The Most Important Self-Discipline Skills (With Examples)

Think of someone you admire as a professional. Most likely, you appreciate their resilience and reliability. They get work done and they do it in what seems to be a flawless manner. However, unless you know this person well, you may not realize that they are just as susceptible to the everyday challenges and failures we all face in our imperfect lives.

What separates this admirable professional, however, is their ability to overcome and persist in their goals. This effort is a skill that everyone in the workforce needs to succeed and that skill is called self-discipline. It is the self-discipline of the high-performing professional that allows them to focus their efforts on their goals in the face of countless distractions and roadblocks.

Regardless if you think you have this self-discipline or not, understand that this is a skill that must be constantly nurtured. If you feel you struggle with self-discipline also know that you are not alone and realize that it is a soft skill that can be learned. Self-discipline is key to improving your professional life, particularly if you want to boost your resume and profile.

Key Takeaways:

• Self-discipline is your ability to manage yourself with the intent of achieving a goal.

• Important skills for self discipline include self-control, organization, time management, self-awareness, perseverance, and focus.

• Knowing your values for motivation is helpful to achieve self-discipline.

• Reframing self-discipline is crucial for success. Self-discipline is there to help you grow. Be positive with your intent and follow-through. Set up a system that builds you up, not one that tears you down.

• Maintain healthy energy levels to stay self-disciplined.

What Is Self-Discipline?

Self-discipline is your ability to manage yourself with the intent of achieving a goal. To successfully manage yourself you must have self-control and react to challenges constructively. Whether you are physically or emotionally uncomfortable, your self-discipline is the skill you use to keep yourself on task.

Think about the times you misbehaved when you were young. From harmless mistakes to serious failures, poor behavior is a natural part of growing up. It is a natural part of life, but when you were a kid you had adults to guide you to make better choices. As an adult that external guidance is now less frequent.

This is because actions have consequences and it is your responsibility to make the right choices for yourself. So you do your best to get the life you want. However, bad habits can develop along the way and when you don’t have others consistently invested in your development these habits may go unnoticed.

Bad habits can grow into toxic behaviors that can negatively affect your personal and professional lives. Only then will others call you out on your actions and by then it may be too late to rectify. To avoid this, you must manage your behavior and this takes self-discipline. You have to be your parent and guide yourself to improvement.

Important Self-Discipline Skills

Many skills are needed to maintain self-discipline since it requires consistent action in a variety of situations. Some of the most important skills in self-discipline include:

1. Self-control. Any act of self-discipline requires some level of self-control. Self-control is your ability to regulate your own impulses. This is very important when you need to restrict certain impulses that will interfere with your self-discipline.

   For example:

   Imagine you have decided to go for a run every Saturday morning. However, on Friday evening you are invited to go to a party with some friends. You decide to go the party, and although you would rather stay, you leave early so that you can still get up for your run the next morning. You used your self-control to avoid staying later.

2. Organization. Self-discipline is tough without organization. When you commit to acts of self-discipline, you have to find a way to build them around everything else going on in your life. Furthermore, most self-discipline acts themselves need some organization to perform.

For example:

You decide you are going to clean your bathroom once a week. To do so, you organize your cabinet with all the necessary cleaning materials, as well as a checklist. With this organization, you make it easier for yourself to clean and save time in preparation.

3. Time Management. Almost as an extension of organization, time management is equally important to self-discipline. How you organize and direct your time is critical to achieving your tasks.

   Good time management skills allow you to build necessary routines and adjust your schedule accordingly so that you remain devoted to your tasks. This is true both for short term and long term self-discipline.

   For example:

   You want to write a novel. You plan to write 500 words a day and calculate this will take up an hour of your time. You know you are most productive in the morning so you decide to schedule your writing into your morning routine.

   This requires you to get up an hour early, which you are willing to do. However on days when you cannot write in the morning, you give yourself an extra hour in the evening or else find time during the day.

4. Self-awareness. Self-discipline requires a certain level of honesty and self-reflection with oneself. Without self-awareness, you will be unable to gauge your progress accurately. You need to hold yourself accountable, know where your strengths and weaknesses lie, while also being supportive for yourself.

For example:

You are halfway to your goal of saving $5,000 for a vacation to Europe. One day you come across a really nice guitar for $1,000. You really want to buy the guitar, however, with your self-awareness, you realize that you most likely will not play the guitar often. This moment of self-reflection stops you from spending your savings.

5. Perseverance. Self-discipline means facing uncomfortable situations. During discomfort, it is very normal to want to give up. To remain self-discipline, you must be able to hold fast to your goals in the face of challenges. Perseverance provides you the strength to carry on to do what’s best for you in the end.

For example:

You have been studying all semester for a course that is necessary to graduate. Unfortunately, you fail the final and the course. You are devastated. However, you persevere, and take the course again next semester and pass. You do not allow this setback to prevent you from graduating.

6. Focus. Focus is a special type of perseverance that requires you to stay on task in the face of distractions. With so many sources of immediate gratification around in life, it is easy to lose focus while committing an act of self-discipline since those acts are usually less attractive and involve more long term rewards.

   Staying focus during an act of self-discipline is essential while you work towards your goal. Otherwise, you may be distracted so much you stop being self-disciplined all together.

For example:

You are in the middle of doing your taxes. Outside your apartment, there is a parade. To stay focus, you shut your windows and play ambient music in your headphones. By staying focus you are able to complete your taxes.

How to Be Self-Disciplined

Unfortunately, there is no specific path to self-discipline. Each person must tailor their approach to their needs and abilities. Your situation may require a different form of discipline than someone else. However, there are common steps to take that confirm you are on the right track.

They include:

• Discover your values and your goals for motivation. Self-discipline is pointless without a reason. Take time to consider what it is you want to achieve. Set a goal based on your values. This will give you greater investment in its success.

  Make the goal a SMART goal so that it can be tracked. With this target in mind, you now have a reason to keep yourself focused.

• Start small. If you struggle with self-discipline, then a big goal will be overwhelming. In your attempt, you may constantly fail and become frustrated. Soon you will lose your focus and be back where you started.

  To avoid this, give yourself little victories with small tasks of self-discipline. Build up with small steps over time to grow your confidence.

• Be mindful of resistance and discomfort. You are trying to break bad habits so naturally, your body will want to resist. Change is uncomfortable and you are purposely putting yourself through the discomfort.

  Monitor how your body and mind react to this. If you feel urges to slip from your self-discipline, take a moment to be present with the discomfort and carry on with your task.

• Avoid distractions. Keep temptations like social media away so that it is harder for you to distract yourself from your goals. Implement blocks on your computer. Hide your phone in a place that is difficult to reach. Keep junk food off your shopping list and avoid making plans that will impact your sleep.

• Practice every day. You want to build your self-discipline into a routine. To do this you need to make it a habit and to make it a habit you need to do it every day. On days you want to relax, still, give yourself little moments of self-discipline to reinforce your good behavior.

• Be realistic with expectations and results. Failure is bound to happen. Therefore, from the start, be realistic with what is possible to achieve. This is why starting small with SMART goals can help. Give yourself the time and space to develop with tangible tasks. This way your discipline can have a better chance of success.

• Track progress. Seeing results right away can be hard. If you track your progress, the small gains you make become more obvious. For example, if you see that for a week you managed to keep yourself to only thirty minutes a day on social media you can feel good that you made progress.

• Give yourself rewards. If your goals take time, give yourself rewards for meeting successful benchmarks. Perhaps tell yourself if you reach the halfway point of a project on time then you will buy a nice dinner. This reward will act as supplemental motivation as you work towards the result.

In the end, self-discipline is a mindset about how you approach tasks. It is important to both start and finishes these projects. They begin with small steps, realistic expectations, persistence, and self-motivation. Don’t expect yourself to be perfect, but do expect yourself to do it. There is no other way around it. Get started, stay on target and get it done.

The Positive Side of Self-Discipline

The word “discipline” may invoke in your mind punitive measures and you may have a negative reaction to the idea of discipline. This is normal. Many people associate discipline with its negative uses. It makes us think that discipline is a set of strict, cold, and uncaring barriers that are designed to keep us in line.

Sometimes this punishment style of discipline is necessary, such as when a drill sergeant must build raw recruits into a dependable military unit. However, other times it can lead to more problems, such as when unfettered negative feedback turns into destructive verbal abuse. In fact, for most professional situations, discipline should be used and seen positively.

Discipline takes all different forms, from encouragement to consequences, which means it has the potential to be enjoyed. This is especially important for successful self-discipline. You will not get far if you don’t agree with your own set of rules and guidelines. Much like a manager who needs to convince their team to tackle a difficult project, you need buy-in from yourself.

Like the successful manager who makes a decision that meets both the interests of the company and the needs of team members, you need to listen, both as the manager and recipient of your goals. The first step is to see then that your self-discipline is not there to harm you but to help you grow. The experience can be positive even if the feedback is not.

To further enhance a positive outlook towards self-discipline be positive with your intent and your follow-through. Set up a system that builds you up, not one that tears you down. This includes when things get tough or failures occur. Your self-discipline is not there to indulge you in comfort, you must face discomfort honestly to keep you on track to your goals.

Positive discipline is about encouragement and respect. It builds a connection that has a long-term positive impact. With positive discipline, you can feel more assured in the strength of your character through your developed capabilities and skills. Be accountable to yourself as an effective form of self-care.

With this healthy approach to self-discipline, you find yourself less hesitant to its demands and enjoy its rewards. This does not happen overnight. Even after you reframe self-discipline in a positive light, there are still other mental blocks you will face that can distract or destroy your discipline.

Tips for Overcoming Mental Resistance to Self-Discipline

Self-discipline is hard but not impossible. Even after you reframe the concept of discipline in a positive light you will find the resistance that you must overcome. The first step is to acknowledge what barriers there may be in your way. Some include:

• Energy levels. If your energy levels are low you are more susceptible to distractions and comfort-seeking activities. This is one reason why self-discipline in multiple areas of your life can reinforce each other.

  A better diet, better sleep hygiene, and a schedule that includes breaks are all important ways to keep your energy up when approaching a task.

• Bad habits. You can be your own worst enemy and feel a constant drive to slip back into old ways. Recognize and acknowledge when these habits occur. Take note about what brought them up and how you felt afterward. You may start to see a pattern that you can then preemptively avoid.

• Motivation. Something to look forward to can increase your drive to work through difficulties. To be more disciplined with yourself, give yourself small rewards throughout large stretches of hard work. Take a break or eat a snack and give yourself the chance to reset as you return your focus.

• Disorganization. Discipline requires you to keep yourself in order, however, if you live a disorganized life it can seem overwhelming. Start by organizing your mind. Journal your thoughts and build a schedule that prioritizes your short and long-term goals. If you feel your mind is cluttered try meditating or low-stress physical exercise to achieve clarity.

• Failure. Persisting through discomfort is key to self-discipline and there is nothing more uncomfortable than failure. Even the thought of failure can lead to procrastination and other bad habits. Reframe failure as a learning opportunity and be gentle with yourself. You must keep forward momentum and though you may stumble you will not fall back.

Accept that these challenges will be present and acknowledge them when they appear. Your self-discipline is not there to replace mental resistance, your self-discipline is there to manage it when it appears. Be honest with yourself and your abilities. Remember that you are not perfect and that your self-discipline is there to help you grow every day.

Final Thoughts

Your resume will reveal whether you have self-discipline or not. Your past achievements were affected by your ability to keep yourself on task. Self-discipline will help you improve your results. The better you are with your self-discipline the better outcomes you will see.

With more focus, you can be more effective in your profession. This will lead to better opportunities and recognition. With enough self-discipline, you can take on new goals that lead to more growth. Self-discipline is the way for you to keep on top of your career development.

As your self-discipline improves, the challenges you face at work become more manageable. You can use your skills to compartmentalize tasks and pursue tangible measures of success. Your confidence will grow and you will feel better about the quality of your work. Combine all this and you find yourself with a better work-life and future.

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.