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How to be more disciplined
The Hawthorne Effect
When the thoughts in your head feel big, return to the small.
Drink more water. Eat more protein. Move more. Snack less. Read books. Scroll less. Go on walks. Rest your eyes. Put the phone away. Stay off the apps. Call your parents. Tell them you love them. Ignore the trolls. Support your friends. Be in nature. Pursue something meaningful. Reflect on your mortality. Realize it’s all play.
Does this action get me closer or further to my goals?
If I repeated this action every day, would I be closer or further?
Underrated career hack:
Be easy to root for.
Show up early. Do what you say you're going to do. Take things off others plates. Have a great attitude. Help without any expectations. Don't gossip, whine, or complain.
Be easy to work with and hard to compete against.
“People who genuinely like themselves are ruthless with access because solitude is not a punishment to them.” — Unknown
Former Duke men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski on staying hungry:
“If what you did yesterday still looks big to you, you haven't done much today.”
The easiest way to improve your discipline is to pretend someone’s watching you.
Allow me to explain…
In 1924, a factory outside Chicago ran an experiment on its workers.
The Hawthorne Works was a Western Electric plant that made telephone parts, and the company wanted to know a simple question: would better lighting make their employees more productive?
They brightened the lights. Productivity went up.
Then, to confirm the result, they dimmed the lights back down. They expected productivity to drop.
It went up again.
The researchers were confused. They tried other variables. Shorter breaks. Longer breaks. Different hours. Almost every change they made, productivity improved. Even when they reverted conditions back to the original setup, workers were still outperforming their old numbers.
Eventually they figured out what was going on. It had nothing to do with the lighting, or the breaks, or the hours.
The workers were performing better because they knew they were being watched.
Psychologists now call this the Hawthorne effect: people modify their behavior, often for the better, simply because they're aware someone is paying attention.
Think of the student who sits up straight when the principal walks by. The basketball player who takes her reps more seriously when the head coach shows up. Or the kid who stops misbehaving the second his parents walk in.
It's been two weeks since I moved back to Chicago, and if I’m being honest, my habits have slipped a bit.
I wake up later than usual. I go through the motions in my workouts. I scroll on my phone instead of reading.
In Vegas, my routine was dialed. I woke up at the same time every day, got to the gym by 5, and was at my desk by 7. I didn't think about any of it.
But back home, I'm relearning it.
The best part of being self-employed: nobody tells you what to do.
The worst part of being self-employed: nobody tells you what to do.
So a question I’ve been asking myself:
If someone watched you for a week, would they believe you're serious about your goals?
Here are a few ways I've been trying to build more accountability into my week:
1. Co-work with a friend. Pick one morning a week and work in the same room as someone whose opinion you care about. You don't have to be working on the same thing. Since many of my friends life in different cities, I’ve been doing this over Zoom.
2. Text a buddy your goals for the week. Even better: put money on it. Send a friend $100 on Monday and tell them to keep it if you don't accomplish what you said you would.
3. Create an accountability group. I’m in a LinkedIn group that meets every Monday to share our publishing goals and check in on each others’ progress. We have a group spreadsheet where we track our target posts published vs. how many posts we actually published. It’s been super helpful because I don’t want to let anyone down.
4. Use an AI tool. My friend built an AI health tool (still in beta), and every morning it texts me my goals and checks in throughout the day. It's the closest thing I've found to having a coach in my pocket.
5. Share progress updates online. It might just be my generation (and the product of scrolling social media a ton), but I love the little hit of dopamine from posting. Sharing wins makes me want to keep winning, and it holds me accountable when I have nothing to share.
Ok. That’s all I got for this week. I’ll update you with how it goes.
Here’s to crushing our goals and slaying dragons ✊🏻
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