How to Be Effortlessly Disciplined: 5 Mindset Shifts

I'm able to begin a task and complete it regardless of boredom or distractions on a scale from 1 to 10 how much do you agree with that statement take a moment to pause and to really think about your answer to that now if you rated yourself a 10 out of 10 then you probably don't need this video but most of us could probably do with a little bit more discipline in our lives right through discipline through self discipline you develop like an armor for your mind you just need to have discipline you need to lock

in and you need to do whether you feel like you're not there is something wrong with you and that discipline is the solution discipline is the ability to do hard stuff that you don't want to do once you're disciplined like you're you're like a sharpened sword man like a well-tempered blade because discipline equals Freedom hey friends welcome back to the channel if you're new here my name is Ali I'm a doctor turned entrepreneur and the author of Feelgood productivity which is a book about how to do more of what matters to you in a way

that's enjoyable and meaningful and sustainable and so in this video I want to talk through five science-backed evidence based methods that you can use to become more effortlessly disciplined but then if you stick around till the end of the video we're going to talk about why actually focusing too much on discipline might actually be the wrong move all right so method number one is something called mental contrasting and it's based on a really cool study by a psychologist called Gabrielle tingan and this is about something called fantasy realization Theory which states that when people contrast

their fantasies about a desired future with Reflections on their present reality a necessity to act is induced that leads to the activation and use of relevant expectations that's a bit of a mouthful but basically the way this study worked is that they split people up into three groups now with the first group they asked them to imagine the positive fantasy I.E to focus on the goal and imagine how amazing it would be if they actually hit the goal for the second group they asked them to imagine a negative fantasy I.E to focus on their current

state in the present moment and how bad it was but then for the third group they asked them to contrast these two things so to look at the future to look at the now and like really vividly imagine the contrast between where they are right now and where they want it to be and basically what they showed is that the people who contrasted where they are and where they want to be were way more likely to take responsibility of their own actions when it came to going towards their goals and they wrote in 2009 we

argue that mental contrasting by making reality appear as an obstacle to Fantasy realization mobilizes energy that strengthens the transition to goal commitment so basically the key idea here is that if you mentally contrast where you are now and where you want to be that is more likely to drive energy towards your goals and that is one of the things that's more likely to make you feel more disciplined and one specific way of doing this is to First imagine what that future and goal state looks like like for example you've been able to run that Marathon

or get that sixpack ABS or launch that business or whatever the thing is that you're trying to mobilize discipline to words and then you want to figure out where you are right now and imagine the obstacles that might stand in your way like the obstacle to me getting six-pack abs is that I might eat too much crap or I might not go to the gym as often as I need to or a number of other things and the more I can visualize those obstacles along with the fantasy that I'm kind of aiming towards in theory

that is mental contrasting and that should according to the evidence improve our levels of discipline now one of my favorite tools that I use everyday for tracking to improve my discipline is something called rise and they are very kindly sponsoring this video rise is an amazing time tracking app that I've literally been using for the last 2 years it works on Mac it works on Windows and what it does is that it automatically figures out what program or what like Chrome tab or whatever you're in and categorizes that thing based on what you're doing on

your computer and so it's basically an automatic way of tracking your time now this is super helpful because if you're struggling with discipline for something like I was when I was writing my book it was super helpful for me to see how much time was I actually spend writing every single day and so what rise would is that if I was writing in Google Docs or scrier or noan I was like you know the different apps I was used for writing it would call that writing time and I'd be aiming to hit at least 4

hours a day and before I used rise I thought hey i' I've been writing all day and stuff but like actually using rise made me realize that oh crap I thought I was writing all day but actually I was screwing around most of the time and only doing like an hour and a half of writing but as soon as I started to track it and start seeing the numbers I was like oh crap I should spend more time in Google Docs and a little less time on YouTube Rise also has a really good commodora timer

built in so you can set 25 minute or 45 minute study sessions or work s sessions or whatever the thing is you want to do and it also gives you very handy notifications when it's time to take a break and also when it senses that you are getting distracted which I've got an enormous mileage out of and genuinely it's an app that helps me be more effortlessly disciplined in fact I love the app so much that I reached out to the founders of the company the super cool people and I've actually invested in rice as

a company because I have enormous Faith behind what they're doing and it's a really cool team behind it as well and it's just a genuinely fantastic way of tracking your time and staying more on track and more disciplin so thank you so much rise for sponsoring this video all right method number two is something really powerful as well and that's something I use every day in my life and that is called implementation intentions now here is a cool study by psychologist Angela Duckworth who actually wrote the really good book grit and in the study they

got a group of high school students who were going to take a particular exam and first they asked everyone to visualize the outcome of succeeding in that exam but then they split up the class into two different groups now the first group the control group was just asked to write an essay about an influential person in their life but the second group was asked firstly to imagine the obstacles that would stand in the way of them succeeding the exam and then also to create if then statements that might help them overcome the obstacle so for

example if I get distracted while doing practice tests I will get up and do a quick walk around my room and then sit down and start again so basically they're trying to imagine the obstacles that are going to be in their way and then figuring out what are they going to do if and when they encounter those obstacles and the researchers found that the treatment group I.E the group that was asked to do the if then stuff that group completed 60% more practice questions than the people in the control group and I don't know about

you but if I was for example struggling with discipline to I don't know write or to study or to go to the gym or whatever the thing is and by just imagining obstacles and then figuring out what I would do if I encountered them that could lead to a 60% increase in the amount of questions I did or workouts I did or anything like that that's pretty sick it's a very very easy change we can make to our lives and actually psychologists have paired these two strategies that we've just talked about together called MCI mental

contrasting with implementation intentions so technically an implementation intention is just like when you say if x happens I will do y so if for example you want to floss more and you can say if I am brushing my teeth or when I'm brushing my teeth then afterwards I will also floss so this is sometimes known as habit stacking where you are stacking in multiple habits together but technically the psychology term for it is implementation intentions and then if you pair it with mental contrasting I.E Imagining the future Imagining the obstacles and then running implementation intentions

to figure out how you're going to get through those obstacles that concept of MCI is a really well validated and highly evidence-based strategy for increasing your motivation and discipline to actually make progress with the stuff that matters to you if you're interested in more details about implementation intentions I have a whole section about them in my book Feelgood productivity which you can check out if you like but let's now talk about method number three which is to reduce environmental friction and the key idea here is that if you really want to effortlessly increase your discipline

you've got to design your environment in a way that makes it really easy so if for example you are trying to be more disciplined to go to the gym then having your gym clothes out and in front of you when you wake up so you can put them on first thing in the morning makes it way easier to actually have the discipline to go to the gym similarly if you're trying to be more disciplined and not eat unhealthy food then just not buying junk food when you go to the supermarket and shoving in your fridge

is a way of designing your environment in a way that makes it easy for you to be disciplined in that context and I can't remember where this quote is from but there's a really nice quote which is that it doesn't take much discipline to not eat a chocolate bar if there are no chocolate bars in the house and whenever I do talks and speak to students and you know any any of this kind of stuff people always ask me like oh you know I I'm I'm not I'm not disciplined enough or like how do I

get more discipline in my life and I usually start I don't usually start with mental contrastic or implementation intentions cuz it's a bit of a mouthful to explain I usually start with what does your environment look like have you actually designed your environment in a way that makes it way easier for you to do the thing that you think you want to do you know back when I was in medical school I would have my medical text books literally next to my desk rather than across the room because there's no excuse for me not to

just pick them up if they're right next to me but if they're all the way across the room and I have to walk like five steps to get there and take them off the bookshelf and open that's too much friction whatever I can do to reduce the environmental friction of making something happen is going to make it way more likely that the thing will actually happen and that is a way to become more effortlessly disciplined by not actually needing to rely on discipline and willpower so if you want an action point ask yourself right now

what is something that you are struggling with discipline in and what are one or two things that you can do to design your environment in a way that that makes it way easier for you to do the thing that you actually want to do all right strategy number four is monitoring and tracking and basically the idea here is something from management literature which is what gets measured gets managed and what gets measured gets improved and there have been a bunch of studies that have shown this for example for people who are trying to lose weight

just the act of weighing yourself every day and just looking at that number means just by default you end up losing weight because now you're more aware of this thing that you're trying to do similarly if you're trying to build muscle at the gym everyone says you should track your workouts and you should take progress picks and maybe even like measure your biceps and stuff because tracking those numbers and seeing improvements over time is a massive source of motivation and therefore helps us be more effortlessly disciplined and there are three key reasons why monitoring the

things that you want to be more disciplined in actually works the first one is motivation so seeing ourselves make progress in a thing that we care about is enormously motivating and drives something called intrinsic motivation which is where you do the thing for the sake of doing the thing and feeling yourself improve and level up and stuff is just a profoundly motivating thing that we can do secondly monitoring gives us a feedback loop and so when we can see the result of the actions that we're taking we can adjust adust our actions accordingly and thirdly

monitoring gives us clarity about what's working and what's not working and so again allows us to adjust what we're actually doing and that means that you can focus on the stuff that's actually moving the needle for the results that you want which means you have fewer things to focus on which is also a thing that helps discipline for me personally the way that I track any new habit that I want to build is by using an app called streaks on my iPhone home screen it's super helpful right now it reminds me to exercise 30 minutes

a day to do this meditation exercise that I'm trying out and to film something for my Vlog Channel every day and these are things that I would otherwise struggle with but the fact that I see it right there on my iPhone home screen means that I'm just like oh yeah of course I need to do some exercise today and then I will do it cuz I want to keep the streak up and it's a reminder and it's also monitoring and tracking and stuff and seeing that streak build up for several days in a row is

also profoundly motivating and now the final strategy that I want to talk about as a way of effortlessly increasing your discipline is to find a way to make whatever you're doing a little bit more enjoyable or energizing and this is the core thesis of my book Feelgood productivity it's why it's called Feelgood productivity because when we feel good we are more likely to be productive and this really applies to discipline as well like when was the last time you felt you needed discipline to I don't know watch Netflix we tend not to need discipline for

those things because those things are inherently enjoyable the things we need discipline for are the things that we don't enjoy so you only need discipline to go to the gym if you don't enjoy going to the gym you only need discipline to study for your exams if you do not enjoy the process of studying for your exams now at this point a lot of people think well I've got to do hard stuff and we we we all have to do things we don't enjoy and yes it's true that we all have to do things that

we don't enjoy at times but there is normally an enormous list of things that we can do to make whatever we're doing a little bit more enjoyable and a little bit more energizing the first three chapters of my book are play power and people so incorporating play and power and people into anything that you're doing however boring and Grim the thing is will just automatically make it more enjoyable and more energizing which reduces the amount of discipline that you actually need to Marshall in order to do the thing for example let's say you are struggling

with discipline when it comes to studying for your exams ask yourself what would this look like if it were fun how can I make studying for my exams a little bit more enjoyable could you have some Lord of the Rings instrumental music in the background while you're studying could you go to a different library or a coffee shop each day of the the week so it feels like you're going on this adventure could you find a way to make your notes aesthetically pretty and color code your timetables and stuff just as a way of making

the process of studying a little bit more pleasant now I'm using students as an example here because we have all probably been students at some point in our life if we aren't already but this really applies to absolutely everything in our life because when you're having fun with what you're doing productivity and discipline and motivation and all of that kind of stuff just automatically takes care of itself and once you've done that you broadly won't have to worry about discipline ever again but one thing you might run into is still worrying about time management because

managing our time is something we all struggle with and you can check out my video over here which is about the Trident method which is a specific method that I've been using to manage my time that I've got an enormous value out of so check that out over there thank you so much for watching I hope you enjoyed this video and I'll see you later bye-bye