Short excerpt from a YouTube video in which Craig Ballantyne argues that discipline begins by removing harmful or distracting behaviors ("discipline through subtraction") rather than immediately adding new habits. He advises identifying the "ball and chain" (e.g., alcohol, porn, Netflix, Instagram) that holds someone back and eliminating those before introducing additional commitments.
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If somebody's looking to be more disciplined, what's your idea of that? The biggest thing that people need to do is get rid of the bad things. So I've always been a huge proponent of discipline through subtraction. And anybody who's ever gone into a weight loss program, like, listen, you can add a green juice every single day, but if you're drinking a bottle of wine and eating a bag of chips at night, what's. What's going to matter? What's going to make the biggest difference? So everybody listening to this needs to think, what's the ball and chain holding me back right now? Is it booze is a porn? Is it Netflix is Instagram? When I first work with somebody, it is, let us see what is holding you back before we add anything new, because you're already overwhelmed, your hair is already on fire, you're spinning too many plates. Whatever cliche you want to use, we don't need to add more complexity to your life. We need to get rid of the stuff that is holding you down.