Discipline Doesn’t Work- Here’s How To Achieve Your Goals Without It.

James Clear Charles Duhigg Nick Winter Ali Abdaal Thomas Frank Tom Kuegler

Discipline is overrated

If discipline was a medicine no doctor would ever prescribe it. It doesn’t work. Or at least not consistently in most people. Everyone has ‘that goal’ that they’ve always wanted to achieve but never have. Most people blame themselves for having a lack of discipline for their numerous failures. The real medicine that people need is the art of environmental design.

Why we should never aim to use discipline

We should view our discipline the same way we view our emergency savings. Yes we should have some, but relying on discipline is like planning on using our emergency saving to pay the rent each month. Instead, our discipline should be our insurance policy. For our day-to-day activities environmental design should be used to achieve our goals, and discipline for the the occasions where something outside of our control happens. We can control bringing healthy food to work, but then use our discipline when unexpectedly a colleague brings doughnuts for everyone.

The Art Of Environmental Design

A well designed environment should protect us from our own vices of laziness, procrastination and inconsistency. As…