How Discipline Works

Lesson From a Navy SEAL and an Air Traffic Controller

“When that alarm goes of, there’s at least 50% of the time that the soft little pillow is just caressing your head and you want to stay there. And it takes discipline to go ‘Nope, I’m going to get out of this bed and I’m going to do what I’m supposed to do. And that discipline you have at that moment, you win that fight - that’s a big victory. And that pattern will carry out throughout the day. Because once I’m up, well I might as well go work out because I’m already up and I feel that I got out of bed and I won that battle. Let me go win another battle.
And then you show up at the office and there’s someone that’s got a big box of donuts that they’re giving away, and it’s almost an insult not to take them. But you already got out of bed, you already worked out, you had the discipline there. And now you see the box of donuts and you’re like ‘No, I’m not going to eat the donuts.’”

I’ve seen videos of Jocko Willinik saying this on multiple platforms, and on every one of them, there is one type of comment that keeps appearing:

 "I thought he was going to say that you take the donuts because you earned them."

I’m aware that some of those comments are made simply for the sake of being funny. But some of them are made by people who don’t understand how discipline works, because they have never experienced it.

And I am not here to judge those people. I am here to expand on this idea and hopefully provide a useful example of how discipline works.

For those who have very little patience or short attention spans: discipline spreads.

Start practicing discipline in one area of your life, and it will spread to other areas.

You don’t become disciplined at one thing and stop there. You become a disciplined person. Discipline cannot be contained to one specific area, it cannot help but spread.

I would like to share a personal example of how discipline spreads and why you really don’t take “the donuts,” whatever “the donuts” are in your case.

Obviously Jocko Willinik is the Navy Seal from the subtitle. And if you haven’t figured out, I am the air traffic controller. Although a former one.

Some of you are familiar with the fact that, until January this year, I was working as an air traffic controller.
(To some of my colleagues who will probably be reading this: I miss you, but I don’t miss the job.)

The job consists of doing shift work, including night shifts, from 11pm to 7am.

Depending on the shift, I would be able to get some sleep, but rarely more than 4 hours.

Then, on my way back home in the morning, when I got off the transport, I would pass four bakeries before I got inside my building.

The thing about me is that there is absolutely no food as tempting to me as fresh pastry. There isn’t even a close second.

And at 7 in the morning, all of those 4 bakeries would bring out their first batches of fresh pastry.

Another thing is that multiple studies have shown that insufficient sleep leads to overeating and unhealthy food choices. The lack of sleep makes your cravings much stronger. And I can confirm this, as well as every single one of my ex colleagues.

I know how tempting the smell of fresh pastry is to me, even on a full stomach. But nothing can compare to how tempting it was after those night shifts.

I would be faced with a choice:

Take a bunch of pastries (because, for me, there is no such thing as portion control in those cases), eat all of them, then try to recover from lack of sleep and overeating the rest of the day.

Or, take a 40-minute nap if needed, and then do a workout to wake myself up. After that, see if I’m still craving pastry. If I am, I will take some because I’ve earned it.

I cannot remember if there was a single time that I ended up taking the pastry after I did the workout.

And it’s not because I have some superhuman level of self-control.

It’s because discipline spreads.

Here is how it went:

When I felt like I needed it, I would take a nap. Sometimes I was able to start my day right away, straight from the night shift.

Usually, writing and reading come first in my daily schedule. But I’ve found that after a night shift, doing a workout with the right amount of intensity works better than any amount of coffee or tea to wake me up and increase my energy levels for the day.

After I was done with the workout, I would tell myself that I’ve earned the pastry.

Did I still crave it after the workout? I absolutely did. I was craving it less than when I was passing those bakeries earlier in the morning, but I was still craving it.

However, I've achieved that first victory of the day that Jocko was talking about.

And after you achieve that first victory, you want to keep winning.

In my case, the first victory was not waking up but going to do a workout.

I know what kind of nutrition my body needs after a workout. And it's not pastry. Would taking a pastry post-workout ruin the fitness results of someone like myself who is disciplined with their food most of the time and trains every single day? Of course not.

But I’ve kick-started the momentum of discipline. I feel good about the choice I’ve made and the self-control I exhibited, and I want to keep going. I am aware that keeping the momentum of discipline alive will make me feel better, and for a longer time, than eating the pastry would. So I have a post-workout meal to fuel my body rather than to fuel my cravings.

Now, I’ve achieved another victory.

After I did my workout and skipped the pastry, there was no chance I would put off sitting down and writing. I’m on a roll. Why would I stop?

I sit down and write. And, since I’m feeling good about myself because of the previous victories, I stay to write more than I planned.

You probably get the idea - as the day passes, every time I am presented with a choice, it becomes exponentially easier to make the healthy or long-term beneficial choice instead of the quick pleasure choice.

This is why I say that people who expected Jocko’s story to end with "you earned the donut" haven’t experienced what discipline is.

There is this misconception that when you practice discipline, you can’t wait for a break. You can't wait to have that cheat meal, get drunk, or spend the weekend binge-watching Netflix.

In reality, every time you exercise discipline, every time you win that internal battle, your desire to keep the streak going grows stronger. It becomes easier for you to make the right choice because the unhealthy, short-term pleasure choice becomes less and less appealing.

But I know there are going to be people who, after reading this, are going to say: “But how do I achieve that first victory to get the momentum going?”

This is my answer to you: Suck it up. Do the damn thing. Stop asking for tips, tricks and hacks for everything. You get out of bed by getting out of bed. You do the workout by doing the workout. And you pass four bakeries without buying any pastry by looking straight ahead and putting one foot in front of the other.

But maybe the awareness of the fact that discipline spreads is sort of a hack? Maybe, by knowing that every next victory will be easier to achieve, you become more motivated to achieve that first victory of the day? I hope so.

Finally, because I’m not a robot, I think it’s important to say this: I’ve had “cheat days” where I ate to the point of wanting to throw up. I got drunk to the point of... well, let’s not talk about that. And I’ve binge-watched stuff before. So I am not speaking from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know what it’s like to make an unhealthy choice. And I am not saying you should base your whole life on making choices that are either good for your health or bring some kind of long-term gain. That would be a pretty boring existence in my opinion.

But if you know what you want out of life and out of yourself, you know that you need discipline to get there. And since you need discipline, I wanted to tell you how discipline works — it spreads.

Thank you for reading.

P.S. Average cup of coffee costs around 2.7USD.
On the other hand, supporting Existential Espresso would cost you 1.16 USD per week.

If you like my work and get some value from it, I would appreciate you considering it.

By becoming a paid supporter of Existential Espresso, you would be helping me to keep investing so much time into researching and writing all the content on the daily basis.

What you get is access to the locked essays (such as “Why Having a Price on My Head Didn’t Upset Me” or “Why Living With a Bulletproof Vest is The Best Thing to Ever Happen to Me”), as well as an opportunity to recommend topics for future essays.

There is also zero-cost support in the form of you liking this post, commenting if you have any thoughts on it, and of course sharing this with anyone who would find it interesting.

Thank you for your support.