Discipline Is Specific

The feeling of effort is a sensation of opportunity costs. When you’re doing anything, and an alternative activity promises to be easier and more immediately rewarding, the activity feels effortful.

This explains why people could spend all their time reading in earlier ...

Narrow down what you want to do. You need to have a specific plan to work out exactly when and how you’re going to do that.

A behaviour is more likely to become habitual if it’s something you enjoy or find rewarding. 

In the opportunity-cost framework of effort, when you get rewarded for an effortful activity, the experience of effort becomes less unpleasant, meaning we can increase our self-control by remembering that certain actions yield positive results.

If persistence in do...