Have you ever asked yourself why some people are focused and organized, while others suffer from a lack of desire to work? It seems like some individuals have everything at their fingertips, while others can barely keep up. Why is it like this? The answer lies in one’s level of motivation, persistence, and self-discipline. Each of these qualities is equally important, but discipline, in particular, is an issue for many of us. So, we’ll try to figure out the roots of poor self-discipline and give you a clue as to how to reduce your own level of procrastination. There’s so much advice on the web that it’s easy to get confused. That doesn’t mean that our strategies are your only salvation. However, having thoroughly explored the topic, we’ll likely be able to help you sort things out.

Keep doing whatever it takes. Consistent practice hones your skills, gets you beyond your comfort zone and helps you make every second count. Be sure you carry out the promises you make— advice can be really annoying if you get stuck just trying to get a grip on yourself. You’re entitled to your feelings even if you’re angry and upset. Embrace your feelings and let them inspire you. Even if you’re among those for whom demonstrable tips from a business training textbook don’t really work, we’ll help you think everything over from another angle. Let’s delve a bit deeper.

Self-discipline: What’s It All About?

We can easily take a promising ready-made technique from any self-help book or article and gradually adjust it to our life context. While our results-oriented society offers many alternatives in terms of self-development, people are predominantly focused on key performance indicators. Ignoring your needs for the sake of better results eventually causes mental exhaustion, laziness, and procrastination. Still, you often ignore these inner alerts by blaming yourself, finding new guidance, trying to follow fresh advice, bumping into barriers and beating yourself up again… sounds like a vicious circle, right?

First, forget about feeling guilty. Who’d blame you if you tried on the wrong size of boots? Most likely your motivations methods are a bad fit for your needs and your mind treats them as external ideas that can easily be thrown out. So, perhaps for you, these options have little to do with self-discipline and more to do with individual perspective.

What is self-discipline? According to the Oxford Dictionary, self-discipline is: “the ability to make yourself do things you know you should do even when you do not want to.” This definition is a reflection of our results-based society’s obsession with doing. Sadly, in the daily pursuit of profit and success, there’s no time to think about what you really want. Some people hide deep dissatisfaction beyond their superficial appearance. We think it should be the other way round.

Let’s check Merriam-Webster’s version about self-discipline: “correction or regulation of oneself for the sake of improvement.” As you can see, this definition implies a mindful approach regarding goals.

We ask you to consider mindfulness, since this phenomena entails self-discipline as a deliberate focus on one’s self, playing a role of “inner linchpin” that has a consciousness-raising effect. As a result, self-discipline originates from individual requests, genuine values, and does not contradict with harmonious existence. Isn’t it good to be both calm and focused?

What Are We Wasting Time On?

As the saying goes, the first step is the longest stride, and recording timing may be your first big move toward awareness. The main thing is to start analyzing your actions. Take a pen, a piece of paper, and record your daily activities every 15 minutes for at least 4 hours a day. No need to explain causes, details, and outcomes of what you do. A small 2 column chapter will suffice.

For instance, there is a list of several spheres that can exhaustively cover one’s daily routine:

• Work
• Hobbies/self-development
• Leisure
• Self-service
• Domestic duties
• Waste of time
• Communication
• Commute
• Sleep

What’s the use?

Most likely, you already know your weaknesses. For example, some people are Internet addicts, while others lack punctuality. Meanwhile, it’s one thing to know your weaknesses, but another is to actually see what you’ve been doing during the last time one-hour timespan and what you’re going to do for the next hour. Having recorded your timing for a while, you might prefer to not waste your working day with social media, emails, funny cat videos, and other distractions. Wasting fifteen minutes, however, isn’t as big of a deal as “snapping out” after spending a half-day doing God knows what. Beyond that, doing what you want for fifteen minutes can be a suitable reward for getting things accomplished. No regrets, no sense of guilt, since a part of your day is productive.

Start by setting a timer, and your perception of time will change drastically after few days.

How to Arrange Your Recording Process

1. Be straight with yourself. If you work online and occasionally spend a lot of time reading newsfeeds on Facebook, don’t mark this as leisure. It actually belongs in the “waste of time” section.
2. Don’t get down on yourself for wasting time. From this angle, time recording can be compared with a water/electricity counter: a big invoice can either get you upset or jump-start actions towards improvement.
3. There’s no need to do something utterly important every time span. Let yourself do nothing for fifteen minutes (if you don’t feel guilty afterwards). Analyzing the list, you’ll see if you deserve some down time.
4. Fill your activities every fifteen minutes during these four hours (don’t include sleeping time, obviously). This way, you’ll be surprised to see where the time goes. For example, an important two hour meeting was spent not only on work (let’s say you had been working for 40 minutes), but also on communicating with colleagues while listening to a boring presentation (which is also a loss of time). Was there a chance to use this time more wisely?

Secondly, routines can help shape your day. Set the tone in the morning and smoothly finish daily tasks. Take a look at this sample list of routines:

1. Thinking up a list of what you’re thankful for today.
2. Planned events of the day.
3. Planning for tomorrow.
4. Meditation.
5. Self-care: facials, shaving, taking a shower/bath.
6. Reading at least 25 pages a day (any literature you like).
7. Airing a room (before bedtime).
8. Listening to soothing music.
9. Physical exercise.
10. Cleaning up.

Recording timing during a week or so, along with arranging new routines, will help you see how often you’re actually involved in the present moment. You’ll also see that “being absent” is neither productive nor helpful for self-discipline.

If you’ve been delaying something for a long time and haven’t done it yet—it’s high time to get it done. On top of that, set weekly challenges and follow through on them, whatever it takes. Don’t set impossibly high objectives (one week is not enough to become a famous millionaire). Use attainable targets. Visit the gym four to five times a week or take online courses once you have free time. These activities will give you mental resources to move further on your path to stronger self-discipline.

If you’ve been tracking your daily activities for a while, you might admit that sometimes it is hard to exactly define activities, which often happens when you multitask. Initially multitasking may seem to be effective, yet after a thorough examination you may realize that in practice it’s a waste of time. When you hang out with friends while working or surfing the web, cursing yourself up and down—these examples are all about being passive at moments in your life when you should have an active presence.

This is where mindfulness will come in handy. Let’s look at three aspects:

Mindfulness = Efficiency

As a result, multitasking is not as effective as it may seem. Why is it like this? According to Maddux, thinkers have long argued over the merits and demerits of mindless behavior, which is defined by the lack of intentional or conscious effort. Although a pragmatic view argues that it automaticity saves time and frees the mind for more important tasks, others argue that such automatic thought and behavior patterns may have problematic consequences.

Being able to maintain the information-processing and control system, our brain is a genuinely unique system (along with spinal cord and peripheral nerves). As for deliberately mindful attention at a certain momentum, it’s thought that the brain is able to focus on one thing only. Adding more tasks affects the flow of the simultaneous processes. In this case, either one process will be carried automatically or your mind will try to switch between them. In the latter case, you’ll be bound to take a step back from the moment action. As an illustration, Fast Company explains the process of multitasking in the following way: “while you’re being hit with much more “information” at once, you retain less–since you can’t filter out what you need to pay attention to from what you should neglect.” Do you want to live on half “autopilot?” We don’t think you should.

That’s why let’s consider mindfulness as The Presence Here and Now.

What does it mean? Start by carrying one case at a time. Commit to it thoroughly. That’s easier said than done, right?

Timings will come in handy whenever you start losing your way. If you’re getting distracted, keep focused on one thing. Prioritizing, plus a small effort of will, can get you back on the right track. If you have a hard time prioritizing your tasks, just pick one. In this case, a fast decision is what matters most.

It’s also crucial to strengthen concentration skills: sustain your focus solely on breathing for at least five minutes. Just breathe in and out. No side thoughts about salary delay, meetings, or your dirty flat. Just breathe and exhale. If you happen to be a newbie in meditation, check Headspace application.

Mindfulness as a State of Flux

Have you ever been involved in a process without noticing how the time passed? How to get control over this focus without waiting for inspiration?

Try to apply a mindful approach to tasks that you’re already prone to do automatically (washing hands, eating, etc.) In the case of eating, pay particular attention to a meal’s taste, smell, color, and consistency. Concentrate on your feelings. See if you can enjoy it. After finishing your meal, see if you can hold your focus for next activity. By being mindful and “listening” to your thoughts, even unpleasant tasks may seem nice and easy.

You might be curious as to why we keep talking about mindfulness as a secret to self-discipline. It’s considered that a disciplined person should do everything in a good time regardless of their attitude about a given task. So, it seems that discipline is a form of self-coercion.

Luckily, there are some less nasty alternatives to this view. Let’s take a look at self-discipline from another perspective. First, let’s think about when we must act without thinking about discipline, motivation, and desire.

Probably, you remember moments when you had no choice: urgent deadlines, emergencies, child care, etc. Do you remember how you felt? What sensations did you have? Essentially, you can shift this focus from your memories to any task you’ve been delaying. Your will is a magnificent force, so why not to use it for the sake of your well-being? There’s a huge difference between self-coercion and “transferring” certain feelings. In the latter case, you use the power of will for benefit rather than harm.

The second method is to reminisce about moments of inspiration. Recall those great moments of being up to the task, trying to hold the memories for a while. How’d you do? Did you nail it? Such memories have a crucial power: inspiration reveals and applies our abilities. Consequently, we’re excited about matters that lead to our personal fulfilment. If you have an issue at stake, try to see it from another angle. What could any given actions or decisions bring to your life? Will it be a step toward overcoming fear? Will it help you to be stronger?

An important clarification: having rest is as equally important as any other activity. Check your timing results. How much time do you usually spend on leisure? Do you feel a need to expand or improve the quality of this time? Do you think you take good enough care of yourself? Don’t hesitate to block out sufficient time for yourself.

Respect Your Own Pace

Imagine an active, flamboyant life, full of events, and the impressions of many people around you. If you have the freedom to travel and to meet new acquaintances and experiences, will you be able to cope with such a pace? Would you like to live your life like this or would it wear you out?

There’s also a quiet life with a steady job and a calming hobby. For some people, this way of life is a boring routine, whereas it suits others quite well.

Sooner or later, everyone faces these decisive moments, such as deciding about having a big or small family, about whether to travel or put down roots. About whether to have a public or private life; whether to devote more time to family or career, and so on.

Look deep inside yourself—was this my own desire? Is it consistent with your life philosophy? Will it bring me harmony?

Most likely, the idea to record timing will have a different impact on readers: short deadlines will push some of them, while others may probably be depressed. We’re all different, and that’s fine.

You might wonder what this has to do with self-discipline. The main idea is to make your internal resources work for you. For this, there’s a need to listen carefully to your personal desires, values, and convictions.

Harmonizing a subject with your inner values will make the process of fulfillment faster and more complete. Ellen Langer indeed has pointed this out, saying: “there is always a step small enough from where we are to get us to where we want to be. If we take that small step, there’s always another we can take, and eventually a goal thought to be too far to reach becomes achievable.” Timings, routines, and mindfulness are but a few techniques to make this step towards genuinely beneficial improvements.