The Most Important Self-Discipline Skills (With Examples)

Self-discipline skills will carry you far in any career or area of life. These skills are what make you reliable, so virtually every employer is searching for employees who are strong in this area.

In this article, we’ll talk about some of the most important self-discipline skills you should have, what self-discipline is, and how to strengthen your self-discipline skills.

Key Takeaways

• Self-discipline skills include concentration, planning, and time management, among others.

• Self-discipline gives you the ability to stay on track despite obstacles, distractions, or simply not feeling like doing your work.

• You can improve your self-discipline skills by choosing a skill to work on, creating goals for improving that skill, and taking baby steps to meet that goal.

16 Self-Discipline Skills That You Need to Develop for Your Career

You can learn self-discipline. The following are some of the self-discipline skills that you need to develop to succeed in your career:

1. Concentration skills. Concentration is the ability to direct your mind to focus on one thing without letting distractions sway you from your goal. It is an aspect of self-discipline because it enables you to focus on work even when no one is supervising you.

   If you have good concentration skills you can follow through with your job tasks even when there is so much going on in your life.

   Your life at home could be falling apart but you would still focus on what you need to do. And even if there is a crisis in the workplace, you can continue to work as you should while everyone is panicking.

   Some of the jobs that need a heavy dose of concentration include surgery, firefighting, and air traffic control jobs.

2. Planning skills. Planning is the process of coming up with the ideas and actions that are needed to achieve your goals.

   Goal-setting is an important aspect of self-discipline. This process is meant to clarify for you what your intentions are and how success looks like. It may also include the strategies you can use to achieve that success. Good goals must be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.

   Your goals will act as the big picture when you carry out tasks to reach where you want to be. And planning skills will be instrumental in determining how well you can implement those goals. Without these skills, your actions will be directionless.

3. Time management skills. Everyone has 24 hours on any given day. What you do with that time will determine how productive you are. Your ability to manage your time efficiently and effectively is an indicator of whether you have great discipline.

   The lack of discipline concerning time will show in the way you fail to meet your deadlines and your poor work performance within a set period.

   You will procrastinate and the work to be done will keep on piling up on your desk. Your co-workers and managers will consider you to be lazy and unreliable. And you may even get fired.

4. Stress management skills. Stress management is the ability to control your level of stress to improve the way you function daily. How stressed you are on any given day will affect your ability to concentrate, quality of work, and productivity.

   Self-disciplined people are good at managing stress so that it doesn’t interfere with their performance at work. As a result, they tend to exhibit a huge level of self-control and are happier even when the situation they are in is not favorable.

5. Fitness skills. Fitness skills refer to the ability to participate in sports and perform physically-challenging activities. It is a sign of good physical health.

   To become fit, you need to engage in exercises regularly. You must also eat right so that you can maintain your ideal body weight and size.

   Being fit will need you to make sacrifices. And when you are tired, in pain, and crave certain foods, you must still regulate your emotions and actions to avoid self-sabotage.

   Training your body regularly improves your discipline and control. To master your mind when you feel discomfort is difficult. But when you get done and you experience the rewards, you can pat yourself on the back for a job well done.

   Some of the jobs that need disciplined people with high levels of fitness include the military, professional athletics, and construction work.

6. Communication skills. Communication is the exchange of information through verbal and nonverbal cues. That means you should master what you say and how your body reacts lest you offend someone.

   One important aspect of communication is active listening. This refers to the ability to hear and understand what someone says, remember, and respond appropriately.

   You should be disciplined enough to follow instructions when you need to. But first, you must fully understand what information is being communicated to you.

   And even when you feel that the instructions you are given are irrelevant, you must separate the negative emotions from your duties.

   So, you must learn to control your words and body language and get things done even if you are reluctant to do so.

7. Motivational skills. Motivational skills refer to the ability to initiate and maintain actions that enable you to achieve your goals.

   You must be in control of your mind and emotions to encourage yourself to stick to your routines even when you feel bored. Your mastery over your feelings will be instrumental in helping you stay committed to your course of action to the end despite the obstacles on the way.

   Your motivational skills will also help your co-workers continue to perform even when there are issues in the workplace. They will ensure you can control individual and team performances significantly to obtain the results you desire.

8. Leadership skills. Leadership skills will enable you to influence people’s behavior around you so that they can implement the desired ideas and actions.

   The best way to lead is by example.

   Great leaders have a lot of self-discipline. They must be able to work hard without supervision because no one will tell them what to do. They must be able to self-regulate their emotions to influence the behaviors of others. That way, you will become a better manager.

9. Collaboration skills. Collaboration skills enable you to work well with others to complete tasks and achieve the set goals.

   People will not always agree. Everyone has an opinion. And different opinions can lead to disagreements and distractions that slow the team down. But if you discipline yourself you can work well with others and achieve your goals.

   The more you learn to control your emotions despite how other people in your team behave the better you will become at self-control. And you will become the person everyone wants in their team because you can be relied upon to work well with your colleagues.

10. Writing skills. There is no point in being disciplined if you don’t know what you are working towards.

    You can even go one step further and write down the processes and strategies you should use to achieve those goals. Breaking down your goals into smaller ones will help improve your progress. To-do lists for daily tasks will be helpful too.

    It’s easy to remember what you need to do if you write it down. You can refer to it whenever you need to so that you don’t get off course.

    Journaling can be very therapeutic too. It will be instrumental in helping you put your thoughts on paper. That is a great way of understanding your thinking process, managing your emotions better, and improving your mental well-being.

    The more in control of your emotions you are the more discipline you will have.

11. Organizational skills. Organizational skills refer to your ability to create structure and bring order to a situation. You must be able to plan what to do, execute tasks to achieve goals, and ensure everything is done efficiently.

    It’s difficult to have self-discipline if you have no sense of organization. Because your organizational skills will be needed to prioritize tasks, delegate duties, and provide direction so that you can work hard to achieve success. And they will help you do these activities with minimal supervision.

12. Critical thinking skills. Critical thinking is the ability to analyze and evaluate a situation before deciding on the wisest course of action.

    For example, if you are hell-bent on losing weight, you can think critically about what would happen if you rewarded yourself with junk food or stopped going to the gym. Once you decide that you are better off with less weight, in the long run, you will withstand discomfort better when exercising.

    To self-regulate successfully, you must be a critical thinker. You should analyze what each course of action will lead to by weighing the consequences carefully. Then depending on the options before you, you can use the best strategy to achieve your goal even if it’s challenging.

    Critical thinking can boost your ability to solve problems in the organization efficiently. It will make you an asset to any organization you work in.

13. Visualization skills. Visualization is the ability to create images in your mind concerning a particular subject.

    Sometimes a project or goal can be so big that your mind finds it difficult to grasp it fully. So, by visualizing it, you prepare your mind and body to embrace the idea completely. It helps to make the impossible quite possible. Think of it as a coping mechanism for the tough times.

    Every time you feel like giving up on a difficult project, you can imagine what it will be like when it’s complete. You could picture your happiness, that bonus check, or the awards that will come your way once you succeed.

    That makes it easier for you to stick to the plan when you deal with the challenges along the way. You can stay motivated as you act to achieve your goals.

14. Persistence skills. Persistence skills are a skill set that enables you to stay on course when you are delayed or forced to overcome difficulties along the way.

    You should be able to continue to perform your tasks even when you find them hard to do. And if you fail to meet your objectives, you must dust yourself up, learn from your mistakes, and continue working.

    You must endure becoming self-disciplined. It’s the only way to overcome failure.

15. Mindfulness skills. Mindfulness skills refer to your ability to be self-aware. It enables you to acknowledge your thoughts and feelings without making any judgments. It also influences your ability to be present.

    You need mindfulness skills to work on your tasks effectively because they keep you alert. These skills will also enable you to control your emotions and relax your body when you feel stressed out. You are less likely to feel overwhelmed as a result. Thus, your concentration levels and productivity will improve.

16. Technical skills. Technical skills are hard skills that require you to undergo practical training or class-based education so that you can perform specific tasks. You must be a good learner to acquire these skills.

    These may include tasks within the scientific, mechanical, information technology, and mathematical sectors. Examples of jobs include programming, project management, and technical support jobs.

    Technical skills can boost self-discipline. The more hands-on experience you have, the better you will get at doing your job. And you can have some control over your reactions and productivity even when something malfunctions. So, you need to practice as much as possible.

What Is Self-Discipline?

Self-discipline is the ability to control your behavior to achieve your goals.

If you are disciplined, then you have strong willpower that enables you to work hard to accomplish what you set out to do despite obstacles and distractions.

And procrastination is a foreign concept to you. You are the kind of person that can delay gratification for as long as you need to because you see the bigger picture.

To accomplish your career goals, you need to develop self-discipline skills that will see you through every challenge.

How to Strengthen Your Self-Discipline Skills

1. Choose one skill to focus on at a time. If you try to get better at all self-discipline skills at once, you’ll just end up frustrated. Instead, choose one or two you really want to see improvement in, and set SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) goals around that one.

2. Identify what needs to change. When you know what self-discipline skill you want to work on, identify what is hindering you from being excellent at it and what you need to do to get those obstacles out of the way.

   For example, if your goal is to improve your stress management skills, take the time to notice when you feel especially stressed and when you feel relatively relaxed.

   Does caffeine make you feel more on edge than you need to? Did that yoga class you took that one time get rid of your chronic stress headache? Do you start feeling off-kilter whenever you check your email inbox?

3. Take baby steps. When you know what obstacles you need to overcome in order to see an improvement in a skill, you can start to work on overcoming them.

   Maybe your baby step to improving your stress management is to cut your coffee intake from four lattes a day to three, and then a few weeks later to two. Or, maybe it’s to sign up for the yoga class or to train yourself to hide your phone in a drawer until you leave for work in the morning.

   They may sound small and simple, but you will be surprised at how far these tiny steps will take you.

4. Celebrate your progress. You’ll quickly run out of motivation to improve your self-discipline skills if you don’t stop to look at how far you’ve come and pat yourself on the back now and then.

   Plan a reward for yourself for hitting a goal such as a meal at the new restaurant you’ve wanted to try, or simply keep track of your progress and let yourself appreciate how far you’ve come.

Final Thoughts

Your ability to regulate your emotions and behavior to achieve your goals despite challenges will boost your chances of being hired. Find a way to list it in your resume as a soft skill. It will also raise your chances of getting management positions. Focusing on self-development can help you become a more disciplined person.

Author

Chris Kolmar

Chris Kolmar is a co-founder of Zippia and the editor-in-chief of the Zippia career advice blog. He has hired over 50 people in his career, been hired five times, and wants to help you land your next job. His research has been featured on the New York Times, Thrillist, VOX, The Atlantic, and a host of local news. More recently, he's been quoted on USA Today, BusinessInsider, and CNBC.