I wake up motivated, it's a brand new day. The birds seem to sing for me. The sun coats me in its warmth and glory. The Lord whispers in my ears. I feel the wind slowly caress my skin; this day is made for me! I definitely will accomplish so much of my plans today!

It's the evening. I forgot most of the things I said I would do. The ones I recalled, I was too lazy to execute. 'I'll do it tomorrow. There's always tomorrow'.

If this describes you, then congratulations, you experience something I like to call Motivational Limbo. It's the gap between getting motivated and actually getting something accomplished. It usually is caused by a lack of direction, or a lack of discipline, or a lack of drive. This article focuses on the discipline aspect, or rather, the lack of it.

Waking up with grand plans for a new day, or a new week or even a month, and failing to accomplish even one of those plans is a common feature across humanity. This reality can usually trigger a sense of, "well that's fine then, I'm not the only one lazy", which is a fine mindset for the average human, but not for the leader or change bringer you seek to be. Since life has no shortcuts, and impact depends not just on drawn out plans and mission statements but actually on executed goals, then the leader must liberate themselves from this pattern of living.

Habit architecture

Habits are the one consistent area of our daily lives that don't need discipline. Every other thing might need constant motivation and drive, but not habits. We carry out actions that have become habits whether we intend to or not. The science behind this lies in the basal ganglia. These are structures deep in the brain responsible for procedural learning and automaticity. When a behaviour is repeated consistently, the brain packages it into an automated routine, offloading it from the prefrontal cortex, which governs conscious decision-making and willpower. This makes it so we put in no effort to do what is already a habit, unlike the actions that we have sworn, forty times this month to 'start now, for real.'

It is this ease of execution that is the goal in habit architecture; building a structure, a system, that makes doing as easy as a tick, or as breathing.

Habit architecture is the deliberate design of our environment, systems, and routines so that the behaviours we want become the easiest ones to do, and the behaviours we don't want become harder.

For example, let's say you have decided to write an article a day for the next month. That is a grand dream that, unless you are already used to such a lifestyle, relying on willpower alone will guarantee that by the end of the month, you've successfully written half an article. However, you can help your future by leaving your document tab open on your PC, open with the exciting article heading you jotted down. Seeing that heading alone can excite you enough to actually continue what you had already begun, and get you closer to the goal you had set.

Personally, there is a story I've been developing for a while now. It's called Cinnamon Grove, and most times, especially when I hit a tricky logical contradiction in the storyline that I can't solve quickly, I tend to lose motivation to continue it. What I did was create a political map of the fictional nation in the story, and set that as my desktop wallpaper. This makes me excited once more about the story, forcing me to pick up writing once again.

That way, even when I open the PC to do something else, like coding or editing a video, I see the map fully, and remember why I began writing the story in the first place. This forces me back into the world of Cinnamon Grove, the politics, the relationships, the characters, the geography, and subtly, the tricky situation isn't as tricky anymore; there's a clear-ish path ahead, and I latch onto it quickly before it gets lost once more.

Deciding to workout everyday in order to build a healthy body is a nice decision, yet how many really go through with it? How many of us just end up flabby? Keeping a piece of gym equipment by the bed can change things a bit. That subtle reminder can be the spark that actually sustains the decision. A person who intends to run every morning to keep fit can keep their running shoes by their beds. Spending habits can likewise be regulated and controlled by systems that split funds for predetermined uses.

Slowly, but surely, these structures put in place graduate into habits that we do without thinking. The person who has their shoes by their beds will likely soon find that the shoes have become quite invisible, and running now feels automatic as brushing their teeth. Someone observing from the outside admires the discipline. Some think it's a gift. Some self-diagnose themselves with adhd, blaming that for that inability to stay committed on anything. Life though, doesn't really care what diagnosis or state your mind is in. It only cares about what you can actually do, having no pity at all for the disadvantaged.

The difference between the successful and the unsuccessful is what habits they've managed to cultivate. While you've been told to 'cultivate a habit of X' many times in the past and you failed to do so, it doesn't mean you should give up on it, yet it doesn't mean you should try the same methods that failed in the past. The reason you failed before was because you were told to 'do better', without any guide on how to actually do anything better. The key lies in the architecture. Building the habit by building the systems that force the habit into being, and ending the repeated cycle of failures. Just as keeping a waterbottle by the bed can force one to stay hydrated, so can little actions transform into massive results.