This series is me taking a stab at documenting what tips and methods worked for me from parenting I received, wonderful teachers from my schooling days, from my colleagues and friends, self-improvement books and blog posts I have read. Lots of trial and errors. I don’t look for perfection. I do go off track for few days and weeks. But I do find it easier to get back on track once something becomes a habit.

Disclaimer: Keep in mind JK’s guiding principle:

Don’t follow anyone. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow the truth.

Following anyone leads to imitation, fear, and a loss of personal understanding. Truth must be discovered personally and directly, not through accepting the beliefs of others.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, here we go!!

1. Link: Goals, Mindset, Habits, Focus, Practice, and Self-help books

Discipline has multiple meanings – a behavior in accordance with rules, self-control, punishment, a field of study. Here we are interested in self-control and control gained by enforcing order. Habit means a settled tendency or usual manner of behavior. In common usage discipline and habit are used interchangeably. But they are different. They work on different regions of the brain. Discipline requires conscious effort – forcing yourself to do something normally you wouldn’t do. Habit is something we do without thinking, an automatic behavior. Discipline needs mental energy, willpower, needs conscious effort. Discipline needs fight against laziness, resistance, immediate gratification. Habit requires no conscious thought. You don’t need to fight a resistance to perform the action. You are in autopilot mode. You may feel bad if you skip a habit. Maintaining discipline is a struggle while habit feels natural.

If discipline and habit are different why we keep using them interchangeably. When we say someone is highly disciplined person, what we really mean is they have built the habits successfully. To expand it further, they have used the limited discipline to build the habits that helps them. One way to look at is you need discipline to build the habits. Once you build the habits you don’t need the discipline anymore meaning you don’t need conscious mental energy to perform the action. Discipline is the fish tape or draw wire you push through the conduits for interior electrical wiring. Once the wiring is complete draw wire is removed. Completed electrical wiring is the habit. Discipline is the scaffolding that is used to construct the building, and habit is the completed building.

Let’s say you want to get up at 6:30am and go for a jog every day. You set the alarm for 6:00am. When the alarm goes off, first few days it is a big ordeal to get up. Mind says let’s skip today and start from next day or let’s do the run in the evening. You want to hit the snooze button and continue the sleep. You have to push yourself to get out of bed, wear the shoes and get out of home for the jog. After few mts of run, mind will start playing up again, let’s stop after 10mts….tomorrow I will do 30-45mts…promise. You need to expend good amount of mental energy to fight through the laziness and negative self-talk. First few weeks will be struggle. It may take few months for the brain to adapt. Once the brain adapts you are in auto-pilot mode. It becomes a habit. We need both discipline and habit to achieve a goal. Discipline is the first stage. We need discipline to get into repetitive mode and habit develops through repetition. Discipline is needed to build habits. To hammer it again (!!)

Discipline: Doing what is necessary even when you don’t want to. Requires conscious effort

Habit: Doing something automatically because it has become part of your routine. Little or no conscious effort

 We all know from experience, remember new year resolutions 😀, building a habit is easier said than done. Around 2010, I picked up cycling. With the goal of cycling over weekends and then cycling to work. Bought a decent 12K rupees cycle. First few weeks were a real struggle – getting up early to cycle so that I can beat the traffic. Plan was 1 hour of cycling, but initial ones ended around 30mts thanks to laziness winning over conscious effort. Slowly won over the laziness and hit the 1hour mark. I kept the cycle, helmet, jerseys, and shoes in a place where they are prominently in sight – all through the day. Told myself if I do it for 1 year will reward myself with Garmin cycle navigator gadget. If I continue for 5 years will upgrade to a better cycle. Happy to say got both the rewards. But sad to say post 2017 cycling stopped thanks to broken roads and dangerous traffic. Switched to walking and physical training.

I do read books from my younger days but in last few years tweaked the goal and experimented with habit building steps to become a reader. Recently from 2023 started learning music – keyboard. We had a 20+ plus years old Yamaha PSR keyboard. Started with that. Told myself that if I stick to learning for 4 months will reward myself with a keyboard upgrade. Upgrade happened and the musical journey continues even with long breaks in between due to travel.

I list few steps that worked for me to build the above habits.

1. Goal: Why you want to build the habit? What you want to become. Difference between I don’t want to say bad words Vs I want to be kinder person. I want to read 10 books in a year Vs I want to be Reader. What you want to become is your identity. Quality vs Quantity. Reader is your identity. Number of books or what books you read are sub-goals. Eg: Runner, Musician, Cyclist, Composer, Writer, Programmer.
2. Cue / Trigger: “I will do it when I get time” is a bad way to start. It requires too much energy every time and high probability it will never happen. You need a forcing function to perform the act. Trigger the brain pathways to get you in to autopilot mode. Trigger could be alarm, or another regular habit. Before I switch on television, I will read 30 pages of a book or walk for 30mts. I will read when I drink coffee.
3. Environment: Depending on the goal, change the environment. You want to become a reader, keep the books on your desk and other visible places. If you want to get out of a bad habit, remove all the cues that triggers the bad action from your environment – home, car, office space etc. Move around people with similar interests. Some habits form faster with context. Keep the same time and location to blog or play the instrument or read books in a particular desk. The brain starts associating that environment with the activity.
4. Habit Stacking: Connect the new habit with an existing habit. Existing habits will act as triggers. Example: I will walk for 20mts after lunch and dinner, after dinner I will read N pages, after evening coffee will write for 1 hour.
5. Start small: Keep the duration of the activity that is easy to start with. Else resistance will be high to not to do it and hard to fight against. Instead of saying I will practice violin 2 hours daily, start with 10-15mts daily and increase it by 10mts every 2 wee Slowly build up the duration. You can’t run 30mts continuously if you haven’t run at all. Slowly build it up. Start with 5 cycles of 1 minute of run and 4 mts of walk and slowly increase the number of cycles and duration of run in each cycle. Start micro before you hit macro. Remember your baby days – Crawl à Walk à Run. Small steps reduce psychological resistance, and brain slowly adapts to the routine due to consistency. Once you build the consistency, you can work on intensity.
6. Short- and long-term rewards: Come up with intermediate milestones and reward yourself as you hit them. Longer the duration bigger the reward. Eg: When I hit the 30mts mark in running will reward myself with a nice running costume. Consistently run 45mts for 2 months will reward myself with a nice new pair of running shoes. Keep at it for 1 year, will reward myself with <this>. When I start playing <classic> musical piece will reward myself with <this>. Make the dopamine to work for you!!
7. Use simple ways to track the progress: Keep simple tools and techniques to track the progress. Don’t make it complicated. Fitness watch or health app to track how many steps you walk every day/week/month/year. Simple day calendar to tick mark days you did workouts and training sessions or # pages you read. Notes to keep track of books you read. Track for consistency than quantity in the initial phase. Once you hit the consistency focus on quality improvements and quantity.
8. Be patient: It takes months to build a habit. 21-day rule is a myth. Depending on the habit research says it could be anywhere between 3-6 months. Initially it will be a struggle. There will be stumbles. You will miss few days. Make sure you don’t miss 2-3 consecutive days. If you miss a day push to get back on track next day itself. Remember repetition strengthens the connections in the habit center of the brain. First 10-20 days require good amount of discipline and mental effort. As you keep at it by 2^nd month mental barriers come down. You cross the tipping point. From 3^rd month you start the transition into autopilot mode. The action requires little or no conscious effort and feels natural. You have formed a habit.

Few other key takeaways from my experience:

• Reduce distractions: Limit the time or better stay away from them: Social media, scrolling, news channels and debates, issue of the week, political party and leader discussions
• Stay away from naysayers and negative talk people: Example: Stay away from people who say why waste money on books or instead of reading books you can listen to podcasts or short reviews
• Rely on experts than YouTube influencers and WhatsApp forwards: Especially when it comes to building habits for health. Talk to experts in person.

Once you have successfully built a habit, discipline can be allocated to form the next new habit. Go ahead and build some healthy habits 😀