Discipline And Consistency Are Key: 8 Steps To Transform Your Life (+ Preparation Exercise)
If only two character traits that distinguish successful people from unsuccessful ones were to be named, they should be discipline and consistency. The two words are not buzzwords; they are the robust foundation that supports the most ambitious dreams you can imagine. It is discipline and consistency that always keep you on track in pursuing your dreams, whether in your professional or personal life.
In this blog post, we will explore the distinctions and connections between consistency and discipline, their role in enhancing personal productivity, building self-confidence, efficient education and learning, the main barriers to discipline and consistency, and go through 8 practical steps that will help you to develop these vital traits and join the community of successful people.
discipline and consistency defined
What do discipline and consistency have in common and why is their synergy often referred to as a success driver? Let’s first look at the definitions.
Discipline is the ability to set personal standards and settings and stick to them despite difficulties and lack of motivation. A common example can be going to the gym when there is no wish or motivation, but it must be done.
Consistency, however, is about repetitively doing the required action to have it integrated into your life as a stable habit. For example, consistency means going to the gym at regular intervals and turning occasional exercise into a routine part of your lifestyle.
No matter if you aim for financial freedom, educational development, or personal productivity, discipline is the trait that kickstarts your journey toward your goal. Once the process is kicked off, consistency ensures continuity of the required actions to yield visible results. Let’s take an example. You would like to save some money for a down payment for a house. By being disciplined you start to cut off unnecessary spending and set aside a fixed sum of money per month. Subsequently, consistency ensures that you save, month after month, that amount of money until you achieve the goal.
Benefits of Discipline and Consistency
I suppose you have read our other blog posts as well. In that case, you have noticed, that we often refer to discipline and consistency as character traits that help to effectively adapt time management and time organization techniques, build and maintain self-confidence, and ensure efficiency in both academic life and life as a lifelong learner. Let us briefly explain why this is so.
Productivity and Time Management
The development of a morning routine can be an example of what you can do to increase your productivity. In our blog post about how you can start your week smart, we outlined the creation of the morning routine as one of the essential steps to set a productive start to your week. However, in order to be able to set and stick to that routine you need to be both disciplined and consistent.
It is a discipline that helps you to wake up early, do a short exercise session, prepare a nutritious breakfast, and practice mindfulness, and consistency to repeat these actions day after day until your morning routine becomes a part of your productive life. The same logic applies to establishing your productivity goals, adapting different task organization techniques, and much more. Discipline and consistency ensure maximum efficiency not only on ‘good days’ but every single day.
Read More: 10 Productivity Goals To Increase Personal Productivity
Confidence Building
Being self-confident is possible when you acknowledge what grounds you. It is about knowing your short and long-term goals, your life principles, your skill set, and your interests. But to be capable of defining them, it takes discipline to carefully set and analyze your life goals, it takes discipline to be brutally honest with yourself to define your life principles and personal red lines. When you want to develop a certain skill, let’s say, public speaking, it is consistency that helps you day after day practice the necessary techniques, regularly attend classes, reflect on your progress, and continue moving forward.
Read More: 10 Proven Tips To Boost Your Social Confidence
Education and Learning
Efficient education and learning are also not exceptions. In the blog post about how to educate yourself and become a lifelong learner, we also outlined the importance of discipline and consistency. They ensure that you dedicate time to develop a learning plan, identify your learning objectives, consistently stick to the plan, engage yourself in active learning, and join different learning communities.
As you can see, in all the mentioned areas of life, the fusion of discipline and consistency is a driving force that initiates positive behaviors and maintains them to get constantly better both in personal and professional life.
Main Barriers to discipline and consistency
Lack of Motivation
While motivation is a good thing, it should not stop you from performing even when you do not feel like doing so. Learn to neglect your feelings and emotions and do the tasks that require your attention and action.
Distractions and procrastination
Distractions are everywhere around us. While 5 minutes spent scrolling through social media seems harmless, the compound effect of time wasted on social media, unnecessary phone calls, and useless appointments is tremendous. Limit distractions by utilizing time blocking techniques and leverage apps that will limit your access to social media and make you unavailable for the time you work.
Unrealistic Goals
By aiming high you can stop feeling the ground. Trying to aim for something unrealistic in the given timeframe or realities (like passing an advanced-level language exam in 5 months without any prior knowledge) can drain self-esteem. Make sure your goals are attainable, specific, and time-bound. This approach makes it easier to stay disciplined and maintain consistency, as you have a clear roadmap to follow.
Physical and Mental Exhaustion
By neglecting your mental and physical health you risk getting a burnout, which can have a terrific impact on your ability to remain disciplined and consistent. With all the hard work you put in, make sure to maintain the right balance and let your mind and body relax. Managing stress effectively and prioritizing self-care is crucial to sustaining long-term discipline and consistency.
8 Steps to Develop Discipline and Consistency
1. Define your goals
Discipline and consistency are cornerstones of a productive and fulfilling life. For that, you need to define both short and long-term goals.
For example, a financial short-term goal can be to save some money to go on vacation to your desired destination in summer, while a long-term or macro goal can be to buy a house within the next 5-7 years. Or, a professional short-term goal can be to do a project management course and become a certified specialist, while a long-term goal is to get a senior position in your company.
Take your time to sit and define your goals to have a direction and purpose for your actions. Utilize goals-setting techniques like SMART goals, CLEAR goals, and backward approach to do this exercise effectively.
2. Create a system
We, human beings function much better when everything is systemized rather than in chaos. That is why, a system supporting your goals is required to take conscious actions. The purpose of the system is to create a routine that will be comprised of activities and duties that are directly linked to your short-term and long-term objectives. If we look again at the example of saving money for a down payment (mentioned at the beginning of this blog post), your routine shall include a defined budget which you can track with an expense monitoring app for instance. You may need to open a separate savings account where you will transfer the saved money every month.
3. Set the right environment
While a carefully set environment can boost your productivity and enhance discipline and consistency, an environment full of distractions can stagnate your progression. There are many different distractions, but the very first thing that you need to do immediately after you decide to integrate discipline and consistency into your life is to eliminate external distractions and undergo a digital detox.
- Digital Detox: Reduce non-essential screen time (social media, streaming services, etc.). You can leverage various tools and apps like Freedom, RescueTime, Cold Turkey Blocker, Forest, etc.
- External Distractions: Eliminate everything that is distracting you at your workplace (unorganized documents, food and drinks on your desk, personal devices that are not work-related, noise pollution), and let your friends, family, and acquaintances know when you are not available.
4. Use Time Blocking
Integration of time blocking techniques and tools deserves to be a separate step because it has a tremendous effect on discipline and consistency. By having time set aside for specific tasks and activities in your calendar you literally minimize almost to 0 the need of constantly thinking about what you need to do. Time-blocking allows you to move structured and without hesitation. You can leverage Google Calendar, Todoist, and Clockify for blocking time in your calendar.
5. Measure progress
What gets measured gets managed. There are 2 parts to your assessment. First, assess your progress toward your goals. Doing a regular assessment (weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly) is a powerful way to ensure you stay on track and make necessary adjustments. Second, assess your discipline and consistency efforts. Do you manage to stick to your routine? How many times did you allow distractions to diminish your progress? What are the major distraction factors that you find hard to fight back?
By measuring progress toward your goals you ensure to stay within the plan and make necessary adjustments. By reviewing and measuring your discipline and consistency efforts you gain clarity on what distorts you the most and what you need to resist.
6. Stay accountable
Letting other people, like family members, friends, or your mentor know what and when you would like to achieve, keeps you more consistent in your efforts as there are more people involved rather than just you on your own. However, if you do not want to share your goals and plans for any reason, you need to link setbacks to a certain type of ‘helpful punishment’ for you.
For example, if you do not complete your personal project by the end of the week, you could restrict access to personal leisure activities, such as limiting your time on social media or postponing any personal purchases and instead spend that time reading a book or doing an extra session in the gym (by having a ‘helpful punishment’ you ensure that even a setback helps you get better). Creating an action/reward system will enable you to stay more disciplined and consistent as this system is in line with our human nature.
7. Learn from mistakes
You will not succeed all the time. Just accept it. You will fail, and not once. However, what separates successful people from unsuccessful ones is the treatment of mistakes. If you did not accomplish your goals, define the reasons and adjust the plan to move on wiser.
8. Enjoy the process
Think once again about why you want to bring discipline and consistency into your life. You do it to get better, to prosper, to enjoy your life. Read it again. You do it to get better, prosper, and live a more fulfilling and meaningful life. Understanding these lifelong benefits, what is the reason not to enjoy the whole process even with its hardships?
Do this preparation exercise before you Start
Before you implement the steps we have just covered, I invite you to participate in an exercise that will last just one week and better prepare you for the upcoming journey. In the course of these 7 days, you will need to do a sequence of tasks that will help you to establish a routine, which I am sure you will want to keep even after the end of the week. Every new day adds a new task to the previous days. So let’s get started.
Day 1: Wake up 30 minutes before your usual time and do a short 10-minute exercise and a 10-minute meditation. This will help you kickstart your day with a small challenge to trigger your discipline and set you up for a productive day.
Day 2: Write down at the beginning of the day the top 3 to-dos that you need to accomplish that day. Those 3 to-dos must be an absolute priority for you.
Day 3: Integrate time blocks. When you plan to do something, make sure to allocate a specific time slot for that task in your calendar. Then just strictly follow the schedule.
Day 4: Dedicate 30 minutes per day to listening to or reading about a topic you have always been curious about. Limit any distractions for half an hour.
Day 5: Dedicate 1 hour to clean up your working environment (at work and home). This exercise shall not be repeated daily.
Day 6: Reflect on your day. Write down what you have learned and what you want to do differently.
Day 7: Reflect on the past week. How do you feel? Was it easy to undergo the exercise? What things would you like to keep in your routine even after the end of the exercise?
Now, when you have finished the exercise I would encourage you to start with the 8 steps that we have outlined in this blog post to start your journey and become a truly disciplined and consistent person.
The Bottom Line
In this blog post, we have defined what is the difference between discipline and consistency, explored the powerful synergy of the two, got to know the main barriers, outlined the 8 actionable steps that will help you to bring discipline and consistency into your life, and went through a preparation exercise you need to do to prepare yourself for this exciting journey.
Remember. You do not need to wait for the perfect moment to cultivate discipline and consistency. You can get Contantly Better already now.
