IF YOU ARE GOING TO READ THIS AT ALL, READ IT ALL THE WAY THROUGH TO THE END. THIS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.
Harsh Strongman, founder of LifeMathMoney and author of my favorite blog has a brilliant post titled “Life Advice for 18 Year Olds.” One of the first things he says is that he wasn’t very consistent with anything at that age because he was too young and distracted. Another great place that I get information from is Alux.com’s YouTube channel. In their video on 15 Ways Teenagers Can Make Money, they also mention that teenagers lack discipline.
Unfortunately, as an 18 year old, I can confirm that they are right. I like to think of myself as the most disciplined person that I know when in reality, there are gaps and holes in my discipline that are not present in my parents when it comes to the most important things. Because of that, this article is advice to myself as well.
In order to solve the problem of self-discipline in teenagers we first need to look at the cause of this issue. I know that I have my own theories and reasons but sense I am obviously not the only one with this problem, I wanted to look deeper. With a quick internet search I found two decent articles on the topic, one by Psychology Today and one by Bartleby.
The one by Psychology Today suggested that the lack of discipline comes from having to manage more freedom than we know what to do with- more than we can manage comfortably. It went on to say that we lack the capacity to constructively structure all this freedom. Fair enough. Supposedly our brains don’t fully develop until age 25 or so so that makes sense.
The main cause cited in the Bartleby article is raging hormones which is acceptable because hormones play a role in everything in your teens. What caught my eye though was that they also suggested that teens lack the courage to resist peer pressure. The average person isn’t trying to be disciplined. If you are in your teens right now, then you have limited control over your associations which means that you are probably hanging out with average people just because you have no other choice. This means that the peer pressure you experience will be pressuring you to be average- not disciplined like we want it.
Those causes for lack of discipline in teens are somewhat general and apply to all. However, we know that everyone is different and has their own reasons for not being disciplined. Below are the ones that I have found to be the most prominent in my life so far.
First, I tend to try to do too many things at once. If you’re reading this you are probably very ambitious, have many goals that you want to accomplish, projects that are half-completed, and ideas that you haven’t even started on yet. I imagine that this is another byproduct of being eighteen. The problem with so many goals is that having a lot of goals requires a lot of processes to be put in place in order to reach them. A lot of processes require a lot of time and depending on your situation with school, sports, etc, you may not have a lot of time right now.
Even if you don’t go to college and you don’t have to worry about school, you still have a finite amount of time in a day. Too many goals mean too many processes which will lead you to having to choose which ones you complete. Not being able to complete all of them will make you think of yourself as undisciplined when really you are just not focused enough.
You are forced to prioritize which is a good thing, but what you should have done is prioritize your ambitions instead of having to prioritize your processes. Prioritize your ambitions and complete all your processes as opposed to trying to complete all of your ambitions and being forced to prioritize processes.
The next problem that I tend to have that gets in the way of my discipline is a change of schedule. This can be for a variety of reasons. A lot of the time, I will just mess it up on my own. I’ll forget something, or plan one hour for a task I know takes two hours. Stuff like that happens more often than I would like to admit.
What also happens a lot though is that someone with more power than me will change my schedule unexpectedly. My mom will need me to do this, my dad will want me to do that, or my coach will schedule something completely new only hours in advance. These are the changes that I do not have control over but that I must adhere to.
They are the most frustrating things that mess with my discipline because there is nothing that I can do about them. Plus, I mentioned above how I tend to try to work on too many things at once, so any flaw in the schedule means that something (usually more than one thing) isn’t getting done. Once again, this creates the illusion of lacking discipline when really the problem lies in lack of focus, and perhaps too rigid of a schedule.
I have another theory on why teenagers are not as disciplined as adults: They have much less at stake and only need to worry about themselves. Allow me to explain- It is said that your twenties is the best time to step out of your comfort zone and take risks. This is because you’re young, you have time to make mistakes, and you have no family that is requiring stability from you. Well, at 18, this is even more true. So you have even less incentive to take things “seriously.” At 18, you still have the safety net of your parents under you in case things go south. You essentially have nothing at stake, so why would you, of all people, need discipline?
Now for the second part of that; teenagers only need to worry about themselves. I touched on this above but many adults have family that they have to look after. They have people depending on them for their well-being. Meanwhile, an 18 year old has no such responsibility. So who do you think will be more disciplined? Someone with loved-ones depending on them or someone with nothing at stake who only needs to worry about themselves?
Teens don’t have the natural accountability that is built into an adult life. It's like training with a trainer versus training by yourself. It’s human nature to give more effort (and show up in the first place) when there is a trainer present. First of all, our bodies have mechanisms that prevent us from inflicting too much pain on ourselves- mechanisms that a trainer can’t feel. Secondly, you probably spent money on the trainer so you now have something to lose if you don't show up.
In this metaphor having a trainer for your workouts is like having a family in life. No, I am not saying that if you are an 18 year old reading this you should go out and make a family just so you can be disciplined. That would be ridiculous, but what I am saying is that there is no substitute for real life accountability.
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If you haven’t caught on by now, allow me to enlighten you: while listing the reasons for our lack of discipline may help in some ways, in the end, they are still excuses. No matter how legitimate they seem to be. Everything that I wrote above is true but if you’re old enough to be reading this then you know that an excuse is an excuse whether you are 18 or 35 or 82. And if you are making them when you’re younger then you will probably be making them when you're older unless you kick the habit now.
Real quick, let me solve those problems for myself and for you if you happen to be experiencing them. First, choose one goal, and only one goal to focus one. Then examine the processes that would need to be in place to reach that goal. From those, choose the one that is most important; the 20% of your efforts that are leading to 80% of your results.
Once you have these, you know your number one top priority. All that is left now is to treat it as such. Make it the first thing you do in the morning or the last thing you do at night. No matter what, though, do not go to sleep until this task is done. You can sleep without doing other projects but not this one. This is the one thing that does not get left out. By having this one process set in stone, you will be miles ahead of 99% of 18 year olds and probably 95% of people in general.
That solution will fix the problem of trying to do too many things at once because it forces you to identify a clear priority. Throw in the use of a schedule and you will be able to manage all of your "freedom" in a constructive way. It also reduces the odds of a schedule-derailment throwing you off because it is just one main task that you need to do in the time span of an entire day (Off course, if you decide you won't sleep until it is done, then schedule changes won't matter.).
Negative peer pressure can be avoided by watching who you associate with and by following the process I described above. There's no way to avoid "raging hormones" but if you are using that as an excuse then you may have bigger underlying issues than lack of discipline. Besides those things, we just need to decide to do what needs to be done. There are no tricks. In the end you either do it or you don't.
There is a book titled The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday that I have not read but plan to. Just the title itself relates to this topic well though because that is what you should think when you are having discipline issues and your mind is at work rationalizing every good reason imaginable to slack off. A change of schedule is not the obstacle but the way. It’s not the reason you can’t but rather the reason you must. Why? Because that is what discipline is about.
But remember- we are not pushing through this resistance just for the sake of “being disciplined.” It doesn’t matter if you have perfect discipline if you are not getting the result you want. We are doing this to reach our goals. Even though the title of this is building discipline as an 18 Year Old, it is really about creating the outcome you desire. That’s what brought you here in the first place and if that outcome isn’t enough of a reason to be disciplined, then you probably need to choose a new outcome.
Also, if you were alarmed when I said “gets in the way of my discipline”- then good, you are on the right track. Discipline is getting the job done no matter what, so if something gets in the way of your “discipline,” then you don’t really have discipline. What you may have is a “hobby” or an “interest,” but you do not have a disciplined routine. The two cannot exist at the same time and be the same activity.
With that being said, you will not have perfect discipline because no one is perfect. If you are an 18 year old, hang in there. Know that while it seems like all of your peers could not care less about building discipline, there are others out there like you who are going through the same things you are. There will be a time when you do have control over your associations, and power over your schedule.
Look once again at the title of this post. It is not ‘how to have perfect discipline,’ but rather “building discipline” because that’s what we are doing at this age. We don’t just have it all figured out; we are building what we want our future to look like. Excuses are certainly real but the challenges that an ambitious 18 year faces are real as well. You may not be able to have perfect discipline but you can have perseverance.
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