How do I become more disciplined?

By No Rush · Updated October 25, 2026

The short answer

You don't need to become stronger. Research on self-control points to the set-up: how often something tempting is in front of you, and how much already happens without thinking. Change one thing in your room or on your phone this week, and give the thing you want to do a fixed moment, like right after dinner.

Why am I struggling to be disciplined?

Most of the time it comes down to how your day is set up. If your phone is next to your bed and your running shoes are in a box in the attic, you have to talk yourself into running again every evening. Marina Milyavskaya and Michael Inzlicht followed 159 students. How often they ran into temptation predicted whether they reached their goals. How hard they resisted did not.

A week where it kept going wrong was probably a week with a lot of those choices in it.

What does having self-discipline mean?

In research, people with a lot of self-control mostly have more things they do without thinking. Denise de Ridder and colleagues looked at 102 studies. Self-control was linked more to behaviour that happens on its own than to behaviour that takes effort every time.

Brian Galla and Angela Duckworth saw the same thing. People with more self-control had more useful habits, like studying at the same time every day. Those habits explained part of why life went better for them. Giving in now and then, when it does no harm, is part of it too.

Does willpower run out?

For a long time people thought willpower was like a battery that runs low after a hard task. When 23 labs repeated the classic test with 2,141 people, almost nothing of that effect was left. A second test in 36 labs with 3,531 people found the same. Being tired does count, so on a heavy day a smaller step is a good choice.

What small things can I do daily for more discipline?

Pick one thing you want to do more often, and make it easier than it is now. Leave the book on your pillow, so it is the first thing you see at night. Move the app you lose your evenings in to the last screen of your phone. Then tie the new thing to something you already do every day, like brushing your teeth.

Nobody has tested yet whether setting this up yourself makes you more disciplined over a few months. The studies above only looked at how people's days already were.

When it is more than discipline

If you can't get going for weeks, and it feels like nothing matters anymore, that is heavier than a question of discipline. Talk to your doctor or someone you trust. The helplines are at the bottom of this page.

In the No Rush app

The app has a short card about discipline with the same idea as this page. Instead of asking you to try harder, it helps you find one thing to put further away and one thing to have ready. And when you plan a step, the app asks you When, and where?

No Rush app

An iPhone app for people who feel stuck. It sets out one small next step at a time and tells you why that one. It is not therapy.

Sign up free Take the test For iPhone. Coming soon to the App Store. The first seven days are free in the app. After that, you choose whether to subscribe. Sign up now and the app stays free for you, for life.

Sources

Milyavskaya & Inzlicht (2017). What’s so great about self-control? Examining the importance of effortful self-control and temptation in predicting real-life depletion and goal attainment. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8(6), 603-611. doi.org/10.1177/1948550616679237
de Ridder, Lensvelt-Mulders, Finkenauer, Stok & Baumeister (2012). Taking stock of self-control: A meta-analysis of how trait self-control relates to a wide range of behaviors. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16(1), 76-99. doi.org/10.1177/1088868311418749
Galla & Duckworth (2015). More than resisting temptation: Beneficial habits mediate the relationship between self-control and positive life outcomes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109(3), 508-525. doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000026
Hagger, Chatzisarantis, Alberts e.a. (2016). A multilab preregistered replication of the ego-depletion effect. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(4), 546-573. doi.org/10.1177/1745691616652873
Vohs, Schmeichel, Lohmann e.a. (2021). A multisite preregistered paradigmatic test of the ego-depletion effect. Psychological Science, 32(10), 1566-1581. doi.org/10.1177/0956797621989733