You Need To Learn How To Do Hard Things Even When You Don't Feel Like It

How to find discipline when motivation is lacking.

Not something you would like to hear, huh? But hard things won’t wait for you. When you don’t feel like pushing towards goals, someone else does. And in a few years, only what’s visible will matter - success.

Do what you feel is a terrible advice

A few minutes - enough to ruin your life forever. Unprotected sex, urge to say yes to a weird drug, to try a new gambling site. Small acts, huge consequences.

You unarguably don’t do those things because you want to build a bright future for yourself. You do it because you want it at the moment, you feel an urge. Those urges come from nature. Getting under the influence of them sets you closer to an animal than an aware, thinking human being.

Things you feel like doing now probably aren’t the things that will serve you 10 years from now. You know what you should do, and you feel what you want to do. The latter is usually not good for you. If you don’t plan suicide before getting old, spend now on doing things you should be doing.

“The first and best victory is to conquer self. To be conquered by self is, of all things, the most shameful and vile.” ― Plato

How to find discipline when motivation is lacking?

In the long run, it’s everything about discipline. Is that bad? Only if you think it is. Discipline is a skill, and a skill can be learned.

First thing first - don’t make things harder for yourself:

• Start for 5 minutes: One of the simplest tricks in the book. Just start for 5 minutes. It’s easier to finish a task than start it from 0. We don’t like unclosed things wandering around mind.

Productivity is nothing new here, read (especially 1 & 2):

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Step 1 - Do It. Step 2?

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Lay a good foundation before building

• Put your thoughts on paper: I know I have said it over and over again, but thoughts on paper tend to magically become clearer. Write about your goal - doing hard things when you don’t feel like it in this case - and identify all obstacles along the way. Make mind maps, draw, anything that helps you. Do it until you don’t have anything more to transfer from your mind to paper.

  

• Plan: The previous step was to remove the fog, this one is to select a path. Make a realistic plan. One realistic thing that you can do to be better next time you find yourself in that situation. One thing that can prevent it finding yourself in this situation in the first place.

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment. — Jim Rohn

Decompress

You are not a machine. Rest is a part of productivity too. You need time for work and rest, and that time should be well scheduled, engraved in your head, and done in the same hours.

What it should look like is:

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