Organization and discipline have been things that I’ve battled my entire life. Somehow, I’m fairly OCD about some things but could go months on end with a messy room. I hated if the dishes weren’t done, but always left my dish in the sink. I hated showing up to my cello lesson not having practiced, but I never put in the time during the week.
I had a constant war with myself pretty much my entire youth battling to overcome these things. I would go through periods where I would be extremely productive. It would normally start with something simple, like cleaning my room at 2:00am.
I would be inspired by something so I would convince myself how important a task or skill was and I’d go after it. But I’m sure you know the story from there. The feeling wore off and I’d fall back into my old habits.
Weekends were the big killer. I would have really productive weeks, sometimes because I was forced to by my work schedule, and then the weekend would come and I would feel like I deserved a break. I would destroy any good habits I was starting to gain and replace them with the old bad habits.
When you grow up for so many years struggling with being disciplined it’s not going to be something that goes away overnight. In fact, it’s probably something you’re going to deal with for the rest of your life, but it may get easier if you truly work every day on it.
The way I’ve heard it explained before is that you can’t take a bye week. It’s been found that sports teams that get a bye week before their first playoff game often play more poorly. Their momentum was lost and they can’t pick it back up enough to get to the level of the other teams. Not that you can’t take vacations, but you just have to never lose the habits that make you more productive.
One of those things for myself is getting up an hour earlier than I need to and reading scripture. Every time I do this consistently, I see huge results. I am more content, I get more done, I enjoy the day more, etc.
My plan of attack for this battle of discipline and organization is to start with weekends. Since they’ve always been my struggle, it’s time to schedule stuff on these days. It’s time to make sure that I’m getting up at the same time.
Rest is good, laziness disguised as “rest” is not good.