Apparently, discipline outperforms motivation.
I’ve heard a saying a few times lately. People express it differently each time, but the sentiment is the same.
“Motivation is fleeting. Discipline is key.”
“Motivation is overrated. Cultivate discipline.”
“Motivation gets you going, but discipline keeps you growing.”
That last one is attributed to John C Maxwell an American author on leadership.
The expression is intended as a guide for achieving extraordinary goals. If you want to go above and beyond your usual level of achievement, then you’ll have to add something to what you’re already doing, and that secret ingredient is discipline.
In this context, discipline is the adherence to standards or rules, either set by you or others, designed to get you to your goal. You carefully and consciously control your behaviour to comply with the rules, and that delivers the outcome. It sets in play an unambiguous path between action and results.
It seems a logical and practical approach.
Until you realise discipline isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
I don’t know where the idea that discipline outperforms motivation began. Perhaps it was born from the mouths of gym-fluencers loitering around the water cooler after a workout, or a sergeant shouted it at the troops as they went face-first into a muddy trough at training.
Whatever its humble beginnings, the idea has proliferated across the planet so convincingly that it has reached the cafes of Sydney.
“Discipline picks up where your motivation leaves off”, said the person seated near me.
The words snapped my attention back into the conversation. I’m not sure how long I had been staring out the café window, mesmerised by the swarms of commuters walking by. So many people, so few smiles.
“That’s not how it works.”, I said.
They looked at me, puzzled.
“It’s wrong.”
Their pause prolonged.
“It’s a neuro myth. That’s not how the human mind works.”
I wasn’t challenging the principle just to be contentious. Blind acceptance of neuro myths like this one limits rather than expands a person’s ability to achieve bold goals.
Your motivation supply is unlimited.
Contrary to what the saying infers, your supply of motivation is not limited, nor does it have an expiry date. While ever your heart beats, you are motivated.
You are constantly being driven by something to do something.
You are motivated by external pressures, internal desires, fears, threats, risks, love, anger and countless other emotions.
However, your motivation sometimes flows in a different direction to your goal.
You might say you want to run a marathon, but what you feel like doing is sleeping in. You’re motivated to rest instead of training.
You may have scrawled “Make healthy food choices” on the front of your fridge. But, your mind craves cake and suddenly walking a kilometre to the local bakery seems quite reasonable.
Conflicts in motivation are common. They feel like your motivation has reached a T-intersection.
Your logical brain wants to go in one direction, but your cerebellum drives you in another. Turn left to reach your goal, or turn right to arrive at another desirable destination. Sometimes, you may feel stalled or stuck at the intersection, torn between two enticing options. But that doesn’t mean your motivation is gone; it’s just waiting for direction.
The secret to achieving anything extraordinary is learning to navigate those T-intersections so your motivation flows toward your goal rather than away from it.
Discipline ain’t good for growing.
Compared to all the different types of motivation, I give discipline three out of 10 for sustainability. If you rely on it solely, you’ll run out of energy long before reaching your goal.
Motivation can be grouped into two categories:
- “Toward” motivation is reward-driven
- “Away” motivation is fear-driven
“Away” motivation burns adrenaline and gives you a short shot of energy to flee or confront the thing you fear. After the hit, you collapse into a pile of burnout, where you must rest and recover to face the next threat.
“Toward” motivation seeks out dopamine, which makes you feel good. Your primal brain will do almost anything to get its fix, and once satisfied, it seeks more. When you feel like you’re in a state of flow, it’s dopamine that’s flowing. Your productivity, mental acuity and creativity are all performing at their best.
Discipline draws its power from negative consequences or punishments for non-compliance. If you don’t follow the rules and follow the steps identified, you’ll fail or feel ashamed, guilty, or rejected from the group.
Think about how guilty you feel when you don’t get up with the alarm or the shame that bubbles up when your coach points out the missed sessions. You feel like you’ve let yourself down. Ouch! That’s the stick of discipline wielding a painful thwack, and you keep moving to stay one step ahead of its sting.
Doing the right things for the right reasons makes discipline redundant.
KIRRILY DEAR
Discipline is an “away” motivation. It relies heavily on the fear of failure to gain potency, which burns volumes of energy and then drops you off the adrenaline cliff—your ability to achieve falls to a sharp end with it.
“Away” motivators also limit your capacity to learn and grow.
Discipline can get you going, but another type of motivation will be required to keep you growing.
Discipline is overrated. Cultivate motivation.
Discipline is fleeting. Motivation is key.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Routine sustains effort, not discipline
There’s another aspect of discipline that makes it exhausting and, therefore, of limited value for achieving extraordinary goals.
Discipline is a conscious process. When you recognise you’re breaking the rules, you decide to comply and adjust your behaviour accordingly. You think, then act.
Conscious processes require a lot of effort. Remember how hard it was when you learned to ride a bike? That’s because you were constantly thinking about what every bone and muscle in your body was doing and trying to coordinate it all.
But eventually, that effort becomes automated. You no longer have to think about the parts; it just happens.
Around 2017, I was training for a 1300km ultramarathon, running a business and a charity, and had many other balls in the air.
Routines eat discipline for breakfast.
KIRRILY DEAR
When people learned of all my activities, they often said, “Gosh, you must be disciplined to keep all that going!”
Discipline had little to do with it. I was in the habit of doing all the required steps on autopilot with very little thought, like riding a bike. I had a well-designed and well-established routine.
Routines focus on habits not rules.
When your motivation is heading in the wrong direction, routines bring it back on track.
Discipline is also prone to failure. There is a slither of time between your thoughts and actions where you can question what you “should” be doing. Any self-doubt or hesitation exploits that gap to stop or redirect you. There are no thinking gaps in a well-honed routine.
Routines eat discipline for breakfast.
Don’t rely on discipline. Focus on reward + routine.
Doing the right things for the right reasons makes discipline redundant.
Surround yourself with your ultimate reward.
Surround yourself with prompts, icons, and elements that remind you of the sensations and outcomes you will experience when you achieve your goal. You want to establish a robust effort-reward connection in your mind that will defy any distractions.
Have immediate rewards.
Have mini-rewards scattered along the path to your bigger goal. Again, this aims to trigger the dopamine-seeking part of your mind and get it heading in the right direction. In Answer Your Calling, we set up green tick days for this purpose.
If your mind realises it only has to put in a small effort to get a dopamine hit, it will become dedicated to doing those. Lots of small efforts add up to an extraordinary achievement.
Tweak your environment and routine.
These form the road along which your motivation travels, so it’s essential to ensure the road points in the right direction.
- Remove distractions or enticements that have you travelling the wrong way.
- Choose one or two tweaks to your existing routine that will progress you toward your goal.
- Embed those changes through repetition.
- Once you’re no longer consciously thinking about doing those things, you can choose to tweak another one or two actions.
All that sounds way easier and more fun than being “disciplined”, doesn’t it?
That’s because discipline is overrated. Harness the power of your intrinsic motivation, and it will take you further than you ever knew possible.
