Why "Disciplined People" Don't Feel Disciplined

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going."

That’s a quote from one of my favourite people, and a friend of this podcast, Jim Rohn.

Listening to one of his lectures—for that is what they were—in 2017 changed my life, and I hope this episode will change yours. Let’s get started.

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Script | 393

Hello, and welcome to episode 393 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Discipline is unsustainable. You probably have discovered that. Yet there are many people we look at and see someone living what many would describe as a disciplined life.

So how do they do it?

Well, I can promise you it’s not discipline. Discipline is like a rocket used when launching a spacecraft—it’s required initially to get the spacecraft off the ground, but once in orbit, the rocket can be discarded. Then the balance between forward velocity and the Earth’s gravitational pull maintains the spacecraft in orbit.

And that’s how these outwardly “disciplined” people do it. They decide what it is they want to accomplish—healthy eating, regular exercise, journal writing, daily and weekly planning, etc. And then they “launch”.

A lot of effort and focus is required initially, but after a few weeks, their forward velocity—or the habit—takes over and it becomes something they just do.

And you can do the same. And this week’s question is about how to go from an idea to turning that idea into something you will “just do”.

So, with that said, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Anna. Anna asks, Hi Carl, for the last three or four years, I have done your Annual Planning exercise. And each year, I fail to accomplish the things I set out to do. I feel I don’t have the discipline to keep my commitments. There’s always something else that gets in the way. How do you help people start to live a more disciplined life?

Hi Anna, thank you for your question.

As I alluded to a moment ago, it’s not really about discipline. That’s a fuel that will run out eventually. Sure, it can get you started, but if you don’t develop the habit or routine over a few weeks, the consistency you want will slip away, and you’re back at square one.

The problem with discipline—and, for that matter, motivation—is that they rely on the human condition. For discipline, you need willpower. Willpower diminishes throughout the day.

You start with strong willpower, and as the day goes on, that power slowly wears down. But it is also dependent on how much sleep you got, whether you are in a good or bad mood, whether you are stressed or anxious, and the people around you.

You may have heard the advice to ditch your “toxic friends”. They are the ones who keep pulling you down to their level. If someone were attempting to give up smoking, the advice given is to stay away from their smoking friends.

If you surround yourself with people who hate exercise and you decide, for example, you want to take up the “from couch to 5K” programme, you’re not going to find a lot of support from the people you surround yourself with. They have become what is known as “toxic friends”.

Instead of thinking you need discipline to achieve the things you want to achieve, look at what you can do to make achieving your goals easier.

Imagine you decided you wanted to read more books. Many people will set the goal to read a certain number of pages or chapters each day. This method requires immense discipline to maintain consistency.

You see, people often set these goals when they are rested, unstressed, and motivated. What you need to think about is what a realistic target would be if you were tired, unmotivated, and just wanted to curl up and scroll through your phone.

A better approach would be to set a time target. For example, one of my clients wanted to finish reading the pile of books in his home office this year. He had around thirty-five books he’d bought, and they were real books, not ebooks.

I suggested to him that he set a target of reading for 20 minutes every evening before going to bed. This, he felt, was realistic on days he was tired out.

Speaking to him last week, he said he had discovered that on most days he read for well over 45 minutes, and on some days he read for over an hour.

Over the course of 2025, he’s only missed two days—and those days were when he was at home, but was away on a business trip.

He finished reading the books by the end of August. He’s now buying books again and is confident he’ll stay on top of them.

What happened here was that my client set a realistic goal based on the worst-case scenario rather than the best-case scenario. On most days, he exceeded his set minimum, which meant he finished his goal well before the deadline.

Another factor in his success here was the set time in the evening before going to bed. That gave him an anchor point.

This is why I recommend that people who wish to write a journal do it in the morning rather than in the evening. You have more control over the morning than you do the evening. And it’s a great way to begin your day with a nice cup of tea or coffee, and a place to write down your thoughts and feelings before the day gets going.

You can add to your journal in the evening if you wish, but if you want to be consistent in writing, you will find that starting your day with your journal will help you write every day.

I remember back in July when we went to Ireland to see my parents. There were my wife and my parents-in-law, and we stayed at my wife’s aunt’s house the night before, since she lived close to the airport and our flight was early the next morning.

Waking up at 4 am with everyone running around, making sure they had everything, didn’t feel appropriate for me to write my journal at that point. So I skipped it. However, by the time we got to the airport, went through security, and settled in to wait for our flight, I felt this urge to write. So, I found a small coffee shop, got a coffee and sat down to write.

The sense of relief I felt after writing my journal left me relaxed and ready for the long travels ahead.

There was no need for discipline or motivation. It had become something I do every morning, and when I don’t, something feels wrong.

And that’s what you are trying to do. Turning whatever it is you want to do consistently into your way of life.

This is why brushing your teeth when you wake up and before you go to bed is automatic. You learn to do it when you are young, and after a lot of nagging from your parents, it soon becomes automatic. The thought of going out in the morning without brushing your teeth probably leaves you horrified.

But if you stop and think about it, brushing your teeth in the morning is inconvenient. There’s a lot to do: get the kids ready for school, prepare their breakfast and get yourself ready. Three or four minutes in the bathroom, moving your arm from left to right… Argh! But you do it.

You don’t need motivation or discipline. You just do it. It’s a part of your life.

I was talking with a running friend of mine recently who wakes up at 6:00 am every morning, rain or shine, and goes out for his morning run at 6:30. I asked him if he ever considered staying in bed when the wind was howling outside and the rain was pouring down. He shuddered. The very thought of not going out for his morning run shocked him.

He doesn’t need discipline or motivation to get up and go for a run. His problem would be if the doctor told him to stay in bed for a few days. Then he’s really struggling because staying in bed is not his lifestyle.

All those people you look at and think, “Gosh, they are disciplined” —they never think they are. To them, whatever they do is just a part of their life.

I’m lucky because I have a dog. Dogs need exercise. They love walking. And Louis is no exception. It’s one of the highlights of his day. This means I need to find an hour each day to go for a walk with him. Yet, I don’t need any discipline to take him for his walk. It’s just something I do each day.

Similarly, at 4:30 pm, I do my exercise. 4:30 pm triggers the start of my evening routine. I exercise for an hour, take a shower, then go downstairs and cook dinner. I do this six days a week, with Saturday being the exception.

It never occurs to me not to go upstairs and exercise. If I’m not feeling great, I’ll do a lighter session; sometimes I may only do some stretching. But at 4:30, I know it’s time to stop work and exercise. It’s just what I do. It’s a part of my everyday routine.

Now, one more thing, Anna. A mistake many people make is trying to do too many things at once. When you do this, you are diluting yourself too much.

Remember, to accomplish anything, you will need some discipline and focus to begin with. You’re trying to do something that is not a part of your regular life, and it will feel uncomfortable at first.

I mentioned focus there because this is when you may need your calendar or task manager to nudge you for a few weeks—reminding you that you have something to do.

It’s easier to focus on one thing at a time.

A trick I started using—and found very effective—was to divide the year into quarters and start one new thing each quarter. This gave me three months to develop the necessary habits to turn whatever it was I wanted to change into a solid habit.

There’s no rush to accomplish these things. As Bill Gates said, “most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can accomplish in twelve months”

Focusing on one thing at a time means you need less focus and less time.

And finally, if you were trying to do a new activity every day, you’re likely to miss some days. Take the reading habit, if your goal is to read for twenty minutes every day, allow yourself some wriggle room.

Rather than thinking you failed because you missed a day, look at achieving an 80%+ success rate. It’s hard to start a new activity and be consistent with it at first. It’s likely you will forget or just not do the activity one day. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean you failed.

What matters is that you acknowledge the skip and get back to it the next day. That way, you’re not looking at it as a matter of success or failure; you see it as a work in progress, and a day or two missed is not final. It just means you need to refocus the next day.

I always think of those early weeks as experimental weeks. If I find that the time of day I try to do something doesn’t work, I can try other times until I find the right one when I can be consistent.

I hope that has helped Anna. Do let me know how you get on, and thank you for your question, and to you too for listening.

It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.