I am someone who was from rock bottom, insecure, ADHD mind and can’t focus for 5 minutes.

Now I do 3 hours of deep work in the morning, have been consistent with my good habits for over 2 years, built rock solid after trying out 5 different methods and currently helping young men overcome laziness and conquer discipline. So if you’re someone who used to be like me, listen closely.

Being lazy or struggling to be disciplined is a combinational result of bad habits, bad environmental influence and lack of purpose. A well known pyschologist says it as:

“When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.” –Viktor Frankl

This post to those who are struggling and can’t seem to fix their laziness. You probably struggled for a lot of time already. I now and I’ve been there. If you’re reading this, make this is your break through.

(TLDR can be found at the bottom of the post. Though I highly recommend reading the whole article to understand the connection and how they each part interacts with each other.

The reason why you can’t get out of your bed in the morning, can’t seem to stay consistent on your good habits and quit after 3 days of trying is because you have no consistency.

The only way out is to stay consistent. Even if you waste days, weeks, or months if you keep putting in the work you’ll gradually build that discipline you wanted.

We are humans and our energy is limited. This means if you’re goal is to never procrastinate again that mindset is wrong. Your goal should be to lessen your entertainment consumption using the 2 E’S.

E 1 is for EDUCATION:

• The amount of time you use to make your value to the world higher. Meaning your skills, abilities and capabilities. Because the better you are at something the more likely you are to keep doing it.

E 2 is for ENTERTAINMENT:

• This goes to the amount of time you waste. While I do not recommend wasting time, we are humans and we make mistakes. When you mess up forgive yourself. I mess up plenty of times too.

Why do you need to know all of this?

DOPAMINE.

The reason we want to do something is to experience feelings. The chemicals in your body that fire’s you up when you’re excited and makes you sad when someone says hurtful things to you.

This is what motivates and moves us. We as humans are driven by dopamine. Andrew Huberman said it best. “Dopamine is war. It’s drive and motivation”.

No matter what we do is driven by dopamine.

Like what you do?

• → Increases Dopamine.

Hate what you do?

• → Lowers dopamine

When I didn’t know any of this. I always wondered why I was wasting time. I was awake till 12am and still out there scrolling in social media and watching highly edited videos.

Even though I was filling my mind with dopamine I was still having trouble knowing what to do.

Fixing laziness through dopamine.

If you’re someone who stays in bed, naps all day and can’t seem to do anything productively that’s because your brain is fried. Everything you do is boring so why do it at all? I know because I was like that too.

When dopamine is over the top and it’s too much. Your body won’t move or want to do anything unless the stimuli in your brain is higher. And good habits have very low stimuli in our brains but bad habits spike them to the top.

The way to fix this is simple.

• Schedule what time you want to waste and laze around. This sounds counter productive but if you look at your screen time. It’s probably over 10 hours if you aren’t lying. So if you schedule 3 hours of time wasting, this means you’ve just gained 7 hours of time. I had mine for over 12 hours and I decided to waste 4 hours. I got back 8 hours of time.
• Journal what you do throughout the day and minimize all activities that causes a big spike in dopamine. Meaning your bad habits need to be regulated. I made progress when I become aware I was spending over 12 hours on my phone daily.
• Make your education time than entertainment higher. For example you do 2 hours of entertainment, then you have to put up with doing 2hours and 10 minutes of education. Though this might be too much if you’re new. I highly suggest doing at least 10 minutes of education if you can’t overdrive your entertainment. Don’t let the ego get in the way too.

Habit formation. How to do it right.

The key to habit building is making it easy. Do not rely on motivation. It’s a friend that comes when you don’t want to and goes away when you need it the most. Use will power instead. But not the will power like “David Goggin’s” ultra discipline type. I found this the most useful.

Here’s the process:

1. Make it stupidly easy – If you are new to the gym you wouldn’t bench press 100kg. You would start with the empty barbell. The same principle goes to building habits. You make it stupidly easy it’s impossible to fail. This means instead of doing meditation for 1 hour you do 1 minute. This sounds cringe but it works. Back then I couldn’t even be productive for 30 minutes. So I decided to stick to doing 1 thing everyday for 10 minutes. I made the requirement so small that I could do it even in bad days.
2. Don’t do it twice when you mess up – You have to stay consistent on the thing you’ve set on. You must not over do it when you skipped yesterday. This causes problems and makes you intimidated to start instead. Don’t do 2 hours of studying because you missed yesterdays 1 hour of studying session. It doesn’t work. I always felt more intimidated of doing the work instead of motivated.
3. Stay consistent – Do not quit if you’ve been having trouble of had problems. If you got off for a week get back to it as soon as possible. You must never quit forever. You can take breaks but never forever. The key is to get back on track as soon as possible. That way you can stick and actually make results later. I was on and off my good habits. I would skip days and sometimes weeks. Just get back to it as soon as possible.

Sleep. How it helps you overcome laziness.

Sleep is the best legal performance enhancing drug. So if you only sleep around 4-5 hours like I did obviously you won’t feel productive and energetic.

Since energy plays a vital role in becoming disciplined.

• More energy = Higher chances of being productive.
• Less energy = Higher chances of being lazy.

I remember when I would sleep at 12 am the next day I would feel sluggish and tired. I would always scroll first thing in the morning and waste at least 2 hours watching in YouTube.

But now I don’t and I fixed it. I slept early, got more energy and actually became disciplined. I even have sometimes too much energy throughout the day that I get shocked at how much I get done.

To fix your sleep I recommend 3 things. This is how I also did it.

1. Tire your body – The reason you are not able to sleep fast at night is because your body isn’t tired. This means your body is not seeking rest or recovery. And when it isn’t, it doesn’t want to sleep. It wants to use that energy and get tired. So tire your body during the morning and you’ll have an easier time to sleep. I decided to clean our house more than required. Enough to make me tired at nighttime.
2. Schedule – You need to sleep daily and consistently everyday. This way your body clock gets regulated and fixed. You’ll have to put up not being able to sleep properly for a few days but once you get this rolling it becomes easier. I found this easy to follow once you practice it over a week.
3. No phone 1 hour before bed – Blue light causes our eyes to go dry and makes our mind stay awake. This means you need to stay away from screens near your bedtime. That way you’ll have an easier time to sleep and stay on track. I always notice the difference when I would scroll before sleeping. My eyes would dry out and cause my brain to stay alert. But if I don’t I can feel my eyes being sleepy helping me sleep faster.

Don’t trust motivation. Use will power instead.

Motivation cannot be trusted. It’s like a toxic friend that comes when you don’t want to and comes away when you need it. Instead of relying on watching motivational videos and indulging in mindless consumption. I highly recommend just accepting the suck.

The suck is doing the hard work you don’t want to do. It’s painful and uncomfortable but you do it. And that’s how you build will power. I made progress when I accepted I have to put in the work even if I don’t want to. But the problem is most people do it too hard. They do 1 hour of meditation or 1 hour of exercise and you’ll end up not doing it since it’s too hard. Been there too.

Here’s what to do instead:

• Choose 1 thing you don’t want to do. E.g. working out or waking up early or doing house chores.
• Do the bare minimum. Don’t do 1 hour of meditation. Do 1 minute instead.
• Schedule when you are going to do it. Early in the morning? Afternoon? Evening?
• Be specific about it. What time? 6am? 7am? 12nn? 8pm?

I was down bad back in the days. Focusing for even 10 minutes was close to impossible. So I decided to lower the bar so low it made it impossible for me to fail.

Over time you should add more habits. The good ones.

Good habits.

There are a lot of good habits I can talk about but I will only tackle 3. Which were the most helpful in my discipline journey.

• Tracker journal – Everyday before sleeping I wrote down what I did. This made me more inspired and motivated to work harder.
• Working out- The more I built my muscles the more confident I got. This made me more inclined to keep doing my good habits.
• Reading- I didn’t start reading physical books. Those were too intimidating. I started reading digitally in my phone using some app that summarizes book learnings. It would only take me 5 minutes a day which made it easier to do.

This habits came about after 2 months after I’ve built some foundation.

This 3 habits built my foundation of discipline. Yours will be different but with similar habits. You don’t have to follow mine but it’s a good start if you don’t know what to do.

I also highly recommend reading the summary to really internalize all of this information.

TLDR (Summary) :

• Education should overdrive entertainment. Since if you don’t you fry your dopamine reward system. Aim to at least make your education time higher than entertainment everyday. If you can’t keep trying.
• Dopamine controls what we do. We are prone to do pleasurable activities such as doom scrolling because it’s considered fun by the brain. Lower your dopamine baseline by gradually eliminating bad habits. To ensure the habits you do are pleasurable and fun. The lower your dopamine the better and easier it is for you to do hard work while having fun.
• Your habits dictate your future. Build the right habits by 1) Making it stupidly easy 2) Don’t do twice if you skipped a day 3) Forgive yourself when you mess up.
• Fix your sleep and your productivity skyrockets. Sleep is the best performance enhancing drug. The more energy you get from sleep the better your chances of doing hard things. To sleep better 1) Tire your body during the day with physical activities 2) Schedule bed time 3) No phone in 1 hour before bed.
• Don’t trust motivation and use will power. Motivation is unreliable. Will power on the other hand will make you mentally stronger and makes it easier for you do to hard work. Lower the bar so low it’s impossible to fail. e.g. 1 minute of meditation over 1 hour.
• Good habits are good for consistency. Read, workout and track your daily activities. This makes you more motivated and healthy overall.

I hoped you liked this summary. If this is hard to understand I highly recommend reading the whole post. It contains life changing information that you might be looking for.