The chicken and the egg of productivity
Does discipline beget routines, or do routines beget discipline?
In the mornings, after a shower and making my bed, I sit down with a cup of coffee and begin to write.
…at least, that's the truth I'd like to tell myself.
By the time I make my cup of coffee and open my laptop to write, I've probably:
- Checked or played a game on my phone;
- Opened my email (more than once);
- Opened social media (those red notifications are so tempting);
…among any number of other things.
This is definitely not ideal.
But how do I, y'know, fix it? What am I missing?
Am I not disciplined enough to ignore my phone?
Or am I missing the habit of waking up and getting right to work?
The Chicken and the Egg
I call Discipline and Habit the chicken and the egg of productivity.
You need discipline to form habits.
…but you need habits to cultivate discipline.
Hence, the chicken and the egg problem, the ouroboros of productivity. What a mess.
Obviously, discipline just doesn’t come from anywhere. Neither do habits; we had to learn them.
So it stands to reason that you and I can learn to create new habits.
The million-dollar question is: how?
Treat Yo'self
You brush your teeth every morning. (Hopefully.)
You, like me, probably check your phone after waking up.
Have you ever stopped to think about why you do those things? (Besides “my parents taught me to brush my teeth.”)
You do them because there’s a reward associated with doing them.
Brushing your teeth means other people won’t recoil from you because your breath smells like a garbage disposal filled with rotting onions and maggot-ridden pork leftovers.
You check your phone because you want the reward of seeing the red notifications — the reward that comes with the connection your phone makes you feel to other people.
So…if you’re trying to create new habits, it’s pretty obvious what you need to do: create a reward.
What kind of reward?
Whatever motivates you.
Praise works. Your parents praised you when they were potty-training you. But it could also be chocolate…
Discipline
Discipline is…a bit more difficult to obtain. Mostly because discipline implies willpower, and willpower, as I’m sure you know, is in short supply (and not always effective.)
But discipline is important in keeping your habits when you stray from your routine. You’re traveling and you really don’t want to bang out your 1,000 words this morning — you’re jetlagged and you want to get calentado at the hotel restaurant.
But you do it anyway. Because it’s a habit.
That’s not discipline.
Discipline is what you need when you don’t write your 1,000 words and now you’re back home.
Discipline is how you get your forming habits back on the rails to habitland.
…and how do you stay disciplined?
Reward yourself. The same way you would when you first started your habit.
Because it took discipline to first start that habit. Discipline was the first step.
Discipline is the burst that gets us to habits.
But what if you’re not disciplined?
Remove the Trigger
Let’s return to the phone.
If I don’t have the discipline to not waste an hour in the morning on my phone, I need to take a different approach.
I could punish myself for looking at my phone…but since I have no willpower, I wouldn’t follow through.
I could enlist someone else to hold me accountable…but I could always cheat.
But who says I need to have my phone near me in the mornings anyway?
What if I just removed the temptation? Then I don’t need to have discipline.
What if I put my phone on airplane mode before I fell asleep? Then there wouldn’t be any red dots in the morning.
Nothing to steal my attention.
Now I can save my willpower. I just have to get to my desk and start working.
