Our guest writer is Thom Stratton. He has an MBA, worked on a newspaper, writes Simple Self Reliance (a blog on recapturing lost arts of doing it yourself), worked as a requirements analyst, actually understands social media marketing and is at least ten times smarter than me. He also started a business this year, too.
Now that I’ve exhausted my well of musings (and your patience, too, no doubt) on what discipline is, it’s time to get personal. The reason Dan approached me to write guest posts, after all, was for me to share my own experiences in developing greater discipline over the coming year. I have, after some consideration, set four goals for myself this year:
Goal 1: Exercise 4 times per week
Goal 2: Write 4 posts per week
Goal 3: Make $10,000 from a personal business idea
Goal 4: Write 150 pages of a novel
Now, I know myself. I know that no matter how attractive those goals sound, I will never accomplish them if I leave them like that. I mean really, how often am I going to have the time to sit down and write 150 pages in one sitting? Writing 4 blog posts in one sitting would be challenge enough. No, I know I need to break these goals down into shorter-term goals that give me a better idea where to start when I do have some time to work on them.
So let me revisit each goal and break them down into shorter milestones:
Goal 1: Exercise 4 times per week
Short-term goals:
- Continue our family habit of push-ups and sit-ups each night
- Find a regular exercise time that will work most consistently
- Find an exercise that I find enjoyable while still achieving the desired heart rate for the desired duration.
- Make it to at least three times per week by mid-year
Goal 2: Write 4 Posts per week
Short-term goals:
- Get all blogs onto WordPress, with the Editorial Calendar plugin
- Keep a list of potential topics
- Schedule at least two hours per week for writing posts
Goal 3: Make $10,000 from a personal business idea
Short-term goals:
- Read Barbara Winter’s blog/newsletter each week for inspiration
- Complete “gift shop” for my Simple Self Reliance site
- Make a solid effort at marketing for two months
- Evaluate viability and either continue or select a new opportunity
Goal 4: Write 150 pages of a novel
Short-term goals:
- Select a concept
- Sketch out initial plot-line
- Create sketches of main characters
- Take another pass at plot-line to flesh it out further
- Story-board the first several chapters
- Write three chapters
- Revise plot-line and continue
That’s better, although I may have to break each short-term goal down even further into sub-goals that can be accomplished in one or two short periods of time so that each time I come back to my task list I see goals that don’t overwhelm me with their sheer size.
But even that alone is not going to do it. As I’ve stated before, discipline is the process by which we change our behaviors. My current behavior is to either not write down tasks at all, or write them down and forget to ever look at them again. Neither one is really all that productive, and I recognize the need for change. I need to develop a behavior that helps me remain aware of, dedicated to, and actively pursuing my goals. I need discipline.
But just saying “I need discipline” won’t cut it. It would be like the way my brother and a co-worker would tease other co-workers who would come to them with unrealistic or overly-demanding changes they wanted made to the software they were developing. They would both scrunch their eyes closed, screw up their faces, and clench their fists in mock mental effort for a few moments, then say “Okay, try it now”.
No, I can’t just work on “discipline” and expect to see any changes. What I need is to identify the behaviors that would result from discipline, then work on developing those behaviors. In short, I had to ask myself, “Why sort of things would I do to accomplish my goals if I were disciplined?” The answer is that I’d need to develop the habit of continually planning and carrying out that plan:
Goal 5: Develop the behavior of planning and accountability
Short-term goals:
- Find an organizer I will use
- Consult my organizer at least once every day
- Establish and keep a daily planning time to go over, revise, and further break down (if necessary) my short-term goals and set milestones
- Work up to checking my organizer multiple times per day, and especially when I find I have nothing immediately pressing to do
- Allow no short-term goal over two months overdue
And that’s where everything starts–developing the habits that will help me keep me on task. As I pursue disciplined behaviors, I’ll find that I build discipline. It should be as simple as that.
Wish me luck!
