13 Hacks to be 99.9% More Disciplined That Cost Nothing

I'm going to share the 13 hacks that can make anyone 99% more disciplined that cost nothing. These are the strategies that I use to go from a distracted, broke 23-year-old with ADHD to consistently crushing every hard task without fail and building a $100 million empire. You can start using these hacks today, even if you lack motivation.

So, without further explaining it, these are the 13 hacks to unlock more discipline, starting with number one: cancel your morning alarm. I know a guy that literally has seven morning alarms. He wakes up, hits the snooze button, wakes up again, snooze button again, and he's got a snooze alarm set every 15 minutes.

What are you doing? Why are you laying in bed? Do you know what you tell yourself when you do this?

It's that life is a snooze and you're better off just laying there than getting up and attacking the day. Most of your problems could easily be solved if you just went to bed on time. How do I get up at 4:00 a.

m. every day without an alarm? I just go to bed at 9:00 p.

m. It's not that impressive; I have an alarm to tell me when I go to bed. If you want to wake up ready to attack the day, if the first decision you get the chance to make is snoozing your alarm, you've just lost the battle.

Think about this: if you just delete your alarm, it will force you to think about your bedtime because you have to go to bed at a time when your body will naturally wake up. So instead, set a bedtime alarm that is different from what you will hear from everybody else. It's more important to go to bed on time and let your body wake you up when it's done resting than for you to wake yourself up out of bed because you don't have a forcing function to go to bed on time.

See, if you know you have to go to sleep because your body's going to wake up, and you can't have an alarm intercept, you won't allow yourself to watch another episode, watch another episode, watch another episode. You will go to bed on time because you have to get the time in for your body to feel restful so that when you wake up, you can attack it. Before we get to number two, we've got a goal of hitting a million subscribers.

So, if you haven't already, hit subscribe, which brings us to hack number two: upgrade your TV to a library. I remember listening to Jim Rohn, who’s like the godfather of personal development, a long time ago, and he said most people that are broke have bigger TVs than they do libraries. The average person has a 65 or 75 bazillion-inch TV.

My invitation is to have a bigger library. Go invest in books. When I buy books, if somebody says, "Hey, you should buy this book," I buy that book and every other book the author has.

I see what's recommended to me; I have an unlimited budget for my mind. That belief will keep me disciplined and focused on achieving things that most people can’t. There's a reason supercar companies like Ferrari and Lamborghini don’t run TV ads: because the people who buy those cars don’t watch TV.

They don’t want to be advertised to. They're out there creating their world, not being sold on living a better world because they're already doing it. Your body is wired for dopamine, and TV is very good at delivering it.

If you get into it and become addicted to it, it will take over your life. See, most people that stop me when I'm driving one of my supercars ask me, "What did you do to become rich? " I'll tell you what I didn't do: I didn't sit around watching TV.

I fed my mind. I read books. My success is the byproduct of feeding my mind, of going all in on education—education that nobody made me do.

I didn't sit in a classroom; I wasn't forced to do homework. I was self-educated because I wanted more for myself. I just think having a bigger library is more important than having a bigger TV because if you actually focus on educating yourself, that habit will create discipline, which brings us to hack number three: turn off all notifications.

You may not know this, but the software companies in Silicon Valley are engineering the distractions, and distractions destroy dreams. Even my buddy has a retail store, and we called him at 5:00 in the morning to ask him a question. He answered the phone and then got mad at us for calling him at 5:00 in the morning.

I said, "Dude, you can put your phone on do not disturb. " He said, "Well, that must be nice for you, but I have a store, and an alarm goes through to my phone, so I have to be able to answer it. " Okay, so you're the only person in the history of the world with a retail store that doesn't have your security alarm go to a professional?

Most people don’t realize that their need to always be in the loop, thumb on the pulse of their business, is actually distracting them from doing deep, focused work and building that discipline muscle. Your goals should matter more than the notifications you're allowing. You should design a life that's more interesting than the social media apps pulling you into distraction.

The only person who can call me directly is my wife; that is a special setting I set up on my phone. Everybody else, unless I need the call, I put my phone on do not disturb. Instead, what I do is I schedule time to review my messages.

I plug into Slack, to text messages, to missed calls. Decide when I connect, and that's why I don't even do my email inbox anymore. I talk about it in my book, *Buy Back Your Time.

* A lot of people brag about inbox zero. What about zero inbox? Because I learned your email inbox is nothing more than a public to-do list of other people's priorities on your time.

Turning off notifications is the key to unlocking discipline because it stops you from being distracted. When you are disciplined and you're in the zone and you're getting work done, having a vibration or noise interrupt you is crazy to me. My door is closed in my office; my kids aren't allowed to come and knock on the door.

They understand that when I do that, that's a signal to everybody in the home that it's time for my deep work. Out of respect, unless it's an emergency, please don't interrupt me. You need to do that for yourself.

Your focus needs to be protected. Your energy needs to be protected. Your attention needs to be protected.

Give it to the work. Which brings us to number four: hack your algorithm. This idea will probably mess you up, but I spend millions of dollars every year to buy back my time, to then get work done throughout the day and scroll social media at night.

I probably scroll three hours a day on TikTok. Why? Because I've actually curated my social feed to feed my mind.

Every video I've liked, I've searched, and I've added to it. I'm learning about AI, media, success, and motivation, and my feed is actually a mini university I've designed. Don't let the algorithm drag you down with mindless distractions.

Curate it! Unfollow people! Don't look at stuff that triggers you.

I think we live in this beautiful world where you can decide who you want to learn from—people who have been there and are closer to your goals—rather than your current friends. You can actually unfollow people and refollow the folks that are going to support you. You're allowed to do this.

A lot of you are scared to do it. Just mute them. Just say, "Less of this.

" When something shows up in my feed and I don't want that, I just say, "Give me less," and you can curate your feed that way. It costs you nothing, and it'll change your whole psychology, your focus, your ability to create, and your ability to stay disciplined. Just click on those three dots and say, "Recommend posts like this" or "Not interested.

" This brings us to hack number five: master your list. The other day, somebody asked me, "Dan, do you have a system for. .

. ? " I stopped them and said, "Yes.

" They're like, "You don't even know what I asked! " I have a system for packing. I have a system for my food prep.

I have a system for travel. I have a system for everything. I have list upon list upon list.

Why? Because if I was ever going to do it once, I'm going to write it down so that the next time, it's easier on me and I don't forget anything. As I build them, I can then give them to somebody else so they can do them for me to buy back my time.

Checklists are the key to getting more time. Checklists are the way that you stay disciplined in your work so that you don't get distracted by things that you don't have to do. The most disciplined people aren't superhuman; they just write everything down.

They take everything in their mind and put it on the list because your brain is not meant to remember things. Your brain is meant to be used to solve massive problems. You want to keep it empty so that the cycles are available, not trying to keep all these open loops going so you don't forget anything.

See, your lack of discipline is actually a lack of clarity because it's clogged up and foggy, trying to remember all these things that you should just write down. Get it out of your brain; it makes everything else easier. Once you have everything out, it's a sequence of what to attack.

What I've learned is your sequencing equals success. If you get it out of your brain, put it on paper, sort it, and attack it in the right order, that's how you start to build momentum. Which brings us to number six: stack your habits.

Every once in a while, I'll get a client that comes into my world and they're like, "I want to redesign everything. I want to change my business and do all this stuff," and they literally do everything and take massive action because they read about this. But what they really are doing is setting themselves up to fail.

How many people do you know that decide to get into fitness and then, all of a sudden, they go to the gym twice in one day, start running, and then aren't eating properly, and then they crash and give up? That happens all the time. I'm much more of a fan of massive action consistently.

I'm more of a fan of saying, "Hey, let's stack our habits. Let's lock one in—a big one. Maybe it's nutrition, maybe it's working out, maybe it's getting up earlier.

But once we lock it in, then we can stack it. Once we plug in one, we can add another one easier. Once there's built consistency.

" James Clear said it best: "Habits are the compounding interest of self-improvement. " The best way to actually install a new habit and have discipline long term is to ask yourself, "What do you already do automatically? How can you use that as a trigger and add?

" The new habit to adopt: put your new habit beside an existing one until it becomes automatic. If you have a habit of brushing your teeth and you want to remember to take your vitamins, then take those vitamins and place them next to your toothpaste. If you want to have a habit of reading your book and you know that every morning you grab a cup of coffee, put your Kindle or your book next to the coffee maker so that you grab both at the same time.

The highest level of habit is when it becomes your identity. See, I'm pretty sure if you don't smoke, last week you did not tell yourself 14,000 times not to stop and buy cigarettes. Why?

Because you don't smoke. And as soon as you build a habit into who you are, that's how easy it becomes; you don't think about it, it's just what you do. So, for example, for me, working out daily takes no discipline anymore.

Why? Because it's just who I am. "Sweat every day" has been my mantra for years.

I need to work out; if I don't, it's just as weird as walking around not wearing any pants—like, it's weird. So I work out; I feel better. It's who I am.

Habits need to be stacked so that they just become part of your identity, which brings us to hack number seven: commit to someone. The other day, I was at the gym, and this guy named Jack from my team came to me and was like, "Hey man, I want to produce more content. " I said, "No, you don't.

" He said, "Yes, I do. " I said, "Prove it. " He asked, "How?

" I said, "You ready for this? " He goes, "Yeah. " I said, "Commit to doing two a day.

Commit to doing two a day. If you do, you get to bring your girlfriend to a spa. If you don't, you have to run a marathon with no prep, and you have to go post on social media and tell everybody about it.

" Then he shook my hand. That is commitment, because he made the commitment to me, he made the commitment to his girlfriend (because she wanted to go to the spa), and he made a commitment to all of his friends on social media. There’s zero chance he’s not going to hit it.

And I'm happy to report he’s 16, 17 days in and hasn't missed two a day, and I guarantee he’s not going to miss. Here’s why: people will do more for others than they’ll ever do for themselves. You’ll do more for your dog than you’ll do for yourself.

I've seen people give their dog a prescription with 100 days of pills, two pills a day, and that person never misses one of those pills for those 100 days. Yet, the doctor gives them a prescription for some kind of flu or whatever they got, and they might fill out 75% of it consistently. Having somebody else you’re committed to is how you create discipline.

Finding a mentor or a coach to hold you accountable—that is the purpose of those people in your life. Scheduling your gym time with a buddy is how you ensure you show up, because I guarantee you’ll be less likely to cancel on a friend who went out of their way to change their time to match yours so you guys can go get your pump on. The way you build discipline is by designing the game to be easy to play.

If you want to get something done, tell somebody you respect, because then they’ll hold you accountable. Which brings us to number eight: clean out your pantry. I believe it's easier to avoid the dragon than to slay it.

So many of my fitness clients couldn’t stick to the plan; many of them sabotaged themselves, ate some crap, and made bad decisions. I just kept saying, “Go into your house, take all the food out of there, tell your family you need them to be on board for the next 90 days. Stop blaming them.

If you need to, get a locked cabinet that your spouse has the key to—do that! But I’m telling you, the best way to win in the discipline game is to just avoid having to make the decision. Set the standard in your house: don’t have it as an option.

Get it out of your view, and it’ll be way easier for you to pull off. Here’s a big idea: your environment will always win over your willpower. If you want to make good decisions, you have to make good choices, and the only choices available shouldn’t be bad ones.

It’s not hard to have discipline and make good choices if the only choices available to you are good ones. The same can be applied to your phone. Clean out all the distracting apps—just delete them!

Only check your social media on your computer if you have to, or video games; you’re allowed to move them out of your home. Put them at your friend's house. “Hey man, I just bought you a new game console, but I’m going to come over and play it on weekends.

Is that okay? ” “Okay, cool! ” Get it out of your home.

It's way easier to avoid the dragon than to slay it. Which brings us to hack number nine: make failure painful. This was actually painful, but it was the best decision I’ve ever made.

My first business coach was $1,500 a month. I didn’t have the money. I figured if he’s so good, within a couple of months he should be able to help me make money to pay for him.

But not doing the work would have been the pain; not showing up would have been painful. Not taking deep amounts of notes would have been the most costly thing, not the money. It's not getting the results that would have been the painful thing, and that's why I set up the game so that the pain is something I don't want to feel.

So I'm willing to do the work to avoid it. Most people don't pay, so they don't pay attention. They don't realize that the transformation they're looking for happens at the transaction because in that moment, they say to themselves, "I want to get my money's worth.

" People will always work harder to avoid pain than to gain pleasure. So, here are a few ideas to make sure that it builds your discipline. First off, always have stakes involved.

Anytime you make a commitment, you should create a scenario where, if you don't achieve it, there's pain in your life. Have the stakes there. Put your money on the line.

If you're like, "How do I make this painful? " I would make a donation to an organization you hate—maybe it's the opposite political party you believe in, or whatever it is. But if you don't achieve the thing you want, then you have to give a large amount of money to that organization.

Or you can have some fun and say, "Hey, if I don't do this, I'm going to give you $1,000. " If I don't follow through, I wouldn't even give it to a friend; I would actually give it to an enemy. What if you made a commitment to your friend to give $1,000 to your enemy, someone you actually despise, if you don't achieve your goal?

Do you think you're going to want to do that? No. Number three: embarrassment can also be a great motivator.

You know, when I decided to do Project Visible ABS, which is 90 days, I went from like 17% body fat down to 5%. The stakes I put on the line were entering a fitness competition as-is: dad bod, no tan, no shave. If I didn't achieve it, I was motivated—that's not even the right word; I was highly motivated, oh, and then some.

There was zero chance I wasn't going to hit that. I would have sat there for 13 days and not eaten any food to hit my goal. Which brings us to number ten: start with the big domino.

Most people believe that we build momentum; I think it's a complete lie. I think the best thing you can do is start your day with the hardest problems. That's where you have your most creativity, and it always, for me, goes first in my day.

That momentum, though, then gets built to the other stuff. But I'm not trying to do little wins; I'm trying to get a massive one early, and then the next biggest one, and the next biggest one, before I deplete my ability to think creatively. The truth is, the hardest task is to stop picking the easiest tasks.

In many ways, people's dreams for a bigger life are usually derailed because there's an easier path to a smaller goal. Most people could have bigger lives if they allowed themselves to pick hard things and stick to them—not just take a path that's easier. So how do we do that?

We put the big ones first, and the other ones just fall into place. In practice, your biggest commitments are first in the calendar. I put them literally in the calendar; I honor my calendar.

Sometimes we have this thing, this test, this presentation we have to give in the future, and instead of just attacking the work today, we put it off, and it creates anxiety and frustration. We're not nice to the people around us, and they don't know why. And you know it's because you're upset with yourself, but you take it out on everybody all around you.

That's not fair. Decide to do the hardest thing first, and build that momentum in your life. Which brings us to hack number eleven: delete useless decisions.

Do you want to take the guesswork out of my closet? The blue shirt—a blue shirt. I only wear blue shirts.

I have thousands of blue shirts. I have a lot. Why?

I don't want to have to think. When I sat down a long time ago and said, "Hey, I know I've got to get dressed every day," I didn't want to have to take any cognitive overhead to actually make those decisions. I decided to wear the same color pattern with the same clothes, with the same brand, every day.

That way, it doesn't become decision fatigue; I just have to decide once. Then dream bigger: make the decision, don't repeat yourself—it's called "drive"—and then move on to bigger problems. See, most people keep making the same little decisions all the time, and they don't have the mental capacity to tackle the big stuff.

I would much rather you focus your discipline and willpower on important decisions. Jeff Bezos said this a long time ago: he said, "When I wake up, I read the newspaper, I putter, and then I get to work. I only have to make two to three big decisions in the day, usually before 11:00 a.

m. , and after that, I'm good. " Those big decisions require your focus.

If you take that mind power and that creativity away by making little decisions that you don't need to make, it takes away from your ability to do big things. Pretty much everything in my life, the way I think about it, is my existence. Meals: I do meal prep; I eat the same macros.

Workouts: I go to the same place, same time, with the same people I interact with. My clothes: I wear the same clothes. My weekly schedule, my rhythm of existence, they're all the same.

I've decided to make my decisions a while ago: follow the process. If it's not broken, I keep it going, because I want to add big things. Not get distracted by little things, which brings us to number 12: find disciplined friends.

When I decided to leave my small town and explore what the world had for me, I also knew I was looking to surround myself with people that were closer to my goals than to me. And that's a big question you should ask yourself: Are the folks you're spending time with going to support you and encourage you, or do they make it harder for you to go after what you want to create? It's interesting, because when I think of the list of things that I do to be successful, and then I think of a person's name, I just have to ask myself: Does this person make it more likely that I'll do those things, or less likely?

If it's less likely, why would I involve them in my life the way I'm doing right now? Maybe I've just got to create some space. Maybe I can love them from a distance.

I mean, you've heard this before, but you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with. The way I think about it is that you become the average of the five people you allow to influence you. The cool part is you can get influenced by people on social media, as I mentioned, and by other people that you read about who inspire you.

Here's what I've learned: Discipline is contagious. Being around other people who have discipline, who track their macros, and who work out every day makes it so much easier to make good decisions in your life. Now, if that requires you to do a friend inventory—where you sit down and actually say, "Here are my goals.

What kind of people would I want to spend time with that are going to help me achieve those goals faster? "—then maybe make a list of your current friends and ask, "Is this somebody I see supporting my future or holding me back? " It doesn't mean just because you've known somebody since high school or you've sat next to somebody in math class that you have to be friends with them forever.

But some people you do. Like one of my best friends, Marty: I've known him since I was 13. He works for the government, and he is still my biggest fan.

I love Marty; I have all the time in the world for Marty. When I interviewed Dana White, the first person I called afterwards was Marty. The people in my life today are definitely closer to my goals and dreams than closer to me.

Some of you might feel really lonely; you might not feel like you have any friends. Just find virtual mentors; find mentors in the form of books, coaching, online podcasts. I mean, I'm assuming it's why you're listening to this: You want to find people that are going to show you the world you want to create, so that you can learn from their beliefs or their points of view to adopt those and make your life easier.

Which brings us to the last hack: number 13, visualize your goals. Guess how many times I look at my goals? Yearly, monthly, weekly—no, at least three times a day.

Three times a day, I have 12 power goals that I've set for the year that I review to ask myself, "Am I investing my calendar, my bank account towards those goals appropriately? Is my calendar a reflection of those priorities? " And if they're not, what phone calls do I need to make?

What projects do I need to stop or start? That, to me, is how throughout the year I'm able to achieve about 75% to 80% of those goals—not 100%, because they're massive—but 65% to 75% of big goals—12 of them for the year. I wouldn't be able to do it if I didn't review them with that frequency.

So, if you're struggling with discipline, it's really just a test. The test is this: Do you want it as bad as you say you do? Because if you do, you're willing to do the work.

And the way you get the work done is by reviewing the work, by setting the goal, by visualizing the goal, by attacking it. It's not enough to just have goals; you have to have the goals and be in the energy of receiving them. So, I call this the rule of 300.

You need to have 100% clarity—know exactly to the decimal, to the detail, to the specificity of the goal. You need to have 100% belief that you can achieve it, even if it makes no sense or you've never done it before. You have to believe in your soul, 100%, that you can do it.

And then you have to have 100% belief, 100% clarity, 100% of the time. Most people don't have clarity, don't have belief, or they can't even believe it 100% of the time. They might be inspired for a minute, but then self-doubt creeps in.

I'm just asking myself to what degree do I have clarity, do I believe it, and can I hold that belief? To the degree I can do that, the 300% rule, I can create or pull into my life that outcome. You need to feel it; you need to smell it.

It needs to be part of your identity. That's why it's so important to shop your dreams. If you want to buy a car, go sit in that car, smell the leather, hold the steering wheel, get a photo of you sitting in that car—not a picture from the internet, but you in that car, in that house, in that hotel, in that group of friends.

I need you to go there to shop your dream so that you can make it part of you. Of your reality, the whole point of being disciplined is because you're creating yourself to be ready to achieve the thing you want. Discipline is a means to a process of you becoming, of you getting ready to receive all the dreams and goals you've been asking for.

If you don't visualize where you want to get to, if you don't make it about other people, and if, in that process, you don't see how your effort is contributing to other people, then it's going to make it really hard to be disciplined and to be consistent. I will tell you, the most powerful thing that you can have is clarity around your vision, and once you have that aim, everything else just fits into place and it becomes so much easier. If you want to learn the nine steps to get your act together, click here, and I'll see you on the other side.