The Commitment of Discipline

When you have studied “a course of study” and from that developed “a course of actions,” a regime by which you develop an expertise to the extent that you are recognized as a ‘disciple’ of that domain, not only have you become a highly disciplined person, but in that experience you have demonstrated a high level commitment. And because you have, you now experientially know the commitment of discipline.

That kind of discipline usually takes a long time. It’s not achieve over a weekend training, nor even over a year of specific training. It usually takes several years as Anders Ericckson noted in his longitudinal studies on expertise. And because it does, that explains the need for a no-matter-what commitment, a commitment that you make which is not conditional on your moods, emotions, energy, circumstances, etc. It is not, “Yes, I’m all in ... unless something more interesting comes up!” It is more of an unconditional commitment, “Yes, I’m all in.” Period.

The reason this is important is due to what has been called the whirlwind of everyday activities. This is also known, as the chaos of everyday life. That which mostly threatens your discipline, your consistency, regularity, and persistence are not the big problems and challenges that arise in life. No, it is the busyness of everyday life. And that busyness are all of the things that can so easily accumulate unless you so No and unless you take charge of your schedule.

Stephen Covey addressed this in his book on 7 Habits of Highly Effective People with his now famous Importance / Urgent Quadrants. There he talked about the irrationality of living your life putting out one fire and then another and another and devoting yourself to the things that make the most noise and creates the most sense of urgency. The discipline that handles all of that is a commitment to what is most important in life. And that calls for prioritizing your values so that you know your highest values. That’s the commitment of discipline.

“Productivity is the vaccination against day-to-day firefighting—the urgent and crisis demands of the day. ... It’s possible for a person to have an overwhelming number of things to do and still function productively with a clear head and a positive sense of relaxed control.” David Allen (Getting Things Done, p. 3)

Now without that commitment, the chaos and whirlwind of busyness will dominate. Now you know why we have put so much emphasis on Question-3 of the Well-Formed Outcome questions: Why is that important to you? Yet answering that one time is not sufficient. Whatever you start with, you then have to ask it another 5 to 7 times. In that way, you will elicit your own personal value hierarchy about the given subject.

But don’t stop there. Once you have you two or three highest values that you say is important— that’s your espoused values. But do you live them? Do they define and govern and inspire your everyday discipline? To make sure they do, you will want to integrate what you know into what you do. That’s where the Mind-to-Muscle pattern comes in to empower you as a practical way to live out the commitment of your discipline. Now you’re ready to commitment your time, your money, effort, and mind to that which you say is the most important. To be “all in,” do that.