Discipline Is More Important Than Intensity

I believe one of the greatest hacks, when it comes to forming new habits, is that discipline (or the habit) is more important than intensity. I am still surprised that I only recently learned about “The Law of Just A Little”, as John Assaraf likes to call it. 

This ‘law’ describes the importance of doing just a little of something, instead of doing nothing at all! I am a person who likes to give my all to a task, to be fully present with it and give it as much energy as I can, which becomes a problem on the days where I really don’t feel like doing something.

When trying to start a new healthy habit, we all want to know how long it will take until it becomes, well… a habit. Is it 21 days, 66 days or 180 days? The answer is it can take anywhere between 18-254 days, according to a study done by health psychology researcher, Phillippa Lally. 

Eight months is quite a long time but James Clear points out in his book, Atomic Habits, that frequency, instead of number of weeks, is much more of a determining factor of how much time it will take for a new habit to form. For example, if you would like to drink more water and you start a habit of drinking an extra glass of water before each coffee, it will become automatic much sooner than if you were trying to start a habit of going for a run every Sunday morning.  

Life happens and we all know that we are bound to miss a day or two (or more) when establishing a new habit, however, you should never feel like you are starting back at zero. Every day that you have worked on this habit is reinforcing new neural patterns and pathways. When you ‘start again’ you are actually starting with neural pathways that already look different compared to when you first began the habit. You should never give up and think “what’s the point?”, just keep wiring and firing these neural pathways until this habit is automatic.   

The realization that discipline is more important than intensity is what got me to start exercising again. I was 5 months postpartum and hesitant to workout because I could only imagine how unfit I was. I really wanted to make working out a habit and had to find a way of ‘least resistance’ especially if I was already tired due to being awake with our baby all night. 

I used habit-stacking to remind me that every time I put my daughter down for her first nap of the day, I would go and workout for 20 minutes. It was daunting to think that after 4 hours of sleep I would have to complete a high intensity workout so I made a deal with myself. All I had to do was roll out my yoga mat, even if I just lay in Child’s Pose for 20 minutes and did nothing else. Starting this new habit  by being gentle on myself like this, was the key to helping it stick!

There was no chance I would have stuck to a workout routine if I had put expectations on myself to make it as intense and sweaty as the last one. You have to keep showing up until it becomes a habit because we all know that it’s impossible to stay motivated forever.

The chance of slipping back into your old habits is high because our brains are always trying to keep us safe and comfortable. If you are struggling to stick to new habits I would suggest starting small by adding or removing one part of it every couple of weeks. For example, if you are used to rolling out of bed with just enough time to make a coffee before you head out the door but your goal is to wake up earlier, delay your coffee and establish a 90-minute morning routine, I would suggest you set your alarm for earlier, but then do as you always did and make a coffee straight away.

If a coffee’s what is going to get you out of bed earlier in the morning, then continue to have the coffee as the first thing you do after rolling out of bed. In a couple of weeks, you will find that it is now easy to wake up early and you can start to delay your coffee, then a couple of weeks later you can delay your coffee even more until eventually, you are able to get yourself out of bed without resistance and wait the 90-minutes before your first cuppa.

Build a new habit slowly and make whatever changes you need to in order to be consistent. It doesn’t have to be perfect straight away, in the beginning the main goal is consistency and you can ‘perfect it’ from there. 

The problem with not following through with a new habit or action, as you told yourself you would, is that every time you repeat this action (of not following through) you reinforce neural pathways that make you become the type of person that doesn’t follow through.

On the other hand, if you override the feeling of not wanting to do something by doing just a little, you are reinforcing neural patterns that develop willpower which results in becoming a person with confidence and high self-esteem. 

Remember; don’t think about how long it will take, the days will pass whether you are doing it or not. 

And if it’s for no other reason, just do the damn thing because you said you would.