How to Build Self-Discipline & Stay Motivated

Life coach Mark Fennell shares the key to cultivating strong self-discipline & accomplishing your goals

Co-authored by Mark Fennell and Samantha Fulton, BA

Last Updated: May 5, 2026 Fact Checked

If you’re struggling to stay motivated and need a little extra help with your self-discipline, you’re in the right place. For this guide, we’ve partnered with life coaches to identify 12 key tips for developing strong self-discipline. Whether you’re a student trying to get your grades up, you’re trying to develop healthier habits, or you've got another goal you'd like to accomplish, these tips will help get you on track. Keep reading for 12 tips to cultivate your self-discipline so you can stay focused and achieve your goals!

How to Discipline Yourself

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How to Discipline Yourself 12 Steps Summary Guide

Life coach Mark Fennell says the key to self-discipline is identifying what motivates you, creating a plan of action, and staying consistent with routine and accountability. Other tips include starting with small changes, creating rituals to make tasks enjoyable, eliminating distractions, and using a reward system.

1

Figure out what motivates you.

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Identifying motivating factors will give you a reason to discipline yourself. It’s not enough to know you need self-discipline—you also have to know why you need it and the bigger picture that you’re working toward. Fennell says to start by asking yourself, “Who do I want to be?” and “How do I want to feel in life?”^{[1]
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Expert Source

Mark Fennell
Life Coach

Expert Interview}
- Example: If you want to eat healthier, your motivating factor might be feeling more energized in your daily life or setting a positive example for your child.
  - Putting it into practice: Let’s say you’re at a restaurant and you have the choice between a burger and a salad. This is a moment when you would remind yourself of your motivating factors. A burger might sound better in the moment, but the salad would make you feel better and more energized for the rest of the day.
Meet the wikiHow Experts

Mark Fennell is a mindset and performance coach and bestselling author based in Ireland. He has over 20 years of experience.

Toni Purvis is an etiquette and professional presence coach with offices in Houston, TX and Washington, DC. She has over 15 years of consulting experience.

Sandra Possing is a life coach, speaker, and entrepreneur based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She specializes in one-on-one coaching with a focus on mindset and leadership transformation.

Katie Stolp is a master certified coach and the founder of Think Power, based in Austin, Texas. She has over 5 years of coaching experience.

2

Identify your strengths and weaknesses.

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Knowing where you excel or fall short will help you understand what to zero in on. If there are areas you know you struggle with (such as procrastination or time management), those are what you’ll target when you’re working on your self-discipline. On the flipside, if you know you’re really strong in a particular area (such as problem solving), you can use that to your advantage.
- Example: If you’re someone who procrastinates, this could manifest as waiting until the last second to figure out what’s for dinner. If your goal is to eat healthier, this could get in the way if the fastest option after you procrastinate is ordering fast food or skipping meals. Being aware of this weakness will help you plan around it.
  - Putting it into practice: If you know procrastination is going to get in the way of your self-discipline, make note that you need to plan ahead to avoid setbacks. For the goal of healthy eating, this could look like doing meal prep on the weekends since you know you’ll put off deciding on dinner to the last second during the week.

3

Develop a plan of action.

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Having a plan will help you be consistent, which will reinforce your self-discipline. Fennell says planning is a key step in developing self-discipline.^{[2]
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Expert Source

Mark Fennell
Life Coach

Expert Interview} If you’re trying to build your self-discipline and you dive in with no plan, odds are you’ll fizzle out and fall into old habits. However, if you create a plan of action and set short- and long-term goals, you’ll have a structured outline to follow which will help you hold yourself accountable.
- Example: If you want to discipline yourself so you’ll study regularly, try creating a plan or schedule for the semester. Consider any milestones or goals you want to achieve (such as getting a certain grade on a test or getting your GPA up a certain amount). Then, map out what you need to do in order to achieve those goals.
  - Putting it into practice: Now that you have your plan of action, next time you feel tempted to play videogames instead of studying, refer to your plan and remind yourself that you need to study a certain amount of time to achieve your goals. This way, even if you slip up, you’ll have a method for holding yourself accountable going forward.

4

Create rituals to make tasks more enjoyable.

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Part of self-discipline means tricking yourself into wanting to get things done. Master certified coach Katie Stolp says turning tasks into a ritual can help motivate you to get them done.^{[3]
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Expert Source

Katie Stolp
Master Certified Coach

Expert Interview} You can create a ritual by taking a specific action to set up the atmosphere for completing a task (such as putting on music). This will help provide some parameters for your productivity and can add some fun to your self-discipline journey.
- Example: If you hate studying but need the self-discipline to study every night, you might create a ritual that adds enjoyable elements to your nightly study time so you’ll be more motivated to stick with it.
  - Putting it into practice: Every night, you can do the same ritual of lighting a candle and turning on your study playlist. This way, rather than only studying when you feel like it, you’ll know that when you get home, once you light your candle and turn on your playlist, it’s time to lock in. Eventually, it will start to feel like second nature.

5

Start small to avoid burnout.

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Starting small with your self-discipline regimen will keep you from losing motivation. You can do this by choosing one small change to make or by gradually increasing the amount of time you spend on something. Life coach Sandra Possing says starting with a small habit is “conducive to doing more.”^{[4]
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Expert Source

Sandra Possing
Life Coach

Expert Interview} Rather than trying to change all your habits and routines at once, build your self-discipline slowly with subtle changes.
- Example: If you’re trying to get in shape to run a marathon, you’re not going to start by running 26 miles right away. You would start small and slowly build until you reached your goal. This way, you won’t burn yourself out and lose motivation.
  - Putting it into practice: Rather than going all out right away, you might start by running for 10 minutes and then walking. Possing also recommends “stacking” your habits, or adding a small change to an existing routine.^{[5]
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    Expert Source
    
    Sandra Possing
    Life Coach
    
    Expert Interview} In this case, if you regularly go for walks, you could add 5 minutes of running to the end of your route.

6

Allocate specific blocks of time for tasks.

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This will ensure that you’re committed when you begin a task. Etiquette and professional presence coach Toni Purvis says, “Try not to let tasks grow beyond the window of time that you’re allotting to them.”^{[6]
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Expert Source

Toni Purvis
Etiquette and Professional Presence Coach

Expert Interview} For instance, if you set 30 minutes to complete a task, be sure to stop after 30 minutes. This gives you a definitive start and end point and can make your to-do list less daunting.
- Example: If you’re trying to create self-discipline so you can study regularly, you might set aside a specific block of time that you know you need to spend on studying but don’t want to exceed that day.
  - Putting it into practice: Set a timer for an hour and study for that entire time. Once the timer goes off, it’s time to put the task at hand away and take a break or move on to something else. “When you commit to something, commit to it and then commit to not doing it,” notes Purvis.^{[7]
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    Toni Purvis
    Etiquette and Professional Presence Coach
    
    Expert Interview}

7

Establish a consistent routine.

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Routine is crucial for cultivating self-discipline and holding yourself accountable. “Routine and discipline go hand in hand,” says Fennell.^{[8]
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Expert Source

Mark Fennell
Life Coach

Expert Interview} Make sure you’re building self-discipline into your daily routine. Rather than working on the tasks you need to accomplish when you feel like it or have the spare time, work them into your routine so you know when you’ll be working on them and for how long.
- Example: If you’re training for a marathon, you’ll need to incorporate exercise, running, and recovery into your routine. To be consistent, you’d have to create a routine so you know which days and times you need to be doing what.
  - Putting it into practice: Make a running schedule that works for your lifestyle (for instance, you might run every other day, do strength training in between, and focus on rest and recovery on the weekends). The key is being consistent and sticking to the routine you set. So if you know Tuesday is a designated strength training day, you know where you’ll be and what you’ll be doing when you wake up that day.

8

Use a reward system for extra motivation.

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Rewarding yourself will create positive reinforcement. Purvis recommends setting up a reward system so you know you’ll get something once you’ve accomplished a task or worked for a certain amount of time.^{[9]
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Expert Source

Toni Purvis
Etiquette and Professional Presence Coach

Expert Interview} Make sure you stick with your reward system—this should be a consistent part of your routine. That way, you’ll associate self-discipline with getting a treat.
- Example: If you’re working on self-discipline for a creative writing project like a novel, you might reward yourself by blocking out an hour for social time after you write a certain amount of pages. This adds extra motivation for writing and hitting milestones.
  - Putting it into practice: When you sit down to write, plan to reward yourself after with something you enjoy, like a treat from the bakery or time with friends. You’ll be more likely to settle in and focus because you know that once you write a certain amount, you've got a reward waiting for you.

9

Eliminate temptations and distractions.

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Getting rid of distractions will help you stay disciplined. This means removing temptations that might impede your productivity. Purvis says this is a smart way to cultivate your self-discipline.^{[10]
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Expert Source

Toni Purvis
Etiquette and Professional Presence Coach

Expert Interview} Depending on what you’re disciplining yourself for, this could look like leaving your phone in another room or not keeping unhealthy food in the house, to name a couple possibilities.
- Example: If you know that you need your full attention to focus on your creative writing project but have a tendency to get distracted, you’d want to eliminate anything that could get you sidetracked while you’re working.
  - Putting it into practice: When you’re getting ready for creative writing time, make it part of your routine to power down your phone and put it in a drawer or another room where you won’t be tempted to go get it. Plus, make sure you’re in a quiet, distraction-free room.

10

Recognize your wins, big or small.

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Self-discipline is hard, and you deserve to acknowledge your progress! Being proud of yourself for your wins will also create positive reinforcement and help you stay on track with your self-discipline journey. Purvis notes that recognizing your wins, big or small, is key to self-discipline.^{[11]
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Expert Source

Toni Purvis
Etiquette and Professional Presence Coach

Expert Interview}
- Example: If you’ve been working on studying consistently and you’ve reached 3 days in a row of studying for 30 minutes before bed, acknowledge it! This means you’re trying and that you’re starting to get into a new habit—that’s a big deal.
  - Putting it into practice: Keep track of your progress in a journal or tell your friends or family about it. Just make sure you’re recognizing that you’re making an effort, especially when you see it starting to pay off.

11

Ask for help with accountability.

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External accountability can help you stay on track. “There’s nothing wrong with asking for help when it comes to trying to stay on track,” says Purvis.^{[12]
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Expert Source

Toni Purvis
Etiquette and Professional Presence Coach

Expert Interview} Surround yourself with people who will hold you accountable and who know what goals or milestones you’re working toward. This way, even if you feel your motivation waning, you’ll know someone is going to ask you about your progress.
- Example: If you’re trying to be consistent about working out everyday, find a workout buddy! When you’re working on building a new habit, it can help to have someone who’s doing it with you. Make sure it’s someone who you know will be consistent.
  - Putting it into practice: Make an agreement with your workout buddy that you’ll hold each other accountable. Tell them about your goals and any struggles you have with staying motivated so they’ll know what to watch for. This way, they’ll be able to push you when you need it or call you out if your discipline is slipping.

12

Practice and repeat to solidify your habits.

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As with anything else, practice makes perfect. Possing says practice and repetition are crucial for self-discipline.^{[13]
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Expert Source

Sandra Possing
Life Coach

Expert Interview} Don’t expect perfection overnight, but rest assured that if you keep working at it, you’ll achieve your goals and start to see real progress. Remember to stay consistent, even if it means starting small and slowly building—progress looks different for everyone!
- Example: If you’re trying to discipline yourself to workout, focus more on practice and repetition than hitting a new personal record every session. To build discipline, you’ll want to start small and focus on getting into the habit of going to the gym regularly. This way, you won’t burn yourself out.
  - Putting it into practice: The simple act of consistent repetition will get you closer to your PR goals and reinforce your self-discipline. If you’re practicing, you’ll start to see progress eventually.

Overcome Laziness and Procrastination with this Expert Series

Are you feeling unmotivated and stuck? Are you just having a hard time getting yourself to do the things you need to do? Then these expert articles are just for you!

1

How to Stop Being Lazy and Unmotivated So You Can Achieve Your Goals

2

14 Ways to Quit Procrastinating: Tips from Life Coaches

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The advice in this section is based on the lived experiences of wikiHow readers like you. If you have a helpful tip you’d like to share on wikiHow, please submit it in the field below.

Take some time each day or week to reflect on your behavior and what you have done. This can help you see how you're progressing and see where you need to make changes.
Do activities or join classes that teach self-discipline, such as martial arts.

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