A Powerful Way To Develop Discipline

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. I had a great time at Rafiki’s house – probably too much of a good time. The late lunch that started at 3:00pm did not end until 10:30pm! Good food, great friends, lots of laughter, stimulating conversation – a good time all around.

One of the conversations centered on the challenges we experience of maintaining discipline to do the things that we want to do. Turns out each of us has certain goals but progress has been painfully slow.

Everyone admitted that their goal was not difficult - we just need to get it done. One of our friends suggested that we need to hold each other accountable so that we can support each other. Everyone enthusiastically agreed and we came up with this accountability plan:

1. Everyone(group of six) stated a goal that they were willing to work on and report progress every week.
2. Once a week we will have short conference call, where we will each report on what we did regarding the stated goal.
3. The team will decide if each person’s report is acceptable i.e. did you actually accomplish something that week.
4. If you fail to do anything that week then you have to pay a penalty of $50.
5. Any penalties collected will go to charity.

For my goal, I committed to wake up at 7am every morning. Typically, I get up at 8am because I sleep pretty late, around 1 or even 2am. And I need my 8 hours of sleep to function properly. This means that usually I don’t get enough sleep. It also means that I waste a lot of time during the day because once I come home from work, I am too tired to do much.

I figure if I can get up at 7am, I can accomplish a couple of things before I go to work and therefore have a more productive day. To accomplish this it means that I have to go to bed much earlier than I have been used to, say 11pm. It’s now after midnight so I am one hour past my bedtime. Time to get ready for bed, set that clock for 7am and hit the sack. If nothing else, I am not trying to pay $50.

So has anyone tried something like this before? We would love to hear how you develop and maintain discipline.

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