Ok Let's Fix Your Discipline
Morning Digital Family,
We are fast approaching the end of the first quarter of this year which means the birth of some new and exciting things. I told you a few digital entries ago that I was relaunching my monthly Private Self Authoring masterclasses. Well, I'm going to launch them in less than a week and tickets will be limited so, at the end of this entry, you can find out how to reserve tickets.
When we think about success we often think about ambition, big goals and plans! These are very important, however, they are only half the story. The other half is having the discipline to get the stuff done. Without real discipline, our goals, ambition and plans will remain lifeless ink on paper.
I first leant about discipline playing sports. When I first started learning how to play Table Tennis. Interesting fact, both my mum and dad were table tennis champions! When I started playing, I just wasn't that good. It was such a technical sport and I just wasn’t getting it. Every inflexion of my wrist would have the ball flying off the table which often left me very frustrated.
However, things started changing when my parents sought to nurture my interest and invested in a Table Tennis table for our basement. I would fold it up every evening and practice. Every single day. This is where I started learning the principle of building discipline like muscle and the doctrine of marginal gains. With every practice, I felt myself getting better and better. Safe to say, it was transformational. I went on to play Table Tennis at a national and international level after.
Defining Discipline
You may think discussing the definition of discipline is much ado about nothing because it’s so simple to define, I would disagree. I think the current dictionary and working definition most people have is far too shallow.
Here is the general definition
The practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behaviour, using punishment to correct disobedience.
I would say discipline is about being able to usurp transient pain for eternal of existential joy. Maybe this is a more religious definition, sure, but it gets to the heart of the matter.
On the surface, self-discipline is about finding compelling reasons to do something then committing yourself to see that task or activity through to the very end. Possessing self-discipline requires having an internal desire, drive, and motivation that propels you forward toward your goal. However, this ain’t just about the pursuit of a goal.
Self-discipline is more specifically about your ability to control your desires and impulses in an attempt to stay focused (for long enough) on what needs to get done to successfully achieve that goal.
Given this definition, self-discipline, in a nutshell, involves committing to long-term gains without falling prey to the pitfalls of instant gratification along the way.
So rather than talking about discipline in this nebulous sense, I want to talk about discipline as a muscle. A muscle is something we all understand. We have them all around our bodies. In fact, there are about 600 muscles in the human body. One universal thing about muscles is that they can all grow and they can waste away if we don’t exercise them.
One of the ways to practically start growing your discipline is not to start too heavy but to start with the bar.
Start With The Bar
I talk about this extensively in my upcoming masterclass. Suppose you haven't been to the gym in a long time because, I dunno, I suppose there has been a global pandemic stopping you. Your muscles may have become wasted a little bit and you’re no longer as strong as you used to be. Because of an amazing vaccine rollout programme, the gyms open again and you're eager to prove you are still as strong as before. You get to the bench press and you are trying to lift the weights you lifted prior to the lockdown. Reading this, you are probably aware that this is unwise. This person will either fail miserably and be discouraged from trying again or worse, injure themself and have to take time out.
This is how a lot of people treat their goals and discipline. They say far too high and intense, then burnout and then don’t try again. This starts a cycle of saying you are going to change, trying to change and then stopping. You may be starting too high and intense
Instead of being driven by ego, you could start with the bar. By the bar, I mean the mental bar with no weights attached at all. It may be embarrassingly light, but it means you have time to work on your form and to ease your way back into things as you get stronger. As you build muscle, you can add more weight and resistance.
This is my invitation to you everyone reading this, trying to build discipline. Find the bar in your life and start with that. Maybe it’s laying the bed every morning. Can you commit to that for a month? Maybe its drinking 2 litres of water; can you commit to this for a week?
What you will find is that as you begin with the bar, momentum is generated and the law of marginal gains takes over as the muscle starts to grow and expand.
Marginal Gains
The doctrine of marginal gains is all about small incremental improvements in any process adding up to a significant improvement when they are all added together.
It is perhaps most easy to understand by considering the approach of Sir Dave Brailsford. When he became performance director of British Cycling, he set about breaking down the objective of winning races into its component parts.
Brailsford believed that if it was possible to make a 1% improvement in a whole host of areas, the cumulative gains would end up being hugely significant.
He was on the look-out for all the weaknesses in the team's assumptions, all the latent problems, so he could improve on each of them.
By experimenting in a wind tunnel, he noted that the bike was not sufficiently aerodynamic. By analysing the mechanics area in the team truck, he discovered that dust was accumulating on the floor, undermining bike maintenance. So he had the floor painted pristine white, in order to spot any impurities.
Each weakness was not a threat, but an opportunity to make adaptations, and create marginal gains. Rapidly, they began to accumulate.
He went further. The team started to use antibacterial hand gel to cut down on infections. When he became general manager of Team Sky, he redesigned the team bus to improve comfort and recuperation. They started to probe deeper into untested assumptions, such as the dynamic relationship between the intensity of the warm-down and speed of recovery. As they learned more, they created further marginal gains.
Team GB used to be also-rans in world cycling. Indeed, one pundit described the operation as "a laughing stock". But in the last two Olympics, Team GB has captured 16 gold medals and British riders have won the Tour De France three times in the last four years. This is the power of a questioning mindset and a commitment to continuous improvement.
This doctrine also applies to the world of business. Many of the most innovative companies are now using a marginal gains approach. Google, for example, runs 12,000 data-driven experiments annually in order to discover small weaknesses and, thus, small improvements. One such experiment found that by tweaking the shade of the Google toolbar from a darker to a lighter blue, it increased the number of click-throughs. This marginal change increased revenue dramatically.
Aviation is an industry with a marginal gains approach. It is always looking for improvements, however small, to drive safety.
For example, in the 1940s, there were a series of inexplicable accidents involving B-17 bombers. The industry commissioned a psychologist to conduct an investigation. He found that the switches controlling the flaps in B-17s were identical to those controlling the landing gear, and were placed side by side. Under the pressure of a difficult landing, pilots were making a mistake.
A quick fix was required, so a small rubber wheel was attached to the landing gear switch and a small flap shape to the flaps control. The buttons now had an intuitive meaning, easily identified under pressure. This was a tiny change, a marginal adjustment to the design of the cockpit, but it had dramatic results. Accidents of this kind disappeared overnight.
This approach has now been applied to airlines for many decades with remarkable effects. In 1912, eight of 14 US Army pilots died in crashes - more than half. In 2014, the accident rate for major airlines had dropped to just one crash for every 8.3 million take-offs.
As you can see, small things can make a big difference and this is the case with discipline. Start small and stay consistent.
Have an amazing week
M.T. Omoniyi
Announcements
1) Building Real Discipline Masterclass
Later this week, tickets to the first self Authoring Masterclass in a year will go live. They will be limited and will most likely go on the first day. If you want to be the first to find out then you can join a group chat on WhatsApp where I will share the link first before sharing it publically.
2) Budget Breakdown
I spent some time breaking down the top takeaways from the Budget last week
With Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak announcing his 2021 budget just yesterday, we look at just how feasible some of his proposals are. Will more people be plunged into poverty? Will this new budget fuel a much-needed economic recovery? And what does this mean for the traditional conservative stance on lowering taxes?