PDF Summary:The Science of Self-Discipline, by Peter Hollins

Have you struggled to maintain discipline in your daily routine? In The Science of Self-Discipline, Peter Hollins explains how to build sustainable discipline through science-based habits and strategies. Hollins argues that changing your habits takes far more than forcing yourself to perform a rigid routine—it requires a shift in your mindset, reasonable expectations, and a transformation of your external surroundings.

Hollins is a psychology researcher and the author of several self-improvement books. After experiencing the benefits of discipline during his own body transformation, he researched how to optimize discipline for every area of his life. In this guide, we’ll explain his science-based approach to discipline, as well as his internal and external strategies, which you can use to improve your daily habits and reach long-term goals. We’ll also compare his ideas to those in similar books, such as Discipline Equals Freedom, and add more tips to improve your discipline.

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You could even write out a plan that breaks your long-term goal into concrete, daily steps to keep you on track. For example, the authors of The 12 Week Year explain that you should outline a plan that breaks your long-term goal into specific, measurable, steps that push your limits and keep you accountable.

Don’t Fight Your Impulses, Observe Them

Hollins says that if you fight your urges, it makes them last longer and grow stronger, which puts you at greater risk of succumbing to them. You probably already know this if anyone’s ever told you not to think about something. When you try to suppress a thought, your focus on that topic typically grows stronger. So, instead of suppressing your urges, allow yourself to experience them with an awareness that they’re temporary. Hollins explains that this will help you stop identifying with your emotions and give you a position of power over them, which allows them to pass more easily. One way to do this is to picture your urge as a passing storm that comes on strong and then fades away.

(Shortform note: Attempting to suppress our inner thoughts and urges isn’t a battle we typically win. This truth also applies to stress management. In The Upside of Stress, Kelly McGonigal explains that trying to avoid things that stress you out only reinforces your stress about those things and can even lead to new stresses. For example, if you avoid dating people because you fear you’re an inadequate partner, you’ll reinforce your negative belief about yourself. Additionally, you’ll deprive yourself of the support a loving partner can provide, or you may stress about missing out on experiences that partnerships provide. Instead, McGonigal explains that embracing stress helps you overcome it and even use it to your advantage.)

Remind Yourself That You’re Capable of Maintaining Discipline

Hollins emphasizes the importance of believing that you’re capable of maintaining discipline to reach your goals. To affirm your strength when you feel weak, remember these tips:

Practice the 40% Rule. Developed by Navy SEALs, this rule means that when you feel like you’ve reached your physical or mental limit amidst a challenge, you’ve only exerted about 40% of what you have left in the tank. The 40% rule is supported by evidence for the placebo effect, which is the influence our beliefs have on real-world outcomes. If you believe you have what it takes to maintain discipline—even when it gets hard—you’ll find the willpower to keep going.

Remember the progress you’ve already made. By giving yourself credit for how far you’ve already come in your journey to your goal and taking inventory of the ways you’re capable of achieving your goal, you’ll empower yourself to push forward.

(Shortform note: Another way to boost your confidence and persevere through moments of doubt is to take inventory of your strengths. Once you know your strengths, you can rely on them to help overcome your weaknesses. To do this, write a list of your strengths and weaknesses, then group your weaknesses with strengths that you think could compensate for them. When you encounter situations that challenge one or more of your weaknesses, try to apply one of your related strengths to the situation. For example, if one of your weaknesses is learning new skills but one of your strengths is interpersonal skills, consider asking for extra help or mentoring whenever you have to learn something new.)

Consider Your Future Self

Hollins suggests that you can delay gratification to gain more in the long run if you identify with your future self. When you realize your future self will reap whatever seeds you sow in the present, you’ll be less likely to give in to fruitless temptations. Consider how your future self will be able to enjoy relaxation and fun more wholly when you know you’ve already accomplished the things you were supposed to. If you don’t do what you’re supposed to, you’ll likely be stressed about it.

To think about your future self more easily and avoid unhealthy rationalizations, apply the 10-10-10 rule. This means thinking about how the decision you’re facing will affect you 10 minutes from now, 10 hours from now, and 10 days from now. To demonstrate the 10-10-10 rule, imagine you want to stop working to watch TV. Consider how in ten minutes you’ll have made no further progress on your tasks. In ten hours, you’ll probably have forgotten whatever you watched on TV, but you’ll still be bothered by the work you still need to finish. In ten days, the TV you watched will have been inconsequential to progressing toward your goals, but any work you completed will have brought you that much further along.

(Shortform note: By relenting to immediate gratification and procrastinating the things you need to be doing, you’ll not only stress yourself out, but you may also contribute to other health issues. Research shows that procrastination is associated with anxiety, depression, and arm pain. Experts admit it’s difficult to say whether these ailments are caused by procrastination or vice-versa, but procrastination can be removed from the equation by correcting behavior. Besides thought experiments like the 10-10-10 rule Hollins mentions, experts suggest strategies like cognitive behavioral therapy and self-forgiveness.)

Logistical Tools to Build Discipline

While it’s important to develop a disciplined mindset, Hollins also suggests some practical strategies to help you build lasting habits that will push you toward your goals.

Build Discipline Using the 10-Minute Rule

Hollins recommends that if you’re tempted by something that would lead to a lapse in discipline, wait 10 minutes before giving in. By doing this, you’ll allow the impulse to fade, while giving yourself time to make a more rational decision about what to do. If you still have the urge after the time has passed, you can allow yourself to give in. Hollins explains that this strategy filters out a lot of unnecessary and thoughtless breaks in our discipline. When you do this enough, you’ll also prove to yourself that you can resist temptations and build confidence in your ability to stick to your plan.

(Shortform note: Hollins’s advice about using discipline to delay impulsive decisions applies to many pursuits, but what if your goal is to be more decisive? If you already struggle to make decisions, creating time for more decision-making seems like it could encourage overthinking. In this case, you can think of discipline as a practice of sticking to your previous decisions without backtracking or second-guessing. To help you stick to your decisions, Barry Schwartz explains in The Paradox of Choice that, once you’ve made a decision, you should put effort into whatever decision you’ve made rather than doubting or regretting it.)

Condition Yourself to Endure Discomfort

Hollins says that because discipline can be very uncomfortable, it’s important to build your tolerance to discomfort. For example, you can add physically uncomfortable things to your daily routine, such as setting your morning alarm an hour earlier than you normally do or doubling your typical running distance.

(Shortform note: Immersing yourself in discomfort can do more than build your tolerance to it. In The Comfort Crisis, Michael Easter explains that pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone builds your confidence and helps you feel more resilient to life’s challenges. When you push yourself past your conceived level of capability, you prove to yourself that you can do more than you previously imagined. This builds your self-belief and helps you feel future challenges are more manageable.)

Manage Stress With Box Breathing

Hollins points out that stress management plays a large part in our ability to maintain discipline. If you go into fight or flight mode, you’ll stop using your higher brain and revert to impulsive instincts, which may lead you to break your disciplined routine. To avoid stressing out and losing control of their behavior, Navy SEALs use box breaths to stay calm. This involves breathing in for four seconds, holding your breath for four seconds, then exhaling for four seconds. By regulating your breath in this manner, you can trigger the rest of your nervous system to relax when you notice yourself becoming stressed (breathing hard, sweating, and so on).

(Shortform note: Beyond breathing strategies, Navy SEAL Jocko Willink uses other physical steps to manage his emotions. In Discipline Equals Freedom, he lays out his stress protocol: Take a step back from the situation, put your hands on your hips, take a while to look around, take deep breaths, and listen for a while before you begin talking.)

Resist Perfectionism With the 75% Rule

According to Hollins, perfectionism makes us afraid to try new things because it makes us believe that the only success is perfect success. If you always wait for the perfect conditions to chase your goal, you’ll never begin. Your circumstances will never be completely perfect. Hollins explains that this is just a rationalization for inaction. To combat perfectionism, practice the 75% rule—when you feel about 75% sure you can do something, do it. If you wait for certainty, you’ll never act.

(Shortform note: Can perfectionism be a good thing? Experts say that perfectionism can be positive if it’s oriented toward achieving something rather than driven by a fear of failure. When perfectionism is goal-oriented, it can help people set high standards and feel motivated to strive toward them with persistence. On the other hand, perfectionism becomes unhealthy when it’s based on a fear of failure, feelings of inadequacy, and harsh comparisons. This can lead to procrastination, severe stress, and a lack of creativity.)

Prevent Procrastination by Setting Deadlines

Hollins recommends setting ambitious deadlines and doing your best to stick to them. Without strict deadlines, we tend to flounder around. To demonstrate how stagnating procrastination can be, Hollins highlights Parkinson’s Law, which states that we expand the time it takes to complete tasks to fit the time window we’ve allotted for them. For example, if you give yourself a week to finish a project for work, you may delve into nitpicky tasks that aren’t essential to the project’s objectives in order to stretch the project’s duration until the deadline. On the other hand, if you set a more aggressive deadline, like two days, you’ll work only on the essential elements of the project in order to complete it in time.

Is Procrastination Really That Bad?

Though it may seem like procrastination is a self-defeating habit unique to humans, psychological research suggests that this process is natural and even shared with other animal species. One study that observed pigeons completing a task found that the birds were more likely to respond to signals given near the end of the task’s duration rather than signals at the beginning of the task. These results suggest that behavior is better reinforced closer to deadlines.

So, if procrastination is a natural phenomenon, is it really that bad? As long as we have deadlines to temper our procrastinating tendencies stated by Parkinson’s Law, we’ll eventually get done what is necessary. But what about goals without fixed deadlines? For example, maybe you want to repair your relationship with a loved one or start stand-up comedy. Without a deadline to eventually kick you into gear, you might put off these goals forever.

To give yourself a sense of urgency on such goals, consider a reminder that your life is finite and you only have so much time to accomplish your goals. Ryan Holiday, author of The Daily Stoic, suggests using a “Memento Mori Calendar” that displays the number of weeks in an 80-year life as boxes on one page. He checks these boxes as a visual reminder of the time he likely has left to live. This functions as a literal “dead”-line. Holiday also recommends carrying a reminder of your mortality with you throughout your day, like a coin that reads “memento mori,” Latin for “remember that you will die.”

Build an External World That Encourages Discipline

Although it’s important to have a strong foundation for discipline in your mind and behaviors, your environment plays a large role in your success. If you’re constantly surrounded by unhealthy temptations, your discipline will be more likely to waver. In this section, we’ll discuss the importance of surrounding yourself with a pro-discipline environment and investing in relationships with people who bring out the best in you.

Build an Environment That Encourages Discipline

If you’re constantly having to grapple with temptations that draw you away from the things you need to be doing, you’ll eventually exhaust your willpower and give in. So, you should construct an environment that supports discipline instead. One way to do this is to remove distractions that tempt you throughout your day. For example, if you work from home and you’re tempted to do unnecessary house chores whenever your work presents an uncomfortable challenge, try working from a coffee shop, library, or any place that removes you from your home’s temptations.

(Shortform note: Sometimes the greatest distractions you face aren’t just the places you are, but the people you surround yourself with. If you’re always tempted to engage with people around you or your work colleagues ask for your attention a little too often, try setting boundaries. Wearing headphones when you need to do some deep work can keep you from overhearing enticing conversations you’ll want to join and indicate to others that you’re focused on your work. You can also close your door if you have your own office or put up a “do not disturb” sign. If unspoken signals aren’t enough, you can communicate with family or colleagues about sections of the day when you’d like to be left undisturbed.)

Hollins says you can also take advantage of your cravings for dopamine by rewarding yourself for completing tasks related to your goal. For example, if you finish writing a chapter of your book, you can treat yourself to a coffee. By doing this, you’ll condition yourself to associate challenging tasks with rewards.

(Shortform note: Experts say rewards can derail our healthy habits if we don’t use them wisely. For instance, rewards are dangerous because they might signal to you that you’ve completed a goal and thus can slack off. Rewards can also threaten to break your habits if they’re overly indulgent and involve behaviors you’re trying to avoid. One expert says the best rewards to give yourself are those that support your healthy habits. For example, if you fulfill a writing goal, reward yourself with a new journal to write in.)

Build Relationships That Promote Discipline

Hollins explains that along with your physical surroundings, your relationships have a significant effect on your discipline. So, it’s important not to be around people who slack off and indulge in unhealthy behaviors. This can rub off on you. Instead, find an accountability partner. This is someone who encourages you to maintain your discipline, who celebrates your successes, and whom you don’t want to disappoint if you slack off.

(Shortform note: According to The Success Principles, a good accountability partnership involves a commitment to each other’s success, not just your own. This means motivating each other to stay on track toward your goals, meeting regularly to check in on progress, and looking out for opportunities that may support each other’s success.)

Hollins also suggests you take advantage of the Hawthorne Effect to maintain discipline. The Hawthorne Effect is the idea that knowing people are watching you makes you perform tasks more effectively. You can implement this idea by regularly posting some of your routine tasks on social media. For example, Navy SEAL Jocko Willink takes a picture of his watch and posts it to Instagram when he gets up to work out every morning at 4:30 a.m. If you work remotely and struggle to stay on task, work at a coffee shop, a library, or with a friend who also works remotely.

(Shortform note: The Hawthorne Effect can have a positive as well as a negative influence on motivation. One study observed that medical patients sometimes overestimate their pain or experience more intense symptoms in the presence of medical attention. Amplified patient responses can be caused by a variety of factors, including conformism, a desire for special attention, or a fear of not being taken seriously. The study concluded that it’s important for medical practitioners to use neutral language around their patients to encourage normal, calm impressions of their treatments. To put this finding into practice, surround yourself with people who you trust to give you level, honest feedback and healthy amounts of attention.)

Finally, writes Hollins, find a positive mentor. Identify and connect with someone who inspires you to be disciplined toward your goals. For example, this could be someone who’s already had success in the area of the goal you’re pursuing. Learn from their approach and apply what you can to your own.

(Shortform note: One expert says a key to identifying a good mentor is whether the relationship feels natural. To test the waters with a potential mentor, arrange a casual meeting and present them with a question or problem you’d like to hear their advice on. If they listen to you carefully and you seem to have good chemistry together, there may be a good mentorship in the making!)