DISCIPLINE
You were falling asleep at the wheel and missed the stops you were meant to take.
Hello again.
Discipline is the key that makes you go from unremarkable to undeniable.
No one else will show up for you so it falls upon you to show up for yourself on time. Every time. Better yet, show up early. Show up before everyone else. Leave after everyone else. Few understand this. Be one of the few.
Discipline is a word that gets thrown around a lot lately. Starting with Jocko and David Goggins, who grokked it at a deep level. But then hijacked by all manner of fools and fake gooroos who pay lip service to it but if you know them by their fruits they don’t really understand Discipline.
For instance, how many of these Instagram/YouTube life coaches can actually tell you what Discipline is? There is an outline of an idea of a definition… but nothing more. No, no, there’s no need to give them your hard earned shekels. I’ll tell you for free.
If you’re familiar with Stephen Covey’s work, he popularized a tool called the Priority Matrix, sometimes called Urgent-Important Matrix – the name doesn’t matter. Apocryphally this tool was famously by used by President Eisenhower to help him decide how to get through a tremendous mountain of tasks.
The Eisenhower Matrix uses a 2×2 grid to rank tasks on two key characteristics:
Importance of the task to the overall success of the mission
Urgency with which the task needs to be carried out
It is a versatile framework that can be applied from an individual to an organizational scale, to a wide range of situations. It can be as easily used by a bank to assess a merger as it can be used by a group of soldiers to assess a hostage rescue mission. An Eisenhower Matrix looks like this:
I’ll briefly summarise what each quadrant is and does, and how much time you should assign to each.
Q1 Urgent & Important - DO IT
Mission-critical items. Non-negotiable. These are things that you approach with a “Do or Die” attitude. Can’t be delegated to outsiders, must be completed by you. Must be done as soon as possible.
E.g. Urgent calls/meetings, slides for key stakeholder meeting, materials for upcoming workshop, address customer complaints, etc.
Q2 Not Urgent but Important - SCHEDULE IT
These are things that will generate the most satisfaction and value, but are not absolutely mission-critical. Can’t be delegated to outsiders, must be completed by you. If you don’t do it now, you won’t die. But the relative upside or lost opportunities from neglecting actions in this quadrant will not be felt for a long time. Perhaps you will never know.
E.g. Competitor analysis, professional development, coaching & mentoring, etc.
Q3 Urgent but Not Important - DELEGATE IT
These are things that are urgent and require immediate attention. However, because they are low- to mid-skilled, they don’t require YOUR attention. This quadrant is where the time-saving hacks are commonly found. Barter your money for time and outsource/delegate to someone else instead.
E.g. low-level meeting that doesn’t require your attendance, schedule meetings, upload content, etc.
Q4 Not Urgent & Not Important - DELETE IT
These are things that are not even remotely essential to your functioning. Nice to have, a luxury at best. Ideally you spend exactly 0% of your time here, but since you’re only human you may indulge yourself and spend time in this quadrant – provided you’ve squared away whatever is Urgent & Important. Don’t even bother delegating to someone else. Just cut it out entirely.
E.g. scrolling social media, networking, sorting junk emails, etc.
Pop quiz: Which of these quadrants will give you the most bang for your buck? Which one will drive the most long-term results? Where should you thus be placing more attention and energy?
If you answered Quadrant 4, you are unserious and need to unfuck yourself. Really. These are the people who believe that there is nothing wrong with spending hours a day on social media or watching videos that have no real value. Then wondering why they haven’t gotten a raise or are still scraping by 40-50K a year despite being in the workforce for over a decade.
If it is neither urgent nor important, do not do these things.
If it is urgent but not important, figure out who can do these things for you?
If it is urgent and important, do these things immediately.
If it is important but not urgent, schedule a time to do these things.
Ergo, the only acceptable response is Quadrant 2.
There are things that are important and have a high ROI but are not urgent. They are not Do or Die so you end up not doing them.
You never invest in what is essential because you’re too busy dealing with what’s in front of you. There’s always an emergency, always another fire to put out, always invoices to chase and sales leads to follow up on. Most people revel in this state of perpetual motion because it’s exhilarating; it keeps them in a state of perpetual motion and stress and thus distraction.
Years pass, and the needle has barely moved. You’re not where you thought you should be at this point in your career/life. What happened?
Did you not work yourself to the bone?
Did you not sacrifice enough weekends and holidays?
Did you not give enough your soul to the firm?
Or, were you not – this word is so misused as to be meaningless nowadays – TALENTED enough?
My friend, talent is a great filter but even talent means nothing if all along you spent your coin doing the wrong thing. Even if you had the work ethic of a modern Hercules. You were distracted when you should have focussed. You were falling asleep at the wheel and missed the stops you were meant to take. The ones that you needed most, but didn’t seem so at the time, and so on you went without them.
Without ever knowing what it’s like to be focussed.
Pretty sure at least 90% of people are distracted. Could be higher, certainly not lower.
The Modern World is not merely filled with pleasing and enticing distractions, it seems to be comprised of nothing BUT distractions… pop culture, Soyflix, porn, casual sex, drugs, alcohol, the News, social media, consumerism.
All designed to keep you spending instead of saving/investing.
All designed to keep you passive and waiting for your betters to tell you what time it is.
Life’s got you playing defense instead of going on the ATTAQQ.
Have you ever questioned…
Why do you know about what goes on in a country 10,000km away but cannot pay attention to what is in front of you?
Why do you know the affairs of men and women who will never care about you, never even know your name, as you lavish them with time and attention and even money in some self-defeating parasocial effort that amounts to nothing more than being an NPC in someone else’s story?
Why it’s so common that our friends and colleagues mainly gossip about bullshit, vacation they took recently, fake & ghey ‘tasteful conversation’ they recently had at wine bar, or whatever lame TV show is all the rage right now is, but the moment you want to talk about personal development, healthy eating or exercise, philosophy, and building wealth, they look at you like you said you have a third nipple
Are you seeing the pattern now?
I know, it can be hard to figure out what to eliminate. Especially if you aren’t even sure what it is you’re working toward. I have found that answering these two questions always clarifies what matters most:
What am I working toward?
What are the core values that drive my life?
Deciding which tasks to do and which tasks to delete becomes much easier when you are clear about what is important to you.
This is why monk mode is so incredibly powerful.
Strip away anything that isn’t you.
That isn’t The Path. That isn’t The Mission. Have you ever tried?
Show up earlier than the rest. Go harder and faster than they could. Do what others are unable or unwilling to do so you can get the results and rewards that others are unworthy of receiving. Under promise and over deliver. Show up all the time. Especially when there’s no certainty that it will pay off. Build a body of work that is undeniable. If you can’t outmatch others yet with your work, outwork everybody else with your consistency. You’re not outstanding if you can do 10,000 things in a mediocre way. You’re considerable if you can 100 things well. You’re exceptional if you can do 1 thing to perfection. Go deep rather than go wide. Be that guy. Yes, BE THAT GUY.
To create the conditions most ideal for Discipline to emerge, leave yourself with no choice. Artificial pressures are registered by the mind no differently than genuine ones.
Impose on yourself a Point of No Return.
There is a Chinese saying:"Fighting a battle with one's back facing a river" (背水一戰), which originated in Han Xin's order at the Battle of Jingxing (204 BCE).
Or Hernan Cortes’s act of burning his ships, leaving no recourse to his troops but to throw themselves fully and viciously into the mission. Glory or Death. No in between.
That is the mindset you must have going into any battle now. Why? Simply because you can. There is no downside for adopting this mindset, and only an infinity to claim if you win.
Return with your shield or on it.
No back door.
No escape.
No Plan B.
All just excuses and copes.
Remove all thought of escape.
Remove all daydreams of life being otherwise.
Commit only to what is in front of you and strike it down.
Every day.
Every task.
Every face.
Every moment.
You will always be moving.
Very good, I'm fired up
Very interesting way of thinking about discipline. I wholeheartedly agree