r/Discipline

I had to learn most of these the hard way. If you're younger than me, hopefully this saves you some time.

1. Never go back to a woman who cheated.
2. Never let anybody just disrespect you.
3. Never shake a hand while sitting down.
4. Never go broke just trying to impress other people.
5. Never eat the last piece of something if you didn't actually buy it.
6. Always keep that ambition to be better.
7. Protect the people behind you, and always respect the ones beside you.
8. Take a 1-3 second pause right after getting asked a question.
9. Just never beg for a relationship.
10. Work out at least 4 times a week.
11. If you aren't invited, just don't ask to go.
12. Always carry some cash on you.
13. Dress well, literally no matter what the occasion is.
14. Listen, nod, and most importantly, actually make eye contact.
15. Find multiple different ways to make money.

What else would you guys add to this list?

I've been struggling with consistency for years. Starting things and never finishing them. Making promises to myself every Sunday night and breaking them by Tuesday afternoon. I thought something was fundamentally wrong with me.

Last weekend I was venting to my older brother about it over dinner. He's 14 years older than me, runs his own business, wakes up at 5am daily, and has maintained the same workout routine for over a decade. I've always assumed he was just "built different." Wired for discipline in a way I wasn't.

Instead of giving me the usual advice about motivation or morning routines or accountability partners, he did something I didn't expect.

He grabbed a napkin and drew two circles. Pointed to the first one and said, "This is you on a good day. Motivated, energized, full of plans." Pointed to the second one and said, "This is you on a bad day. Tired, unmotivated, wanting to quit."

Then he drew a straight line connecting both circles and said, "Discipline is this line. It doesn't care which circle you're in. It just moves forward."

I nodded like I understood, but he could tell I didn't fully get it yet.

So he tried a different approach. He put down the napkin and said, "Let me ask you something. When you brush your teeth in the morning, do you have an internal debate about whether you feel like doing it?"

I said no, obviously not.

"Do you need a motivational video to convince you to shower?"

No.

"Do you set a reminder on your phone to eat lunch?"

No.

He leaned back and said, "So you already have discipline. You just haven't decided what else deserves the same status as brushing your teeth."

That hit me differently than any productivity book or motivational speech ever has.

He explained that when he started his business, he didn't have some magical reserve of willpower. He just decided that certain actions were non-negotiable in the same way hygiene is non-negotiable. Not exciting, not optional, not dependent on mood. Just done.

"The gym isn't something I decide to do each morning," he said. "I decided once, years ago. Now it just happens the same way brushing my teeth happens. There's no daily negotiation."

Then he said something that genuinely rewired how I think about consistency: "You don't lack discipline. You just haven't promoted the right habits to non-negotiable status. Everything you struggle with is still sitting in the 'optional' category in your brain. Move it to 'automatic' and the struggle disappears."

I asked him how you actually make that shift. How do you move something from optional to automatic when your brain keeps treating it as a choice.

He said, "You do it badly for about three weeks. You don't wait until it feels natural. You just do it while it still feels forced. One morning you'll realize you did it without thinking about it. That's the moment it graduated."

He compared it to driving a car. "Remember when driving required your full concentration? Every turn signal, every mirror check, every gear shift was a conscious decision. Now you drive across town while having a full conversation and eating a sandwich. The actions didn't change. Your brain just automated them."

I sat with that for a while after dinner. Didn't say much. But the next morning I woke up and went to the gym without having an internal debate about it. Not because I felt motivated. But because I decided it was no longer a question.

It's been 11 days now. Some mornings I've been tired. Some mornings I've genuinely not wanted to go. But I stopped asking myself whether I felt like it. The question isn't on the table anymore.

I wanted to share this because I think a lot of us frame discipline as something we either have or don't have. Like it's a personality trait distributed at birth. But my brother showed me it's actually just a categorization problem. We're perfectly disciplined about things we've classified as automatic. We just need to expand that category intentionally.

Try picking one habit this week and mentally promoting it from "optional" to "non-negotiable." Don't add five things. Just one. And do it badly for three weeks without giving yourself permission to debate it each day.

That napkin drawing is still in my wallet by the way. Probably will be for a while.

If you're interested more on about building discipline and mindset join us on r/DisciplinedMind is where we work on that shift.

i. have noticed that some people who describe themselves as lazy often automate, simplify, or find shortcut that get the job faster. Meanwhile, hardworking, and disciplined people sometimes spend much longer doing the same work step by step.

I just snapped once again and masturbated to porn. And whilst I was in the middle of doing it I came to the kind of horrible realisation of why I think I can't seem to quit and why I always fall back into it.

I think it's simply down to the fact that I haven't found anything that feels quite like it or that can scratch the itch that only porn seems to be able to do. I'm 23 almost 24 and I've been using it for a good 12 13 years and I can't seem to think of something that makes me feel so alive and stimulate me as much. I've never been this explicit and vulnerable but I guess I have to make the most of the anonymity, but nothing hits the same as watching porn. The endless amount of options, taking your time, watching whatever you want and especially wherever you want, I've watched porn and masturbated to it in the absolute worst of places because of how the addiction has a choke hold on me. Public bathrooms, at work, at friend's houses, in the car whilst driving you name it I've done it.

Nothing makes me feels as much as when I give in to this addiction.

I can watch as much motivation videos, try and control my urges as much as possible, try and occupy myself, it always comes back and ends up triumphant in the end I just can't shake it. It gets to a point where whilst I'm doing it, I know it'd a bad thing, I know I shouldn't be doing it but that almost makes me do it even more because I tell myself "you shouldn't be doing it so make the most of the fsct that you're doing it" or even sometimes like this most recent time that has made me write this post, I was keeping in mind a quote that I read the other day about giving in to pleasure, short term pleasure especially is the worst thing you can do yadayadaya I can't remember the exact quote but laing those ligns and even with that in mind, I still continue to do it.

On the flip side things, nothing has made me feel as shit as porn and masturbation. I've lost girlfriends over this genuinely it's fucked, I almost lost my current relationship over it but I promised I'd stop but I can't and I can't bring myself to admit it to her because I feel it deep that she doesn't understand it. It's made me question my life, question what I'm doing, regret my life, made me feel like I'm throwing away my potential, numbing myself because I don't know what else to do and lack a purpose, the list goes on.

I consider myself quite a smart and intelligent guy, I've always been told u think outside the box and seem like a bright young lad, but this ever looming shadow always drags me back and I can't shake it, no matter how bad it makes me feel and how bad I know it is for my brain, my ambitions, my relationships all the rest of it. I can't seem to give it up. Always "one last time", "watch that video that you loved again", "no one will know it's fine", "just do it quick it doesn't count" it's insane I'm in an eternal hell hole of a loop.

No matter how bad I know it is, my urges can't seem to forget how good it feels too. I spend all my time convincing myself this is bad this is bad when I thin kthe real problem is that I'm trying to lie to myself that it isn't good because in reality it feels fucking amazing IN THE MOMENT. In that moment, nothing else matters, in that slight moment I no longer feel anxious about my life or ambitions or worry about my current relationship issues.

All of this to say and I hope someone read all of this it really would mean a lot even though if be surprised if they did lol is to try and admit to myself to stop trying to lie to myself that it's bad bad bad when I know deep down the reason I do it, is because it feels good and maybe that's the key to finally break the cycle, is to admit why I actually do it and then work backwards from there.

Thank you for reading what I have to say, if anyone wants to chat whether someone going through the same thing or someone that has previously gone through it, I'm all ears I feel kind of hopeless in the sense of it feels impossible to break the loop

Discipline, I already know it’s something that can be trained, but what are some other things to do to help my narrative and self perception so I THINK as a disciplined and consistent person?

I’m a person who dead ass is such a bad Procastinator, I want to change

streaks aren't a motivation system. they're a punishment system with a delay on it. every day you add makes the number worth more, which means every day you add raises the price of missing one. you're not building a habit. you're building something you're slowly becoming afraid to lose.

then you miss a tuesday. the number goes to zero. and you don't just lose the number, you lose the story you'd started telling yourself about the kind of person you were turning into.

so you delete the app. again. and you add one more entry to the pile of evidence that you're someone who doesn't finish things.

but the streak isn't the real problem. it's a patch over the real problem, and the real problem is stranger than you'd guess.

here's what the research found. when people think about themselves in the future, the part of the brain that fires for "this is me" barely activates. in some people it responds closer to the way it responds to a stranger.

read that again. your brain isn't being lazy when you skip the gym. it's being accurate. it doesn't recognize who it's doing the favor for.

which means every promise you've broken to yourself wasn't weakness. it was a favor you declined to do for someone you've never met. and nobody sacrifices much for a stranger.

now the part nobody says out loud.

the version of you that never changes isn't a disaster. nothing dramatic happens to him. he's employed. he's fed. he's fine. that's what makes this dangerous. a catastrophe would get your attention. this never will. nothing has to go wrong for five years to disappear.

he's not a warning. he's a monday. and there are about eighteen hundred of them between you and him.

there are three levels to this and almost everyone is stuck on the first.

level one, he's a stranger. no face, no age, no tuesday. just a category. every promise you make to him is a letter sent to an address that doesn't exist. this is where day nine lives.

level two, he's an acquaintance. you can describe him. fitter, calmer, further along. but you can't see him, and a description isn't a person. this is where most self improvement leaves you, which is why it feels so good and changes nothing.

level three, he's real. he has a face, an age, a specific room he's standing in on a tuesday afternoon. and at that resolution something flips. breaking a promise to him stops feeling like slipping. it starts feeling like standing someone up.

a promise to a stranger is a favor. a promise to a real person is a debt.

so here's the whole method, and it's smaller than you want it to be.

step one, tonight. get a piece of paper, not your phone, your phone will negotiate. write the date five years from today and how old you'll be on it. then write three things exactly as they'll be if nothing changes. what's in your savings. what you weigh. how long it's been since you started the thing you keep saying you'll start. then one last line: what is he doing at 3pm on an ordinary tuesday. not his goals. his afternoon. most people can't finish that line. sit there until you can.

step two, tomorrow morning. make him one promise. one. and make it so small it's almost embarrassing. ten pushups. one page. no phone for the first ten minutes you're awake.

step three, that night. write down whether you kept it. that's it. no streak, no chain, no number going up. just kept or not kept.

then do it again the next day, whatever happened.

it feels too small to matter. that's the point. it's small because you've spent years proving to yourself that you don't keep the big ones, and you don't fix that with a bigger promise. you fix it with evidence.

and this is the difference. a streak turns one missed day into a lost month, because the number resets and takes your self image with it. a promise doesn't work that way. you can let a person down on tuesday and show up for him on wednesday. that's just being human. a counter can't forgive you. he can.

you don't need discipline. you need one kept promise, then another, until the man on that piece of paper stops being a stranger and starts being someone you'd hate to disappoint.

you've never met him. that's the entire problem. it's also the only one on this list you could start fixing by friday.

you've go this, cheers

I stopped giving myself entertainment as an option, and I discovered how much time is actually in a day

I’ve been experimenting with a simple rule:

Either allow yourself to be bored, rest, or produce something.

That’s it.

No scrolling.
No games.
No random videos.
No entertainment just to avoid silence.

My options are basically:

• Stare at the wall
• Sleep or genuinely rest
• Pray, think, walk, exercise, study, write, organize, work, or create something

At first, boredom feels uncomfortable because your brain is used to constant stimulation. But when you refuse to immediately escape it, something changes.

Eventually, doing something productive becomes more appealing than doing nothing.

I’ve also discovered that there is an incredible amount of time in the day. I can get important things done and still look at the clock and realize that I have hours left.

Scrolling doesn’t only consume time. It fragments your attention and makes the entire day feel shorter.

I’m starting to believe that boredom is not the enemy. Boredom may be the doorway to creativity, focus, and meaningful work.

My new rule is:

Be bored, rest, or produce—but don’t mindlessly consume.

Hey all,

I recently was thinking about what holds us back. There are a billion challenges with strict laid out goals, tasks, etc. There are a billion workouts, workout plans, diets, budgeting tools... you get the idea. It gets overwhelming. So here's something simple to help you just get started.

I'm calling it the 1-week SMEF challenge. Just one week to build momentum. Just four simple pillars, all benefiting from 1% improvement. SMEF stands for Sleep, Money, Exercise, and Food. Each of these has the potential to have outsized impacts on your life... for better or worse. The goals of the challenge are simple:

-Sleep for at least 8 hours each day

-Spend money ONLY on essentials (bills, food, gas, insurance... you get the idea)

-Exercise every day (even if its only a 10 minute walk)

-Cook all your food at home

You'll notice this isn't particularly prescriptive. What works for you might not work for somebody else. The goal of this is more to be diagnostic in nature, to help you see where your barriers are. For example, if you find that you don't mind getting out for a walk but you can't stand to cook dinner after work, that's a strong data point. If you find that you're grocery shopping at Walmart and are veering off into the clothing section, that's a data point. Noticing and understanding what holds you back is the first step in making change, and that's all this is meant to do. Let me know what you think, or if you end up trying this!

I've been trying to stay consistent with creating YouTube videos, but every time I build momentum, something gets in the way—college, exams, or other responsibilities.

Because of those breaks, my channel has slowed down and my views have dropped. It's frustrating because every time I come back, it feels like I'm starting from scratch again.

I'm curious how other people deal with this.

How do you stay consistent when life gets busy?

If you've taken long breaks from creating content, how did you recover?

Do you force yourself to keep posting, or do you accept the break and start again later?

I'd love to hear your experiences and any advice that has actually worked for you.

🚀 Day 1: Trying to Become the Guy I Keep Imagining

Hey Reddit! 👋

This is my very first post.

I'm a Computer Science student who keeps saying, "I'll start tomorrow."

Well... tomorrow officially ends today.

Starting now, I'm committing to becoming more consistent in every part of my life:

\- 💻 Solving C++ & DSA problems every day

\- 📚 Studying consistently

\- 🏋️ Hitting the gym regularly

\- 📖 Learning something new every day

\- 😴 Fixing my sleep schedule (this one's probably the hardest 😭)

I know motivation comes and goes, but I'm trying to build discipline instead.

I'll be posting my progress, wins, failures, bugs that took hours to fix, and everything I learn along the way.

If I stop posting, roast me. Seriously. Hold me accountable. 😅

If I disappear for a week, I probably got stuck in a segmentation fault... or YouTube's recommendation algorithm won. 💀

Here's to becoming 1% better every single day.

Day 1 starts now. 🚀

I've been trying to become more disciplined and improve my daily routine.

There are so many books, videos, and productivity tips online, but I'm more interested in real-life experiences.

What's one habit that genuinely changed your life, and how did it help you?

I'd love to hear your experiences.

I spent years trying to overhaul myself in one clean sweep. New routine, new me, starting Monday. It never lasted past the second week, and every collapse made me trust myself a little less.

What actually changed things was almost embarrassingly small. I started making one promise to myself each morning that was so small it felt pointless. Ten minutes. One page. A walk to the corner. And the only rule was that I do not break it, no matter how unmotivated I am, because the promise was never really about the walk. It was about being someone whose word to themselves means something.

Motivation still comes and goes like weather. But I stopped waiting for it. Discipline, for me, turned out to be self-trust that you rebuild one kept promise at a time. The confidence is a side effect.

The reframe that stuck: I am not forcing myself to do hard things, I am becoming the person my future self already remembers as the one who started. When I skip, I am not lazy, I am borrowing from her. When I show up, I am paying her forward.

If you feel behind this month, don't reset with a giant plan. Pick one promise small enough that you cannot fail it, and keep it today. Then keep it tomorrow. That is the entire method.

What is one promise you could keep today that is almost too small to matter?

Long story short, I am a heavy sleeper and I am wanting to study for a competitive exam due to which after school, I only get around 6 hours to work with in context of studies.

Sitting for more than 5 hours in school gets exhausting, I feel even tired after I shower and eat lunch after returning from school.

If I do not take a nap, I would feel sleepy and would not be able to focus in studies and when I take a nap, due to the fact that I am a heavy sleeper, I cannot wake up without sleeping for HOURS. It essentially takes time even for someone else wake me up (various tries) and when it comes to alarms, I just shut both my devices off in sleep without even realising that it is time to wake up.

How do I fix this issue?

I want to only take a power nap which is of around 45 minutes, I have noticed that it works for me in sense of not making me feel sleepy for the next 4-5 hours.

The most profound practice that I've found in my life is meditation. Through meditation and listening to teachers I've realized that all your desires and thoughts are kinda bullshit. This is the idea: whatever you think is wrong. Thoughts are just words in your head, they are not reality. And when you try to describe reality through words it is very simplified and you can never pass all the nuance and complexity of reality through this medium. That means that when you say something, it is both true and not true.

For example: Discipline is good. It is true in a sense that if you use discipline to make yourself healthier, it is good. But it is also bad, in the sense when you use it to suppress your desires to the point where you don't enjoy your life at all. Both are true, and both are wrong.

Whatever you say, it is going to be wrong. Don't say anything. Any thought is bullshit, just perceive it and let it go and be guided in the moment by whatever is right. You don't need theory, goals and whatever else. Just be in the moment and notice that it is all bullshit.

Like whenever I try to do things my mind somehow start to overplan and overanalyse things that I end up draining my energy in planning and stuff rather than actually doing it and things makes me feel anxious also.

Any insights/opinions on fixing this..

Honestly corporate productivity extensions are so trash. They restrict you to blocking like 3 sites on the free tier, track your data, and take up like 20MB of space for no reason. Whenever I used them, I just ended up disabling the extension the second I wanted to scroll reels or youtube.

I’m a design student and I wanted to build a real functional system for my own internet addiction instead of just doing another theoretical class project. So I spent the last few weeks building a tiny browser extension called Fate.

Instead of a rigid firewall, it treats web blocking like a game of chance.

The logic:

1. You add your worst distractions to the blocklist.
2. You set your winning odds for each specific site (10%, 30%, 50%).
3. When you try to open the site, it flips a virtual coin.
4. If you win the toss: You get through, but you have to type a fast justification explaining why you're choosing to slack off.
5. If you lose: The gate locks and it forces you to look at a scrolling list of your own past excuses so you face reality.

It is 100% free, there are no limits on the blocklist, it runs entirely locally (no servers, zero tracking), and the whole thing is ultra-lightweight at just 172KiB because I optimized the shit out of it.

I have a tiny user base right now (literally like 5 people lol) and I need people who are brutally honest to test it out and teach me how to make it better.

Please tear this apart. Is the coin-flip mechanic actually helpful or just annoying? What obvious features am I missing?

It's called Fate on the chrome webstore if you want to try it out, let me know if the logic makes sense.