Two Triggers That Transformed My Self-Discipline

I want to show you how I went from beating myself up about not being self-disciplined, to having a dead-simple system that made me self-disciplined without thinking.  

It all started after I read James Clear’s book - Atomic Habits for the third time… Apparently I wasn’t ready to learn this lesson on the first or second pass (which is a solid case for re-reading excellent books you already have).

He talks a great deal about identity-based goals and the challenges people face when labelling themselves as being a certain type of [negative] person. 

In my case, someone who struggled to stick to things ie lacked self-discipline.

There’s a quote in the book that says: “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

I missed it initially, but this time it jumped off the page and punched me in the nose. I realised that self-discipline was a daily practice that just needed a system. It wasn’t something you had or didn’t have.

Armed with this new understanding, I set off to build a system for staying on track.

I spent months unpacking the exact moment where things would go wrong for me and it was always when ‘life’ got in the way for a brief moment. I never fully got things back on track afterwards.

Today, I want to share with you what I did about it and how became a self-disciplined machine in parts of my life.

Let’s jump in...

If you haven’t already read it, get a copy of Jame’s book and let your eyeballs feast. It’s probably going to be the best thing you’ll do for yourself this year.

If you have it, re-read it, or pick up the Audible version to listen and refresh. 

Next, you need to look at what area of your life you want to practice more self-discipline in. 

We’re about to build a system around making you more self-disciplined in that area, so be specific and don’t try to change 57 things at the same time. 

The first one I chose was exercise because I hated the gym but I knew I wanted to achieve an all-round level of fitness for any situation. I just wasn’t showing up consistently. 

And every time no-showed, it was another notch on my you-have-no-self-discipline scorecard.

To solve it, I built two triggers:

Trigger 1- Alarms and Reminders

Like every business owner, my phone is with me 24/7 but I wasn’t using it as a tool to think for me.

I started using "Okay Google" (Hey Siri for Apple users) to set reminders to take action - write, exercise, leave work on time, drink water, make a client call, follow up, give thought to something important, remind me of someone's name next time I'm at this place, etc. 

For exercising, I build in alarms and reminders for the following things:

• Gym days and the focus of the session
• To pack my gym clothes at night.
• Say your goodbyes at work - get ready to leave.
• Last call to get your arse out the door.

It’s not rocket science but I needed lots of reminders to prompt me to think about the value of that thing I should be doing. Otherwise, I’d place a greater value on the other thing I was working on and just skip the gym.

Now, it’s not flawless because you can still ignore it but this system has yielded more results for me than trying to wing it without reminders and alarms to prompt me to take action.

There's no way I'd be self-disciplined without this one tiny trigger.

Trigger 2 - If that, Then This, Statements

It’s naive to think that life is systematic and you’ll get to every gym session for the rest of your days. 

I knew I had a hectic life so I had to build in flexibility from the start. I also knew that this was the bit that was letting me down and leading to an undisciplined life.  

To build in flexibility I started to ask myself what action I would take when I couldn’t make it to the gym that day. 

James Clear talks about this in his book when he mentions identity-based goals. Rather than having a goal to go to the gym 5 days a week or lose 10kg, he explains you must become the type of person who never misses training.

I took this and added flexibility in to suit my lifestyle and fix the mental challenge of losing momentum. I now tell myself I never miss training more than 2 days in a row. 

So when life does get in the way, I’ve already pre-decided how I can quickly recover and still maintain my self-image of someone who’s disciplined. 

This tiny shift has a win-win-win built into it. 

I become self-disciplined, remain fit and have the flexibility to live a normal life where things pop up.

It helped me not always feel like I was failing and missing things.

Here are some other tiny If That, Then This triggers I’ve also used:

• Make one new sales call each day. If I don’t I make double the next day.
• Reach out to a distant family member on Thursday. If I don’t it’s Friday.
• Send an internal email on Fridays to my team that lets them know what big decisions we’re facing as a company. If I don’t, it happens before Monday. 

Building triggers and planning for failure has been a massive productivity hack for me. 

And I really hope it adds value to your life.

I’ll leave you with another piece of wisdom from Atomic Habits - “spend less time focusing on outcomes and more time focusing on the habits that precede the results.” - James Clear.