Make it Plain
Learn discipline by keeping journals.
Top people have very clear goals. They know who they are and they know what they want. They write it down and they make plans for its accomplishment.
— Brian Tracy
There were a lot of questions on my last newsletter from readers that I would have loved to take on immediately, but I think what will be more efficient is to stick to our journey of learning discipline, and we'll come back to all the questions and spin off topics from Saying No.
As we already know, indiscipline can be learned, and since it can be learned, so can discipline. And we have learned one of the foremost important skills to have when it comes to imbibing discipline and achieving our goals; the ability to say no.
Another life skill that a lot of people unfortunately pass over, one skill that is a literal hack on discipline towards achieving our goals is journaling.
Writing it all down and making it tangible.
Most folks, especially here in Africa have the wrong idea about journaling. I did too. I thought it was all about keeping diaries, writing stories of all the things that happens to us daily, who offended us, what the teacher said, what we ate and how we lost our lunch money in high school.
I'm sure a lot of us can relate. The age old, "Dear Diary, Today was a good day!" LOL.
Don't get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that type of journaling. In fact, it does a whole lot of good. It will help you become a consistent and better writer because you do it daily. I can credit the beginning of my writing journey to personal diaries as I also did it in high school (don't give me that look!).
However, journaling is far beyond that. This type of journaling only scratches the surface of what journaling is.
Journaling is simply making it plain. Make your ideas plain by writing them down. Make them concrete by putting them in ink or text, where you can always see them in the mornings and go back to them if you forget what you're supposed to do, over and over and over.
It can be your goals for the future, or your goals for right now. When you write your goals down, you effectively translate it from being a wish to being an actual and concrete goal that will hound you if you don't achieve it. You make your goal a proper thing to chase, and when you know you already have a goal you have written down, you are more likely to follow up and achieve that goal than you would have if you had just thought about it in your mind. More discipline is birthed from making things plain and concrete.
When you write your goals down, you effectively translate it from being a wish to being an actual and concrete goal.
Another reason why writing your goals down and making it plain will help you on the journey of discipline is that, you gain an increased sense of clarity. It is easier to do things when you already have a storyboarding, on pen and paper, exactly what you want to achieve. It is clear, and things that are clear are achieved 90% more than the ones that are unclear.
If you keep going, trying to achieve things when you haven't even penned them down, you'll be running on fumes, grappling at little details, forgetting minute but important details, overworking your brain, going through additional mental stress by trying to remember things that you wouldn't even need to think about if you had written them down.
This is one of the reasons why we fail at achieving some goals. When we don't write it down, we have to think through it, and this makes it a whole lot harder, and then thinking about how hard it is makes it a lot easier to push it and not apply the discipline necessary to achieve it.
We have normalized the "I cannot come and kill myself abeg" slogan towards things that are a piece of cake because we have made it harder, we have made it into something that can kill us. See why many of us are failing?
Write your visions and goals down. Write down things you're grateful for. Write down important information you know you need to remember to achieve certain goals. Make them plain.
It can be things you want to achieve within a day, or a week, or a month or even a year. Write them down. It makes it real, clear, and even easier to achieve. When you're seeing your goals, you'll be able to think out and write down how you want to achieve them, one after the other.
You know what? So it doesn't look like I'm just saying my own because I keep a lot of journals, let's look at some statistics. Maybe I'll be able to convince you then.
In a survey by Harvard Business Review one time, students who write down their goals are 1.2 to 1.4 times more likely to achieve them than those who don't.
In another study done of over 500 professionals, 81% of them said they keep a to-do list, and they are certain that it is the to-do lists that help them be more productive and successful in their workplace.
That's not all.
Another study from the Journal of Experimental Psychology discovered that students who write down important information during lectures retained more information than those who just listened.
Not only does it help for memory and discipline, it also surprisingly helps keep you sane and free from stress as a study of 267 college students stated how happier, more optimistic and more accomplished they felt three weeks into keeping a gratitude journal.
Finally, 67% of successful people, in a survey done by The Guardian, keep journals that state their accomplishments, plan their goals and even work through their emotions and challenges.
If all these do not convince you about how keeping journals will help you be more disciplined and articulated towards your goals and thereby helping you achieve them, I don't know what will.
Write them down. You will never forget them. And not forgetting them gives you a much better chance at achieving them.
Remember that age old saying; the shortest pencil is better than the sharpest mind.
So start today. Write down all you want to do that will make you feel accomplished by the end of the day. And do it everyday.
You can apply the same to your week too. Do a performance review at the end of each day or each week to see how you have done and what you can do better.
Do it everyday for the next 30 days and see if you haven't spiked in discipline and your life haven't become a lot better than it is today.
You can reach my email if you need help with this.
To your growth,
Abiola Okunsanya,
Handzinspired. ✨
The Holy bible supports this too,to write down the vision and make it plain.
Thank you for sharing this!
Thank you sir for sharing this insightful post!!! 👏🏾💯