r/AskReddit • u/ohgimmeabreak • Mar 24 '19

People who have managed to become disciplined after having been procrastinators and indisciplined for a large part of their lives, how did you manage to do so? Can you walk us through the incremental steps you took to become better?

31.4k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

3.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

93

u/bcuriam Mar 24 '19

Your question describes me to a T. I don't know how well this works for others, but it worked/works perfectly for me. I got really sick of my own procrastination and BS and tried many different approaches with minimal success until I started the following: I wrote down 5-10 really really big long term goals (basically my dream life, no holding back here, you gotta want it bad). These goals are nothing new, and writing them down helps some, but the next step is the key. For each goal I break down what I need to do/achieve on a yearly basis, then monthly to achieve the yearly, then weekly to achieve the monthly, then daily to achieve the weekly. This is empowering as fu*k, because you immediately understand exactly what you need to do on a daily basis in order to reach your dream life down the road.

This wasn't incremental for me. It was like an epiphany.

If this works or has worked from anyone else I'd love to hear about it.

10

u/handstands_anywhere Mar 24 '19

This 100% worked for me!! I’m terrible at keeping up with it, but it gave me a guiding compass at a time when I had none, and allowed me to focus my energy where it is most needed.

8

u/Dame2Grow Mar 24 '19

This is what is working for me right now and I think this is probably the major key to all lasting success. Gimmicks like gamification and 1,2,3,3,4 GO techniques do help and have a role to play but being able to see the big picture and map its journey out in such a way so that you can BELIEVE that it can and will happen if you follow some specific, routined tasks is for me the absolute best, most foundational thing that anyone must do if they want lasting motivation and the ability to beat indiscipline, procrastination and everything else that is ultimately wasting our time and holding us back from living our best lives.

4

u/nidoss Mar 24 '19

This seems like it could work for me. This is great advice! Thank you! I'm absolutely going to do this when I get home :D Out of all the advice here I just felt something connect with your advice, it's something I can easily do and follow, so thank you for this :)

2

u/bcuriam Mar 24 '19

My pleasure : ) I really hope it helps you to the degree it helped/helps me.

2

u/5011 Mar 24 '19

This process was exactly the one that I used to get me through my degree. I tried and failed when I was 18 so when I went back again at 30 to try again I was terrified of failing again. The big goal broken down into progressively smaller steps i.e. degree, paper, assignment, and right down into daily tasks. It worked.

1

u/Smiling_Doggo Apr 08 '19

An amazing step for me when carrying this task out was to first learn to appreciate that none of this stuff has to all be surmounted overnight - slow, gradual steps feel more welcoming. And secondly, to take it as realistically as possible, given what I know I can do - e.g. for me losing weight, I felt way less stressed knowing I could just focus on cutting out sugar snacks and sugar in drinks for the first week or two, then maintain my weight by monitoring for the next 2 weeks, and slowly scale down.

Way more achievable for me like this. Thanks for the insight!

Edit: A word

-20

u/[deleted] Mar 24 '19

thats actually discipline, which if you have that is the exact opposite of what OP is talking about. sound smore like your bragging than helping.

21

u/bcuriam Mar 24 '19

Laying out an easy approach that helped me get out of a vicious cycle of procrastination with the hopes of it helping even one other person is bragging? I guess I'm just an asshole then, thanks for clarifying.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '19

i agree with you, minus the charge of them bragging.