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You’ll Never Build Discipline — Unless You Do This One Counterintuitive Thing
Everyone fails at discipline for the same reason. The fix is simple, but almost nobody is willing to do it.
Several months ago, I encountered an individual that fundamentally shifted my perspective on discipline. He was my senior in school. His name slipped my memory, but I had an awareness of him. I came across him in a coffee shop one day, and our small talk turned into one of the most illuminating conversations I have had in my lifetime.
He told me that he had struggled for over 10 years to build discipline, and he thought he had finally figured it out.
“Most of what people think they know about discipline is wrong,” he sighed as he took a sip of his coffee. “Discipline is not willpower or motivation… it’s simply pressing friction away from you, to create a path to win.”
I was curious, so I leaned in and said “What do you mean?”
What came next was a master class on discipline in the real world. He wasn’t presenting productivity hacks that looked amazing, but it involved making simple habits that were sustainable and made failure improbable.
Here is what he told me.
