Required Secondary Powers
Discipline

By Isaiah O'Connor

Welcome back to my little “Secondary Powers” series. Today I will be addressing the dirty little word Discipline.

Discipline is one of those things that is both easy and hard, depending on your environment. When you are working for someone else, even if its a client its much easier to be disciplined as you need to live up to someone else expectations. For example, I used to be on staff at a volunteer Youth Camp. Due to the nature of the camp, we had to live by a pretty tight schedule. We had a set time we needed to be up by, a set time for each group time, each meal time etc.  While it took a little discipline to go to bed and get up on time, it was pretty easy to simply get up and tackle the day, as we knew what we had to do, and the kids were looking up to us to do it.

It is far different when you are the boss, especially if you work from home.  If you don’t have a client that day, it can become easy to slack off. You can sleep in a bit longer, or take a nap, or the kitchen calls you for a snack etc.  Its easier at the office, fewer distractions, but yet it can still be hard to stay on task.

So how do you combat this? It is not easy, there are whole books on the subject. I will just hit a few points.  

First and foremost find it helps to make a conscious decision to be disciplined. I find in my own life if I do not do this then, it simply never happens.  

I also find that it helps to figure out your priorities. In the classic book “Seven Guides to Effective People” by Stephen Covey he defines a way to figure out what is the most important using four quadrants. urgent, Important, not urgent and not important.  The goal is to make sure that the important things get done, not just the urgent.

Then you need to take these priorities to set up your work week, with both weekly and daily tasks to finish.  I know that it is much easier said than done, I struggle with doing this as I have a lot on my plate, and being the dad of two small boys, things can suddenly change.

Lastly, I find it helps to have someone to be accountable to. I find I let myself off the hook to easily when it comes to being productive. If I have someone that I am accountable to, then I do not want to let them down, and it somehow makes me try harder.

So if you take your idea and add to it determination, a teachable spirit and self-discipline you will find yourself well on the way to being a successful entrepreneur.  I know that there are more things that could be considered important “Secondary Powers” however, I find that with these the others can come.

If you can develop these things, then even if your first idea doesn't work, you will eventually find something that does, and when you do you can become successful beyond your wildest dreams.

Now just to let you know, with success comes responsibility. Or as Stan Lee put it;

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

Now what power do you have and what responsibility, well, that will be the subject of the next post.

Your friendly neighborhood entrepreneur

Isaiah O'Connor.