And then you can start another one. It’s not that difficult. All it takes is understanding, structure and self-discipline.
And trust me, if beating procrastination isn’t difficult for you, the rewards of being productive will be well worth it! Being productive allows you to accomplish more than others. You get to move up a rung on the ladder. You get promoted, make more money, get it done. You get to brag about all the work you accomplished while other people are sitting on their butts watching TV!
How do I know this? I’ve been there, and I’ve done it. I spend my days working on multiple projects while taking care of a house, running errands, and spending time with my kids.
So how did I develop self-disciple? How did I beat procrastination? Well, it wasn’t easy, but it was worth it. And now I want to share with you what worked for me.
Note that this may not work for everyone. Everyone is different and responds to other methods of discipline.
The first thing that you need to do is figure out your why.
You need to know why you are working.
This is the reason that you started learning Portuguese in the first place, right? Or why are you taking piano lessons now?
This must be a more significant reason than the small tasks getting in the way. It’s good to have smaller tasks, but they should be like training wheels. They should be easy.
The real reason we do things and set goals is to be more successful in the end. We are much more likely to achieve our goals if we do them for a more prominent reason than creating more small tasks.
So, imagine a child you have never met before who is on the other side of the world and needs help. Now imagine that you only have a week to help them. How do you think you would spend your week?
Maybe you would spend the first day on Amazon to find them a new pair of shoes, clean their room and help them with schoolwork. After only 24 hours of working on this task, it is unlikely that the problem will be solved.
For this child’s problems to be solved, the person delivering aid must be passionate about being able to help. This inspires the person to take charge and get the job done. The person delivering aid is doing it because they care.
That’s what your why needs to be.
You have to care about why you are doing something else besides getting through a task or set of tasks.
Maybe you want to build a successful business, and this will enable you to do that. That’s fine.
Maybe you want a clean house, and that’s why you are doing the work. That’s fine too.
Your why needs to be bigger than your set of tasks or small goals. The bigger your why, the easier it will be to get through the work.
Once you figure out why it’s time to start acting on it.
The next step is to create a strict schedule.
Let’s say that you have a goal of getting in shape and running a 10K by the end of the month. You start running every day after work and on weekends, but you keep coming up with excuses not to run. “Maybe I’ll start running tomorrow.” “I’m tired today; I’ll start tomorrow.” Well, tomorrow comes, and you run again. And again. And you still haven’t reached your goal.
Well, the first step to getting yourself into better shape is by setting a strict schedule for it!
You have to get your mindset on what time you are going to get up and when you will go running in the morning before you go to bed at night.
What’s nice about having a morning run is that it gives you something to look forward to the next day. You have something to be motivated by.
Then you have to set a strict time for when you will go running.
If your schedule says that it’s time for a run at 5:00 am, then that’s when it has to happen. You can’t get up at 6:00 am and decide that you’re going running instead of making your kid breakfast. You can’t go running before work, and you will just waste time.
You have to commit these time slots to your schedule to know when to be somewhere at a particular time of the day. If you are going to run at 5:00 am, then make sure that you are supposed to be there at 5:00 am and not running late.
If you have a strict schedule, it will be much easier to accomplish small tasks because you will know when to do them.
The organizing app that I use is Google Calendar. It’s completely free and allows me to schedule appointments, reminders, and events right on the spot.There are also task management apps like Wunderlist, but that’s a topic for another day! This post has already gotten way too long.
The last thing I want to talk about is making your goal attainable.
This is something you should have even before you figure out you’re why.
You should always start with a small goal and work your way up to the big ones.
Don’t expect yourself to run a ten-kilometer run immediately when you just started running.
When I started learning French, I didn’t start right away with speaking. First, I learned how to read simple words and later verbs and phrases. From there, I used my learnings to make small sentences. Then I moved on to reading books written in French, which is when I could start using what I had learned in conversation with others.
So too, in your goal-setting and motivation, you need to start small before you move up to bigger things.
The same is true when creating a website. Don’t make the most extensive website that you could make today. Instead, make the simplest one first with dummy content and then figure out how to turn it into something more meaningful later.
Start with something that you can do right now. With your time.
If you don’t have time to work on it now, that’s OK. Don’t put a project on hold because you can’t do it right now. Instead, put it on the backburner and make lists of what content you need to produce. This can be for anything; a blog post, some marketing content, or something else.
Make lists of what you need to accomplish and when to start doing them.
And then make a plan to get those things done, and next time that time comes around, do them just as planned!
You don’t want to miss your next opportunity and get stuck where you left off when you decide it’s too hard and give up.
You have to get yourself started with the most minor thing that you can do right now so that it encourages you to go further at some point down the road.
Finally, remember why you are doing all of this in the first place!
Remember what you’re trying to accomplish and why.
Make sure that every time you sit down to create something, you know exactly how it will make a more significant difference in your life than simply doing more tasks.
Your why is the thing that you care about most.
Everything that you do should be helping you move closer to YOUR why!
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Nubelson Fernandes on Unsplash
