Discipline and Consistency Make You Unstoppable (12 epic tips)
Whether I’m making new music or working on this blog, discipline and consistency are two things that always lead to growth and give me a sense of control.
They quite simply make you unstoppable.
Or as many have echoed, the biggest differentiator of successful people is they simply never quit. Struggles were felt, failures were endured and doubts were felt. And yet, they persevered.
I think you’re that type of person (which is probably why you’re here in the first place).
So let’s crush it together. This post shares my favorite moves for building stronger discipline and becoming more consistent.
Alright, enough chit chat.
Let’s do this.
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Discipline vs. Consistency 101
“Doing ordinary things for an unordinary amount of time creates extraordinary results.”
Discipline is the ability to take action when there’s no motivation or proof (i.e., no results).
Consistency is the ability to do those things for an extended amount of time.
Since great things tend to take great work (and time), these two ingredients are essential for growth and reaching goals. They’re two sides of the same coin.
But discipline doesn’t just mean taking action on the hard things. It’s the ordinary stuff too that’s important. You know those simple tasks like replying to emails or a sending a quick text.
These are micro bottlenecks that compound and take up mental space.
Benefits of Practicing Discipline
Improve your chances of success
Strengthen your weaknesses
Respond to challenges better
Build new habits
Develop a stronger growth mindset
Have more patience
Get good at playing the long game
Cultivate Epic Discipline + Consistency (12 kick-ass tips)
1. Find Your ‘Keystone Habit’
A keystone habit is a habit that ends up influencing other parts of your life, creating a sort of snowball effect of new habits.
Charles Duhigg discusses the concept in his book ‘The Power of Habit’. A common example is exercise, which often leads to better habits in other parts of your life. Perhaps it’s the boost in energy or the newfound confidence. Whatever the case, it’s a keystone habit.
So the trick here is to identify what your keystone habit is. While exercise is common, there are more examples, like:
Meditation
Journaling
Eating healthier
Socializing (with the right people)
Financial management
Healthy sleeping habits
So, what are the biggest obstacles or bottlenecks in your life? Sometimes, these are hints about potential keystone areas.
2. Know Your Anchors
Discipline and consistency is the ability to not drift too far off course, so it helps to know what your anchors are.
Anchors are the things that best represent you. I usually focus on five key areas:
My values
My purpose
My goals
My passions
My skills
Anchors improve motivation. They add purpose and intention to actions in life. They represent your why.
If you’ve never given values any serious thought before, try taking a test at personalvalu.es, which is free and will give you your top 5 values. You can also do some self reflection, journal about it or talk things out with someone.
Explore more:
➤ How to Look Within
3. Get Clarity With Reverse Thinking
Why are you not being disciplined and consistent? What actions are causing issues? Sometimes to get clarity, it helps to think in reverse.
Reverse thinking is a thought exercise where you think of ways to make something worse. In that process, you end up realizing the best (sometimes obvious) path forward.
So rather than trying to find solutions and strategies for being more disciplined, come up with a bunch of ways to become less disciplined. For example:
Wait until tomorrow to start
Look for outside validation
Only do things that are comfortable
Take advice from unqualified people
Don’t follow through with what you say you’re going to do
Change focus often
These can feel facetious and obvious. But this type of sarcasm can uncover fresh insights that are hiding in plain sight.
4. Set An Hourly ‘Discipline Alarm’
This is a recent hack I got from Regan Hillyer. Everyday, after waking up, set a timer to go off every hour.
This alarms repeats all day.
It’s a gentle reminder to reset yourself and refocus (if you’ve drifted). When the sound alarms, I ask myself some simple questions:
Am I acting disciplined and consistent?
Am I putting off or avoiding something?
Am I embodying the ideal future version of myself?
This practice gives me an hourly opportunity to reflect on what I’m doing and how I’m thinking. If something is off, I course-correct.
It’s like a friend or mentor checking in on you.
5. Create A Disciplined Alter Ego
What stories do you tell yourself about yourself? What do you assume you can or can’t do?
Do you have negative self beliefs about being undisciplined?
Often, the stories, doubts and negative dogmas we have about ourselves are subjective and inaccurate. But they become a self fulfilling prophecy.
So let’s write a new story by creating an alter ego. This is a fun and creative process. Here’s how to do it:
List out your current traits and beliefs
Identify new (more disciplined) beliefs and traits
Adopt this new alter ego
An alter ego simply steps around obstacles of self belief or limiting character traits. It’s the Batman effect and artists, authors, musicians, teachers and entrepreneurs all do it.
So what’s your new story?
6. Don’t Break Old Habits (build new ones)
Breaking habits is hard. But building new ones is easier and more fun.
Eventually, these new habits can replace the old ones (that’s the idea, at least).
When you try to break old habits, all of your attention and energy is going to the very thing you’re trying to stop. It’s a paradox.
So shift your attention to building new habits, not stopping the stubborn ones.
This technique has less friction. It’s focused on growth, creativity and building rather than the stress of trying to quit something.
Here are some ways to build new habits:
Track your progress
I just use my Notes app, a Google Doc or Notion
Have a daily nonnegotiable
Small actions make big changes over time
Try gamifying things
For example, use a timer or create a public challenge
Map out your habit loop
Identify old cues that prompt old habits
Create new cues and rewards for new habits
7. Create a Life Organization System
This has had one of the biggest impacts on my discipline and consistency — organizing and systematizing my life. It’s actually pretty straightforward too. Here’s how I do it:
Define Your Most Important Life Buckets
For example, I have five main life buckets:
Personal
Financial
Career
Social
Health
Explore more:
➤ Organize Your Life Into Buckets
Define Core Goals for Each Bucket
Each of your core life buckets will have their own goals and timelines. So defining them helps — let’s use my life buckets again:
Personal
Goal: Travel to every Asian country
Timeline: 2-3 years
Financial
Goal: Own a home
Timeline: 3-5 years
Career
Goal: Become a full-time content creator
Timeline: 1-2 years
Social
Goal: Meet more musicians and artists
Timeline: 6 months
Health
Goal: Get in shape
Timeline: 3-6 months
Prioritize and Focus
I like to choose one bucket and one goal at a time. Ideally, I try to focus on things that make the most sense and follow some logical order.
For example, if I can check off my career goal (full-time creator) first, that would free up a lot more time to write more music, make more art, travel more and pursue my other projects. So that’s where I’m focusing a lot of effort right now.
Break Down Your Focus Bucket
Once I have a specific bucket and goal to focus on, I break it down into smaller, more manageable steps.
Let’s use my full-time creator career goal:
Macro goal —> full-time creator
1 micro goal required —> establish niche authority
Nano goals required —> create daily content; reach 50K visitors/month
Create Workflows That Match Your Personality
Workflows work better when they’re customized to you and your unique personality, quirks and bottlenecks. So I like to organize my day in a way that works with my brain. Here’s what that looks like:
Morning
Creative work
Research and design tinkering
Afternoon
Administrative work
Evening
More creative work (music and art)
Explore more:
➤ My Life Organization System
8. Aim Lower
Big goals are exciting — but they’re also overwhelming.
It can feel like you’re staring up at a big mountain, trying to figure out how you’re going to reach the peak.
So I like to shift focus by aiming lower. This means working on the smaller steps and the process (not the end result).
It’s a strategic way to create more sustainable habits and actual results. It’s easier and more realistic to focus on small, daily tasks over large leaps forward.
Here’s how to strategically aim lower:
Break down your main goal into micro goals
Break down each micro goal into even smaller nano goals
Focus on the small nano goals
Focus on reaching one micro goal at a time, until you reach them all
9. Do More Hard Things
If you want more discipline, do more things that create discipline. It’s sort of obvious, but sometimes the simplest solution is the best one.
Here are some hard things that will make you more disciplined:
Start exercising
Take cold showers
Meditate for 1 hour a day
Quit drinking or smoking
Go vegan
Start a business
Learn a language
Wake up earlier
10. Stop Waiting for the Right Time
The right moment doesn’t exist.
The perfect combination of motivation, context and opportunity is rare. And if it does pop up, it doesn’t last long or it’s easily missed. Because the truth is, the perfect moment is always right now.
If you rely solely on motivation or ideal conditions for discipline, then you’re creating the assumption that when things inevitably become less ideal, you’ll stop and wait for ideal conditions to pop up again.
Not the best strategy.
So here are some ways I avoid this trap:
Fall in love with the process
Avoid distractions like social media
Use to-do lists and workflows
Focus on small actions
Stack the cards in my favor
Recognize burnout and take breaks if needed
11. Define Your Motivators + Your Stressors
Knowing what motivates you and what doesn’t improves your discipline. So let’s get some clarity here.
A motivator is something that inspires you to take some action. For example, money, praise and validation, personal fulfillment and helping others are all motivating for me.
A stressor, on the other hand, is something that causes you to freeze or not take action. For example, weaknesses or skill gaps, process bottlenecks, a lack of tools or resources and unrealistic time horizons all create stress.
So here are some ways I like to limit my stressors and boost my motivators:
Work from your zone of proximal development
Leverage your strengths — outsource your weaknesses
Use modern tools to automate mundane tasks
Take care of the most important and urgent things first
12. Stack the Deck
The environment and the people or things we spend time around totally influence our habits and lifestyle.
So lets stack the deck in our favor.
Here are three key areas I try to optimize:
My inner circle
The people I spend time with
My outer circle
The content I consume
My environment
The spaces I spend time in
For disincline and consistency, this means surround myself with more motivating people, consuming more motivating content and creating an environment that’s more inspiring.
I am as good as the people in my life and the environment I live in.
Later ✌️
Discipline and consistency are habits anyone can adopt.
Setting hourly alarms, finding your keystone habits and creating an alter ego are a few strategies I currently love using. But ultimately, I like to stay patient and not feel bad when I have ‘bad’ days. It’s all part of the process.
No one can be 100% on, 100% of the time. That’s unsustainable.
Besides, you’re probably doing better than you think.
Want More? Nice. Here’s More.
