You've Been Lied to About Self-Discipline

You don’t need to be more disciplined. You need to be more realistic.

Why this matters…

If you keep aiming to be perfectly consistent, you’ll fail fast and blame yourself. When really, your system was doomed from the start.

True discipline isn’t about control; it’s about design.

Design for failure, not avoidance of it.

But hey.

It's not your fault you think like this.

Society, hustle bros and influencers say...

Never miss. Never break the streak. No days off.

And you believe it.

But that mindset doesn’t make you disciplined, it makes you delusional.

Real discipline sees slip-ups as part of the system, not proof of failure.

What science says...

Rita Coelho do Vale, an assistant professor who studies decision-making and self-regulation, says we should occasionally contradict our goals.

For example:

- Splurge on occasional luxuries when saving for a house;

- Have a slice of chocolate cake when trying to shed a few pounds;

- Take a rest day from the gym.

Because if you don’t, you’ll eventually fail anyway and get so demoralised you give up altogether.

“It’s something so obvious, but no one had studied it,” Rita said.

“We plan coffee breaks during the day and feel better after them, but with goals, we don’t think like this.”

But she doesn’t just preach this, her research backs it up…

Her team split dieters into two groups:

- One group (the “straight striving group”) stuck to a strict 1500-calorie diet with limited food choices.

- The other (the “intermittent striving group”) followed a stricter 1300-calorie diet but could have one day a week of 2700 calories and unlimited food choices.

The results…

The second group was more likely to stick to the diet.

Why?

They had stronger self-control, used smarter strategies to resist cravings and bounced back faster when they slipped.

Those without a cheat day were more likely to quit the diet and emotionally spiral when they accidentally overate.

The key takeaway…

So long as it is planned, it's often good to be bad.

As Oscar Wilde wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray, 'the only way to get rid of temptation, is to yield to it.'

The disciplined aren’t perfect; they’re strategic.

They plan for indulgence so their willpower lasts longer.

What to do next…

1.) Schedule your failures.

Don’t wait for them to surprise you. Put rest days, cheat meals, and breaks into your calendar before you need them. This turns a relapse into a routine.

2.) Pre-decide your response.

When you slip (because you will) already know what happens next.

No guilt spiral, no “I’ve blown it” thinking. Just bounce back to baseline.

Remind yourself: "this doesn't set me back to 0."

3.) Design your slack.

Keep margin in your goals. If you plan five workouts, aim to complete four.

If you plan a strict budget, include a buffer for pleasure or mistakes.

If you aim to start a new diet, pick one day a week for snacking.

Because the point isn’t to be perfect.

It’s to be consistent enough to come back when you fail.

Quick caveat: this doesn’t apply to hardcore addictions such as drugs, alcohol, or long-term pornography addiction; those require abstinence, not moderation.

Go deeper...

In 2007, Angela Duckworth’s idea of Grit set the psychology world ablaze.

Duckworth called it the most important trait of successful people; the ability to keep going despite failure.

And in many respects, she’s right.

- People who persist usually succeed.

But grit without slack burns out fast.

Here's what this means...

Most people aren’t gritty.

- They can’t study 15 hours a day.

- Complete gruelling military training courses.

- Stay consistent with something every single day for the rest of their lives.

This version of discipline, where setbacks are “bad” and breaks are “weak”, pushes success out of reach for most.

Why?

Because it frames setbacks as something that need to be avoided instead of planned.

Not to mention even the grittiest aren’t guaranteed success!

Because the mindset needed for relentless progress often becomes its own downfall.

The people who are obsessive want the very best for themselves and in result tend to be grittier. But they also tend to be ‘more vulnerable to depression when stressful events occur’ as the psychiatrist Monica Ramirez Basco writes in her book Never Good Enough (2000).

And research backs it up. In Baumeister’s classic study on willpower, people forced to give speeches opposing their own beliefs later struggled with a simple puzzle; their willpower had drained away.

The bottom line...

You only have so much willpower before it runs out.

So you need a break from decision-making and discipline to let it replenish.

Grit without slack is just exhaustion with better PR.

So what is ’slack’?…

Slack is the term for what we mentioned earlier; your ability to plan failure instead of avoid it.

It's the hidden resource that makes resilience possible.

When you have room to recover, you make better decisions and bounce back faster.

That’s why the single mother with no safety net isn’t “less gritty”; she just has less slack.

The term was coined by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, who showed that our cognitive bandwidth depends on our safety nets.

As writer Cody Delistraty puts it:

“Slack is often a better indicator of potential success than grit. It’s the reason the impoverished single mother, gritty and hardworking though she might be, is likely to have a tougher time succeeding than a young man from an affluent family. Her relative lack of slack means she has less room for error; even if she is equally good at recovering from setbacks (the quintessence of grit), she will simply face both more arduous and more numerous setbacks, leading to a faster depletion of willpower.”

To wrap it up...

Discipline isn’t just character-based; it’s context-based.

When you design slack into your system, you give discipline the breathing room it needs to survive.

As Rita put it…

"The simple act of knowing they would have a moment of pleasure in the future made participants more persistent towards their goals".

Or in the more poetic words of Benjamin Franklin...

"A speckled axe is best. A benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself."

For more discipline, don't try and avoid failure.

Plan it in advance.

That's all for this week,

Thanks for reading,

Lew

P.s. you can join the wait list for my upcoming product here.

P.p.s i totally crashed after uploading this week's 1.5 hour video ☠️ i ate a whole box of cereal but excused it to myself by eating it with coconut milk (as if that would make it better). ah man, the things we do to excuse ourselves. anyway this email is back working again now so i can receive replies (hopefully). lol longest PPS in the world. hope ur doing good but if not no biggie.

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