{"id":81307,"date":"2018-01-08T11:06:59","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T17:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/?p=81307"},"modified":"2025-12-22T10:59:31","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T16:59:31","slug":"be-less-disciplined","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/featured\/be-less-disciplined\/","title":{"rendered":"Be Less Disciplined in the New Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Group<\/p>\n

When it comes to keeping your New Year\u2019s resolutions, you probably think you know the secret to success.<\/p>\n

Whether you\u2019ve resolved to lose weight, eat better, use your time more effectively, or even to amor fati<\/em><\/a>, you\u2019ve simply got to get more disciplined<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Right?<\/p>\n

Certainly, discipline plays a crucial role in making any mindset or behavioral change. We\u2019ve said as much ourselves.<\/p>\n

But the exact nature of this need for discipline is frequently misunderstood.<\/p>\n

When most of us think of changing our lives, we think we need to become a more disciplined person<\/em>. To increase our level of discipline permanently, indefinitely.<\/p>\n

The problems with this idea, however, are two-fold, and partly account for why so few people are able to keep their resolutions longer than a few weeks.<\/p>\n

First, it\u2019s incredibly difficult to permanently increase your level of discipline, which is a disposition that seems to be semi-fixed and innate. Just as our weight has a default \u201cset point\u201d that it wants to return to despite effort to put on or take off pounds, our discipline seems to have a set point which it wants to snap back to as well. That doesn\u2019t mean discipline can\u2019t be developed and enhanced in strength, it\u2019s just an extremely arduous task in which change is measured incrementally rather than by large leaps and bounds.<\/p>\n

Second, living a more disciplined life, forever, <\/em>is an incredibly daunting prospect — both practically and psychologically.<\/p>\n

Trying to permanently live at a higher level of discipline is like running a long-distance race of indeterminate length. When your legs ache and you feel like you can\u2019t go on, you call out to those on the sidelines, \u201cHow much further to the finish?\u201d To which they reply, \u201cWe don\u2019t know. A long ways though. Just keep going.\u201d The idea of continuing on at the same pace seems impossible, and with no end in sight, all your motivation drains away and you throw in the towel.<\/p>\n

The first few weeks of trying to change a behavior are so mentally taxing not only because of the effort required to adopt a new way of doing things, but because the increased effort feels like it will be interminable. If you are to maintain this new behavior, you think (at least subconsciously) that you\u2019ll have to keep up the same level of discipline forever. Which is hellaciously demoralizing. You despair, \u201cI can\u2019t keep doing this.\u201d You yearn to return to your old discipline set point. You give up before your resolution has gotten much underway.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a better way to approach the need for greater discipline when changing your life.<\/p>\n

Instead of deciding you\u2019re going to become a more disciplined person<\/em>, decide you\u2019re going to initiate a more disciplined season<\/em>. Instead of seeing behavior change as a long-distance race, view it as a sprint \u2013 something that will be difficult . . . but only for a short time.<\/p>\n

The fortunate reality of changing our lives is that the effort that is initially required to adopt a new behavior diminishes over time. Once the new behavior becomes an ingrained habit, this effort in fact becomes quite minimal to practically nonexistent. You start to do it fairly automatically. While at first you have to painstakingly hack a trail through a jungle of obstacles, thereafter the path is kept clear simply by regularly walking back and forth over the smooth thoroughfare.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s much easier to stick with a behavior change, and reach this point where a habit becomes automatic, when you know the effort required to cement it has a definite end. The average time it takes to form a new habit is 66 days. While that\u2019s longer than the 21 days that habit formation is often erroneously believed to require, it\u2019s still very doable. You can do most anything if you know it\u2019s for a limited time only. You can make a hard push for two months knowing that after this short season is over, you\u2019ll have trained a new habit that will continue to fairly effortlessly bear fruit for the rest of your life<\/em>. And perhaps most comforting of all, once the habit is in place, you can return to your old default level of discipline.<\/p>\n

Real estate exec Gary Keller summarizes this principle well in The ONE Thing<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth is we don\u2019t need any more discipline than we already have. We just need to direct and manage it a little better. Contrary to what most people believe, success is not a marathon of disciplined action. Achievement doesn\u2019t require you to be a full-time disciplined person where your every action is trained and where control is the solution to every situation. Success is actually a short race \u2014 a sprint fueled by discipline just long enough for habit to kick in and take over.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t be a disciplined person,\u201d Keller adds. \u201cBe a person of powerful habits and use selected discipline to develop them.\u201d In other words, instead of aiming to be a more disciplined man this year, work to become a more habit-driven one.<\/p>\n

One hard push over the hill, lads, and it\u2019s clear sledding the rest of the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it comes to keeping your New Year\u2019s resolutions, you probably think you know the secret to success. Whether you\u2019ve resolved to lose weight, eat better, use your time more effectively, or even to amor fati, you\u2019ve simply got to get more disciplined. Right? Certainly, discipline plays a crucial role in making any mindset or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81332,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[502,6,42269],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-81307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-character","category-featured","category-self-improvement"],"featured_image_urls":{"large":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sprint-1-2-538x280.jpg","reactor-320":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sprint-1-2-320x267.jpg","aesop-tiny-cover":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sprint-1-2-400x333.jpg","aesop-character":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sprint-1-2-200x200.jpg","aesop-collection":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sprint-1-2-300x300.jpg","aesop-grid-image":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sprint-1-2-400x333.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81307"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119533,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81307\/revisions\/119533"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81307"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=81307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}