You Don't Have a Discipline Problem (You Have a Design Problem)
Stop asking "how do I build more discipline?" Start asking "how do I design my life so the right choice is the easy choice?"
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You know exactly what you need to do today.
Work on the difficult project. Go to the gym. Eat the salad. Make progress on the thing that actually matters.
Instead, it’s 3 PM and you’ve refreshed Twitter 47 times, reorganized your desk twice, and convinced yourself you’ll start after “just one more coffee.”
And you’re sitting there thinking: “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just do the thing?”
Here’s what nobody tells you: nothing is wrong with you.
The problem isn’t that you lack discipline. It’s that you’re trying to use discipline to solve a problem discipline was never designed to solve.
The Lie You’ve Been Sold About Willpower
Every productivity guru has the same advice: just be more disciplined.
Wake up earlier. Push harder. Want it more. Stop being lazy. If you really cared, you’d find a way.
And you try. You really do.
You set the alarm for 5 AM. You commit to the gym every day. You promise yourself this time will be different.
For a week, maybe two, you white-knuckle your way through it. You force yourself to do the hard thing even when everything in you is screaming to stop.
Then one morning, you sleep through the alarm. Or you skip one workout. Or you have one “cheat day” that turns into three.
And suddenly you’re back where you started, except now you also get to feel like a failure.
Here’s what actually happened: you tried to override 200,000 years of human evolution through sheer force of will.
Your brain is not designed to choose hard things. It’s designed to conserve energy. That’s not a bug. For most of human history, that was the feature that kept you alive.
When your ancestors were hunting and gathering, energy was scarce. Burning calories unnecessarily meant you might not survive the winter. So your brain evolved one simple rule: take the path of least resistance unless there’s an immediate threat.
The problem is your brain can’t tell the difference between “I should write this report” and “I should run from this lion.”
One requires immediate action or you die. The other can be done tomorrow. Or next week. Or never.
Your brain does the math in milliseconds and picks the easy thing. Every single time.
Not because you’re weak. Because you’re human.
What Happened to James
A friend of mine - James - decided last January that this was his year.
He was going all in. No more half-assing his goals.
5 AM wake-ups. Cold shower. Gym before work. Strict diet - no carbs, no sugar, no alcohol. No social media during work hours. Two hours of deep work every morning. Journaling at night. In bed by 10 PM.
He made it 19 days.
On day 20, he woke up at 5 AM, stared at the ceiling for ten minutes, then rolled over and went back to sleep.
Slept until 11. Ordered Chipotle for lunch. Watched YouTube for three hours. Ordered Thai food for dinner. Started a Netflix show. Fell asleep on the couch at 2 AM.
The next day, same thing. And the next. And the next.
By day 25, he still hadn’t showered. His apartment was a disaster. He’d gained back the five pounds he lost. He couldn’t even look at his gym bag without feeling sick.
When I asked what happened, he said: “I just... ran out. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t even maintain discipline for three weeks.”
But here’s what I saw: James didn’t fail because he lacked discipline.
He failed because he tried to solve a design problem with willpower.
Every single thing on his list required forcing his brain to do something it didn’t want to do. Wake up when it wants to sleep. Get cold when it wants to be warm. Delay food when it wants to eat. Avoid scrolling when it wants dopamine.
Eighteen times a day, he was spending willpower to override his brain’s default settings.
And willpower is a finite resource.
Eventually, you run out. And when you do, your brain takes over and forces you to rest.
The crash wasn’t a character flaw. It was biology.
The Real Problem (And Why No One Talks About It)
Here’s what the discipline obsessed people won’t tell you: they’re not more disciplined than you.
They’ve just designed their lives so the right choice is the easy choice.
Think about someone who “never misses a workout.” You assume they have incredible discipline.
But ask them about their setup. Their gym is three blocks from their house. They go at the same time every day. They laid out their workout clothes the night before. They have a friend who meets them there.
By the time they’re deciding whether to go, the decision is already made. Going is easier than not going.
That’s not discipline. That’s design.
The people who seem effortlessly productive aren’t fighting their brain every day. They’ve removed the fight entirely.
They don’t keep junk food in the house, so there’s nothing to resist at 9 PM.
They deleted social media from their phone, so there’s nothing to check when they’re bored.
They set up their workspace the night before, so when they sit down in the morning, the work is already in front of them.
They’re not stronger than you. They’ve just made the right path the path of least resistance.
The Three Shifts That Change Everything
If you want to actually make progress, you need to stop trying to build more discipline and start building better systems.
Here’s what that looks like.
Shift 1: Engineer the default
Your brain will always take the easiest available path.
So make the right path the easiest one.
I used to struggle with writing every morning. I’d sit down with good intentions. Then I’d “just check email real quick.” Then Slack. Then Twitter. An hour later, I’d written nothing.
I tried discipline. “Just don’t check email.” Lasted maybe three days.
Then I tried design: I put my notebook and pen on my desk before bed. Nothing else. No computer. No phone. Just the notebook.
When I sat down the next morning, the easiest thing to do was write. Because it was the only thing available.
No discipline required. Just two seconds of setup the night before when my brain wasn’t tired yet.
This works for everything.
Want to go to the gym? Put your workout clothes on before bed. Sleep in them if you have to. Make the barrier to starting as low as possible.
Want to eat better? Don’t buy junk food. It’s easier to resist once at the store than 50 times at home.
Want to focus? Delete the apps. Use website blockers. Make distraction require effort instead of avoiding effort requiring discipline.
Shift 2: Stop sprinting, start cycling
James crashed because he tried to sustain maximum effort indefinitely.
But that’s not how humans work. You can’t operate at peak intensity forever.
The people who sustain high performance long-term don’t push harder. They build in rest.
Here’s my actual schedule: 90 minutes of focused work. Then 30 minutes of complete rest. Not “check email” rest. Real rest. Walk outside. Stare at nothing. Let my brain decompress.
Then repeat.
This isn’t wasting time. It’s allowing my brain to recover so I can actually do another deep work block.
Most people try to push for four hours straight, accomplish maybe 90 minutes of real work, then spend the afternoon in a fog wondering why they can’t focus.
Your brain isn’t a machine. It has a rhythm. Work with it.
Shift 3: Stack momentum before going hard
Your brain measures effort in relative terms, not absolute terms.
If the first thing you do is the hardest thing on your list, your brain sees it as impossibly expensive and resists.
If you do three easy things first, then tackle the hard thing, your brain is already moving. The hard thing doesn’t feel as hard.
Every morning before I write, I do the same three things: make coffee, walk around the block, read for 15 minutes.
None of those are difficult. But they get my brain moving. By the time I sit down to write, I’m not starting from zero. I’m already in motion.
This is why “eat the frog first” fails for most people. Your brain isn’t ready for maximum difficulty first thing. It needs a warmup.
You don’t walk into the gym and immediately max out on deadlifts. You build up to it.
Same with your brain.
What This Actually Changes
Once you see this shift, you can’t unsee it.
Every time you “fail” at discipline, you’re not failing. You’re collecting data about where your systems need better design.
You keep checking your phone during work? The problem isn’t discipline. It’s that your phone is within arm’s reach.
You can’t stick to a diet? The problem isn’t willpower. It’s that you keep buying food that requires willpower to resist.
You procrastinate on important work? The problem isn’t motivation. It’s that starting the work requires more effort than doing something else.
James figured this out after his crash.
He didn’t try to build more discipline. He redesigned everything.
Instead of 5 AM wake-ups, he set his alarm for 6:30 - a time his body could actually handle. Instead of forcing cold showers, he started with warm and gradually turned it colder. Instead of eliminating all carbs, he just stopped buying the foods he binged on.
Instead of fighting his brain, he started working with it.
Six months later, he’s in better shape than he was during his “disciplined” phase. He’s more productive. He’s calmer.
Not because he got stronger. Because he stopped trying to be stronger and started being smarter.
What You Should Actually Do
Stop asking “how do I build more discipline?”
Start asking “how do I design my life so the right choice is the easy choice?”
Because here’s the truth: you have enough discipline. You’ve always had enough.
What you didn’t have was a system that worked with your biology instead of against it.
Your brain will always choose easy. That’s not changing.
So make the right path easy. Remove friction from good choices. Add friction to bad ones. Build in rest. Stack momentum.
This isn’t giving up on discipline. It’s understanding what discipline actually is: the willingness to design your life well, even when it requires effort upfront.
The discipline isn’t in waking up at 5 AM. It’s in setting up your environment the night before so waking up at 6:30 actually works.
The discipline isn’t in resisting the cookie. It’s in not buying the cookies in the first place.
The discipline isn’t in forcing yourself to focus. It’s in removing everything that competes for your attention.
That’s the shift. And once you make it, everything gets easier.
Not because you changed who you are. Because you stopped fighting what you are.
Thank you for reading.
– Scott
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