A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance. So if you now number yourself among the disenchanted, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else.

Hunter S. Thompson

Feeling indecisive today? Start making decisions and get better at it.

One important step is to not stay in your head for too long. If you find yourself caught up in there, thinking about a million possible outcomes and opportunities and whatnot, just get out! Busy yourself, go for a walk, get up for a run or just do some chores that are due.

You do not want to get stuck in your head, thinking about your life and your decisions, you rather want to make those decisions! Making decisions has a lot to do with discipline because often times a decision is feared because the consequences will result in work. Discipline and the 3 second rule may help you with that.

The 3 second rule or as I like to call it the “No hestitation rule” states not to even begin thinking about certain tasks. Take for example getting up in the morning. Your alarm clock rings and what is the first thing that you would normally do? You would go up into your head and search for excuses to sleep in. You would do the math, think about how long you can possibly sleep today, set a new alarm and fall asleep. But there was a reason for the early alarm in the first place and you have to be strong now to be happy later.

So instead of allowing yourself that excuse-time, you just get up, before you can start thinking. You get up and start your day, maybe eat something, maybe work out, maybe take a shower, whatever it is that you do in the morning. This will become your routine, your credo. Once the alarm goes off, your day has started, no matter what else. This way it will become easier over time, because you will get used to it. Our minds and bodies love being used to something, they hate change. Get used to this discipline of trusting your former self.

Discipline is doing what you don’t want to do, when you don’t want to do it.

You have set yourself the goal of learning at 2pm today? Well, it’s 2:01, so get started! No excuses, no procrastination, just get started. Same with chores that don’t take a lot of time.

Take the following situation: You have some spare time, sit around, surf the web. Suddenly your look wanders through the room and it dawns on you: Jesus, I should really vacuum in here.

Normal, slobby outcome: “Well yeah, I’ll do that some time soon”

Ideal outcome: Just get up and do it. It will take 5, maybe 10 minutes (that you would have spend looking at cats anyway) and afterwards you’ll feel awesome. Yes, even vacuuming your room can feel awesome, because it is applied discipline and it makes you feel being actually in control of your life. 

These small things, like doing chores right when they pop up or bigger things, like getting up at certain (maybe brutal) hours are things that don’t work perfectly tommorow if they did not work today at all. You have to train them over time and you have to be patient.

Be willing to fail and do not judge yourself. The only possible mistake is to give up after a short time, because you did not show the discipline at several occasions. That is even a greater reason to keep up the training.

Discipline is like a muscle (and a big one, trust me!), it has to be trained continuously! Even if you have aquired a certain level of discipline, you can’t stop. You have to maintain your discipline muscle like any other one. Start small, start today, never stop! Train your discipline, like you train your body. If you do not train your body: Also start today! Maintaining mental and physical health is extremely important and feels awesome!

Practice and enjoy!

/phil