Summary
Joe Hudson presents three strategies for cultivating discipline without relying on willpower or self-coercion. The core insight is that traditional discipline—telling yourself you “should” change—rarely works, and there are more effective approaches that work with human psychology rather than against it.
The three strategies are: (1) focus on the pain of the unwanted behavior by actually feeling its consequences rather than intellectualizing, (2) avoid decision fatigue by removing temptations from your environment so you don’t have to constantly resist, and (3) find enjoyable replacements that give you the same benefit as the unwanted behavior. Joe emphasizes that shaming yourself for lack of discipline only creates a vicious cycle that perpetuates the very behavior you’re trying to change.
Key Concepts
- Feeling the pain of a habit removes the need for discipline
- Removing choices eliminates decision fatigue
- Enjoyable replacements bypass the need for willpower
Key Quotes
“How much discipline does it take you to drop a hot frying pan after you grab it? It doesn’t take any because immediately your body knows that it’s painful.”
“Often times when we’re doing something that we don’t want to be doing like a bad habit, we’re doing everything we can not to feel the pain.”
“When you shame yourself and tell yourself you’re bad because you didn’t live up to the idea of discipline in your head, all it does is create this vicious cycle where you feel bad and then you continue to do the thing so that you can avoid feeling bad.”
“Nobody says ‘oh my God I got to be disciplined, I really have to play more video games’ — the things that are enjoyable to do, you can do and they can give you the same thing and they can be good for you.”
Transcript
in this video we’re going to talk about how to be disciplined without being disciplined my name is Joe Hudson I’m a former venture capitalist and now I coach some of the most notable names in Silicon Valley so here’s the thing if you’re watching this video it means that you are struggling with discipline if you didn’t struggle with discipline you wouldn’t click on this you would be out there running or doing whatever disciplined people do however I was never that person and so for me finding discipline was the art of figuring out how not to be disciplined to be disciplined so I want to share that with you so here are three ways to help you be disciplined without being disciplined so the first one is focus on the pain sounds strange but it’s true the second one is avoid decision fatigue and the third is find a substitute all right let’s get into it what do I mean by focusing on the pain how much discipline does it take you to drop a hot frying pan after you grab it it doesn’t take any because immediately your body knows that it’s painful but often times when we’re doing something that we don’t want to be doing like a bad habit we’re doing everything we can not to feel the pain we’re not feeling the pain of the pornography or the drug addiction or we’re not feeling the pain of the lying or we’re not feeling the pain of gossiping so let’s say you’ve always wanted to be disciplined about working out how often are you in touch with the pain of being sedentary right so every day when you work out you feel a little bit better every day you don’t work out you don’t feel a little bit better how often are you in touch with that so if you slow down the process and really feel the pain of it not tell yourself you need to change that doesn’t work hasn’t worked for a decade probably isn’t going to work for the next decade but actually feel the hot frying pan of the thing and if you can really feel that and sit with that enough you’re going to be like Oh I’m going to go work out so here’s a great story about this I had a friend who was constantly overeating and he was overeating because eating a lot somehow made him feel a little bit more settled so there was something he was getting out of it but it also made him feel bloated and bad and so he decided what he was going to do is every time he overate he was going to sit silently for 10 minutes and just feel the bloating just feel the pain of overeating he was never going to tell himself not to do it he wasn’t going to tell himself to eat less he was just going to feel the sensation and over time and not that much time but over time he stopped overeating because he knew how much it hurt him and it was just as simple as that it was just bringing awareness to the pain and that makes it so that you don’t have to be disciplined you just drop the hot frying pan the second one is avoid decision fatigue now there’s this great study that was done where they take little kids and they say hey here’s a marshmallow but if you don’t eat it for 10 minutes you’ll get two marshmallows and the psychologist who did this say that this is one of the best markers for future success a person who doesn’t need to immediately be gratified who can delay gratification are much more likely to be successful in life but the thing that’s really interesting is if you watch those kids in their marshmallows the ones who are successful look away from the marshmallow they don’t sit there and go should I eat it should I not eat it should I eat it should I not eat it they go oh I’m just going to go away I’m going to just look at something else I’m going to distract myself from it so that I don’t have to make that decision so if you have decision fatigue let’s say you don’t want to play video games as much but your Xbox is always out it’s always in front of you then every time you look at it you have a decision to make am I going to use it or am I not going to use it and eventually you’re going to say use it and then you’re probably going to beat yourself up and then you’re probably going to think how bad you are and then you’re going to keep on playing video games so you don’t have to think about how bad you are blah blah blah and off it goes the other thing to do is just like give your controller to your girlfriend or put your controller to miles away hidden under a tree so you have to go run over to get the controller so you don’t have to make the decision so it’s setting up a life where you don’t have to be disciplined because you don’t have the choice the Third Way of having disciplined by not having discipline is find a replacement so what do I mean by that everything that you’re doing satisfies you in some way not working out satisfies you in some way drinking coffee satisfies you in some way playing video games satisfies you in some way it’s giving you something maybe the video games is giving you a distraction from a deeper pain maybe drinking coffee gives you energy maybe not working out makes it so that you don’t beat yourself up for not working out enough when you go to the gym there’s always something that what you’re doing is giving to you and the idea behind find a replacement is to look at what it’s giving you honestly really take a look at it does a cigarette give you like a little relief a break does the video game allow you to just forget about your problems for a while whatever it is and then find a replacement that you can do that gives you the same thing but in a more healthy way so for instance if you ride horses you’re also going to not be able to think about anything else when you’re on the horse so that could be like a video game replacement or golf or pickle ball any kind of exercise that is competitive look for something else that you can do that gives you that same break and when you find that thing make sure it’s something that you enjoy doing so it doesn’t take any discipline to do nobody says oh my God I got to be disciplined I really have to play more video games right like I got to play video games harder and more because I need more discipline the things that are enjoyable to do you can do and they can give you the same thing and they can be good for you and that’s the trick is to find those enjoyable Replacements so those are three ways you can have discipline without having discipline but there are other ways as well and the thing that’s really critical to finding those ways is to not shame yourself when you shame yourself and tell yourself you’re bad because you didn’t live up to the idea of discipline in your head all it does is create this vicious cycle where you feel bad and then you continue to do the thing so that you can avoid feeling bad so that you can feel bad so you can continue doing the thing so the thing to do is to really be gentle with yourself and the more gentle you can be with yourself and the more you can look around and say what are other options besides telling myself I should be disciplined the more you can find the Alternatives that get you the life that you want without having to be really hard on yourself and be really really disciplined so if you like this video feel free to subscribe or write down in the comments other videos that you want us to make and of course you can watch the next video