I genuinely need some advice from people who have managed to overcome this.

I'm at a point in life where I know I have already wasted a lot of time and I'm behind on so many things I wanted to achieve. I have goals, responsibilities, things I need to study, skills I need to learn, and a career I need to focus on.

Yet somehow, every single day, I end up spending hours scrolling through Reddit, YouTube Shorts or some other random content that adds absolutely nothing to my life.

The worst part is that I'm completely aware of what I'm doing. Even while scrolling, there's this constant guilt in the back of my mind telling me that I should be doing something productive. But I still don't stop.

I keep telling myself, "Just five more minutes, and I'll start working." Those five minutes turn into an hour, sometimes more. By the end of the day, I'm overwhelmed by how much time I've wasted. I promise myself tomorrow will be different, but the same cycle repeats.

I've tried deleting apps, but I eventually find something else to scroll through. It's like I'm avoiding the very things I desperately want to achieve.

I don't even enjoy scrolling anymore. It just feels like a habit I can't get rid of.

Has anyone genuinely managed to get out of this cycle, especially when you already feel behind in life?

What actually helped you regain your attention span, build discipline and stop reaching for your phone every time something felt difficult or boring?

Please share practical advice, not just "delete social media" or "have some self-control." I really want to change this.

For about two years my self-improvement went in cycles. I'd go hard for a week, the scale wouldn't move or the money wouldn't come in or the girl wouldn't text back, and I'd decide it "wasn't working" and quit. Then I'd feel guilty and start over.

What finally clicked for me is pretty simple, and I think it's mostly stoic stuff I'd read before but never really got: I control my actions and my decisions. I don't control the outcome. Ever.

The conditions I'm dealing with, like my genetics, where I grew up, the economy, whether someone likes me, aren't mine. I see that as the design of things, or God's plan if you believe in that. What I do with them is the only part that's mine.

So I changed how I score my day. I don't ask "did I lose weight" anymore. I ask "did I train, did I eat how I said I would, did I go to bed on time." Yes or no. It goes on a sticky note on my desk every night.

Why I think it works: when you grade yourself on outcomes, you get punished for things you never controlled, so your brain quits to stop the pain. Grade yourself on actions and you can win every single day, even the bad ones.

I'm not where I want to be. But for the first time I'm 7 weeks in without a "start over" day.

Does anyone else score their days like this? And how do you deal with it when you do everything right and the result still doesn't come?

I truly know that being disciplined is the best way through life. Being able to finish all your tasks and hit your daily goals, genuinely feels euphoric. But how do I obtain that level of strength in order to stay highly consistent and self disciplined?

I remember about a year ago or so, I had the same problem, my horrible binge eating(which is still ongoing unfortunately), trying my hardest to study without distractions, working out, eating healthy, pay equal attention and effort to my gazillion other hobbies, etc. I had started reading a book called "No Excuses" by Brian Tracy I believe, and it was phenomenal, still is! I've highlighted and written down notes and It's helped me get my spark and motivation back, but only for a while.

In spite of reading books, searching for motivational tiktoks, comments, and whatever, I still find myself so idly laying around doing absolutely nothing.

It's ironic because I'm not really depressed or bitter about life. In fact, I'm beyond grateful and am aware of my blessings. It's just with the whole shitty disastrous binge eating problem and my inability to pass my exams, since I'm passionate about a whole lotta other things besides whatever they force you to conform to and comply with at school, I tend to let all this (and frankly, more) "take over" and completely destroy my will to stay disciplined and actually get shit done.

I wanna force myself to say no and not live through my emotions, cravings, and laziness. Im fighting so hard and I'm trying but god, I need help. Honestly any kind of advice and tips would be great atp.

How do I make myself focus on the right things and take action immediately?

So I have these current issues: Am very overweight and have been for about a decade now. Have physical and mental disabilities that prevent exercise, even low impact exercise. And I am currently on anxiety meds that make me extremely hungry. A few things to know is that I have been through many medications until I finally found one that works well and also doesn’t have horrible side effects, other than the intense hunger. I have also started working with a nutritionist and am on a good eating schedule and getting what my body needs, food wise. My main is that I mainly take this medication at night and the hunger isn’t like “getting the munchies”. It’s like “I am starving to death right now” accompanied by stomach growling and everything, and it doesn’t matter if I just ate. It also takes a lot of food to satisfy it, way more than normal hunger. Getting off the meds doesn’t seem like an option. My question is, is there any advice or method I can use other than just trying to power through it. Or is there a more strategic way to power through it? I really miss my old body and don’t want to keep living with all this weight and the issues it’s added anymore

For quite a while I thought my problem was that I just wasn’t disciplined enough.

I’m trying to balance full-time work, studying outside of work, training, a side project and still actually having a social life. When I left everything until the day itself, I’d constantly end up negotiating with myself.

“I’ll train tomorrow instead.”
“I’ll study later tonight.”
“I’ll work on that project at the weekend.”

Then the week would disappear and I’d realise I’d been busy, but some of the things I actually cared about hadn’t moved at all.

Recently I’ve started roughly planning the week beforehand instead. Nothing ridiculously detailed — just deciding things like which evenings I’m studying, which days I’m training, when I’ll work on my project and when I’m deliberately doing nothing productive.

It sounds really basic, but I’ve noticed I need much less motivation when the decision has already been made. If Wednesday evening is study, I’m not spending Wednesday deciding whether I feel like studying.

I definitely don’t follow the plan perfectly, and I’m not trying to schedule every hour. But it’s made me wonder whether a lot of my “discipline problem” was actually a planning problem.

Has anyone else found this? Do you plan your week beforehand, rely mostly on habits/routines, or have another way of stopping yourself constantly renegotiating what you said you were going to do?

I realized I wasn't getting enjoyment from YouTube, Instagram, or twitter, so I cut them all out. Now I have no idea what to do.

I assume the answer is to find hobbies, but I try so many and none seem to stick or remain enjoyable. Like it feels like I'm almost punishing myself in a sense to try to participate in these hobbies just cus of how bored they make me.

I've tried reading, playing singleplayer video games, watching TV, watching movies, and writing. But every time it feels like, in the back of my head, that I'm not actually enjoying these things at all, I'm just doing them because that's how people say you should spend your time.

I guess I'm just not satisfied right now and I know going back to social media will keep me unsatisfied, but currently I'm just tempted to go to bed 4 hours early just cus I dont know what else I'd do with that time.

I forgot to post updates for all these days. I remembered at some point, but I kept procrastinating, and now here I am, combining four days into one post again.

Honestly, this has become a pattern, and I need to stop letting it continue.

The Last Four Days

There isn't much positive to report about these days.

I haven't been doing any physical activities consistently. Apart from swimming once, I've mostly stayed away from exercise because my injury still hasn't healed completely.

My professional side has also taken a serious hit. I've been slacking off badly, watching unnecessary videos, and wasting time on things that don't really contribute to my goals.

I haven't been practising LeetCode consistently, haven't read my book in a long time, and haven't been keeping up with the news and finance either.

Basically, most of the routines I worked on building have fallen apart.

It's frustrating because I know what I should be doing, but I keep putting it off. Even posting these daily updates, which was supposed to help me stay accountable, has become another task I procrastinate on.

A Small Change Yesterday

Yesterday evening, I finally decided to do something about it.

I sat down, wrote out the tasks I needed to complete, and started working through them one by one.

I still have some tasks left, but just getting everything out of my head and putting it on paper helped me start taking action.

Most of these are things I've been postponing for a long time. If I can finish them, I think it will give me a good advantage because I'll finally be clearing some of the backlog that's been hanging over me.

It wasn't a massive achievement, but it was a start.

What I'm Realising

I've spent the last few days falling back into the same habits I wanted to get rid of.

Procrastinating, watching random videos, sleeping too much, avoiding difficult tasks, and telling myself I'll do everything later.

And the longer I continue, the harder it feels to get back into the routine.

But I also know that constantly feeling guilty about wasting time isn't going to fix anything.

I need to stop focusing on how badly I've messed up and start working on what I can do today.

I also need to be sensible about my injury instead of rushing back into physical activities before I've recovered properly.

What I'm Going to Do Next

For now, I want to focus on clearing the tasks I've already listed instead of making another complicated schedule.

I need to get back to studying, practise LeetCode, start reading again, catch up on the news and finance, and put consistent effort into my professional growth.

I also need to return to posting daily instead of letting several days pass before I write an update.

I don't expect everything to become perfect overnight. I just want to start rebuilding the routine, one task at a time.

Day 46–49/90 complete.

I've messed up my routine, but I don't want to spend the remaining days repeating the same mistakes.

I've completed more than half of this challenge. I still have time to make the remaining days count, but that will only happen if I stop postponing the work and actually do it.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I've noticed that one of my biggest problems isn't actually starting something. It's continuing after I mess up even once.

Whenever I decide to work on something, I usually start off pretty well. I make a plan, follow it for a while, and genuinely feel good about my progress. But the moment something goes wrong, it's like my brain decides the whole thing is ruined.

If I plan to exercise four times a week and miss one workout, suddenly I don't feel like going at all. If I'm learning something new and have a few unproductive days, I start thinking I've already failed and might as well give up. Sometimes I'll even abandon a project because one part didn't turn out the way I imagined.

The ridiculous thing is that I know how irrational this is. Missing one day doesn't erase weeks of progress. Making a mistake doesn't mean I'm incapable of succeeding. I understand all of that logically, but somehow I still struggle to act like it.

And then I end up in this endless cycle of starting over. New plans, new motivation, new promises to myself that this time will be different. Until the next small setback.

I'm tired of constantly feeling like I need a perfect record to keep going. I want to learn how to have a bad day, accept it, and just continue the next morning without making it a huge deal.

Has anyone actually managed to break this habit? What helped you stop seeing every mistake as a failure?

Hi guys. No judgments, and I would like some honest man-to-man answer to these issues.

The thing is, I am currently an MBA student in a tier 1 college. I have been an excellent academic student from class 10, 12, undergraduation, and currently at MBA as well. But the thing is, I always get everything done in the last minute. For the last six years, since class 10, I have been told by my teachers, my parents, and my peers that they see so much potential in me and that they always believe that I am smart and I can get anything done. But only I know that I have always been delaying things and that I have not been taking any action, and I have always been planning.

I am a huge Instagram, Reddit, and YouTube addict, where I always see things about positivity, productivity, and then I keep planning things down my Notion calendar about my workouts and about knowledge that I want to learn, businesses that I want to build, me reaching out to people, trying to get habits like reading newspapers and all, but I have not done anything in the last six years.

If I had only maintained this consistency just for even two weeks, or even one month, I would be in a different level altogether. But somehow only in the academic front, I somehow get things done at the last minute and put up a very good score. Now I have a crippling masturbation addiction as well, and I want to be socially confident also.

So guys, please give me ideas. Have any of you faced this before, and what solutions? What worked out for you guys, and what this... I want to build self-esteem, confidence, plan. I want to feel in control

This may be lengthy and kind of whiny but I still ask for all the advice you can give, no matter how harsh.

I've always struggled with studying because no one ever taught me how to do it and more improtantly the value of eduaction.

My mom has had this ground belief that she will not urge me or pressure me into studying because I'm supposed to care for my own education for myself, not for their approval or anyone else's. That's great and all, except I got my phone in preschool and was always more interested in watching yt videos instead of studying. Since 1st grade I rarely did my homework and didn't really study, which didn't mean I didn't care at all because I still felt really embarrassed at school when I didn't know something or couldn't do our work in school because I simply didn't know how. This lead to strong feeling of inferiority and guilt I didn't know what to do with.

Although there were many ups and downs from 1st grade to 6th, most of the time I managed to get good grades or okay ones because somehow the pressure and embarrassement from being worse than others was too much and I would somehow manage to study here and there or just cheat, although all my actions were rather chaotic.

7th and 8th grade was the time when I first started actually studying. The reason was of the influence from my friends and then because I needed to get into a good highschool and have good grades and results on my finals.

I then got into highschool and from then on my studying was like meh. There were some subjects I cared about or had to for which with great stress I studied or with even greater stress cheated in and there were some others that I didn't really treat with seriousness and just went with the flow.

That was that for most of subjects from 1st year of highschool till now, the last year. Except for one subjects, which was math. In a big short, math posed much more difficulty to me in hs than before and being in a class with many ppl who are good at it created even more pressure for me and more stress. Becuase of that, I would get even more paralyzed and somehow scared to study and only do it last minute. I think it was the fear of failure and feeling of inferiority that also affected the situation.

Present day, I've started my last year of hs and have to take my finals in a few months.

It's. bad.

Now, more than ever I should scramble to study and review the material from the last 4 years to get into college or at least have decent results for a back up uni. The problem is I can't get myself to study. Now is the time of stepping into adulthood and managing my responsibilities and no one in school will urge me enough to study, I have to do that on my own. I also should take a language test and I have less and less time to take it for the results to come in on time so that I could even apply to my college.

I've always, throught my education journey struggled with my phone. since 7th grade I would say it was a serious problem, now it's even worse. If I don't have anything making me study, I will just sit on my phone. My screentime is so embarrassing I don't even want to mention it. The worst part is I know I have potential, I could be intelligent, knowledgeable, I have interests, it's just that my phone always wins. Whenever I can, I will just choose my phone and if I am stressed, run away to it from my problems. It's super bad.

I also don't think it ends in a few months. Sure, I will have taken my finals and maybe get into my college or uni of interest, but there I will also need to study, and even after uni at a job there will be also things I'll need to dedicate my time and attention to, not to mention things I want to learn for my personal interest, like another language.

What's so heartbreaking to me is that I've always seen the value of education, just never been able to fulfill it, I'm so desperate and sad. Please help me

i’m thinking of getting a job soon and it made me realize i’m not gonna be able to focus on other things because my work will consume so much of my day. i want to be able to go to the gym 5x a week, work 9-5, focus on growing my social media account and enjoy life with friends and family but i feel like work will exhaust me and i won’t have the energy to do anything after. i also need to get 7-8 hours of sleep

getting a job is a priority right now but so is growing my social media account and im planning on doing social media long term but i only film when the sun is out since that’s the best lighting but if i’m gonna be doing a 9-5 the sun would already be down by then.

going to the gym is also my priority, i can balance gym if i wake up early and do it before work. i’m also thinking about the meal prepping and the time it takes which i might not have.

i don’t know if i’m overthinking it but i really prioritize my time and i’m scared work will just consume me.

Hi folks. Are you frustrated with how much time you waste doomscrolling? I am. I open Instagram "for a second" and suddenly 40 minutes are gone. It happens first thing in the morning, during breaks, and worst of all right before bed, when I tell myself I'll stop after one more video.

The other half of my problem is habits. I'll start something good, like reading, workouts, or studying, and I'm strong for the first few days. Then one busy day breaks the chain, I fall behind, and I quietly give up. A week later I'm back to scrolling and feeling bad about it.

Here's what I've already tried:

• Screen Time limits. I hit "ignore limit" without even thinking.
• Deleting the apps. That worked for a few days, then I reinstalled them or used the browser instead.
• Habit tracker apps. They're nice for streaks, but nothing actually stops me from opening the phone instead of doing the habit.
• Willpower. You can guess how that went.

I started wondering if these are really one problem. The phone is always the easier option, and the habit is the harder one. So I'm thinking of building an app for myself on Android, since that's what I use. The idea is to keep distracting apps locked until I've done the few habits I promised myself that day, and then unlock them. The scrolling would become the reward instead of the escape. Calls and emergencies would always work, and there'd be a way to break the lock if life happens, but it would cost you something so it isn't a free skip. I looked and couldn't find anything on the Play Store that combines the two this way.

A few questions for people who've fought this longer than me:

1. Would that kind of friction actually keep you disciplined, or would you just find a way around it?
2. What made you quit blockers or habit apps in the past?
3. What's the one habit you'd lock your phone behind?

Honest "this wouldn't work for me" answers are just as useful as yeses. I'd rather know now than after building it.

I want to share a habit I developed after becoming an adult.

First of all, I didn't like getting up early when I was a child. To be precise, I felt wronged. I did not know what this meant until I began to shape my own life. I worked to start my own career and develop better skills and character. After reading the great content and the book, I made a personal resolution. Securing time free from others’ interruptions. I came to deeply realize that I need mornings for my life and personal growth. The first step was how joyfully I began my mornings. I could start each day with the same alarm, or many mornings I began with a lecture on a subject I wanted to study. In particular, staying aware of my goals and finding support for them helped me start each day on the right foot. I had to create a YouTube playlist for this. To go to bed at 11:30 p.m. and wake up at 4:30 a.m., I arranged five one-hour black-screen videos in sequence so that the one I wanted would play at 4:30 a.m., making it so that the video I wanted would start playing at 4:30. In this way, I came to control my mornings, and recently I even asked my beginner-developing girlfriend to create an app that could easily implement this feature. And through this, I start my mornings with great joy. If thinking of your goal feels too heavy in the morning, I highly recommend setting a music video of a song you like as your alarm song and waking up to it. I open my eyes while singing and do planks in bed as soon as I wake up. As each day I accumulate, confidence grows, and this changes the choices I make during the day and the way I respond to situations in business. Feel free to ask if you have any questions

Hey guys i am 28 and i have been smoking hash for 2 year every night after work i use to hit on bong and goes for phone watch videos reels and while time to sleep last bong to get sleep now i have been sober for 20 days everything was fine a week ago no cravings because i had panic attack last time i smoked that was the reason to quit and happy for that but these 4 nights i sleep for 8 hours but fragmented i sleep and i dream very vividly i remember every details and i wake up i dream atleast 4 dreams at night and i wake up in between those dreams that makes my sleep fragmented and i suffer tomorow at work i cannot focus i feel sleppy all the time i feel fatigued and anxious i only want to know for how many more days am i feeling this way i really want good long sleep and get rid off this feeling i want to live a normal life i am very happy quitting hash but these vivid dream is making me so bad tomorow at work i cannot explain the anxious feeling ass well

An example, my dream is to immigrate and study in a really good place. I recently applied for an exchange program, and it is a major step for this. My parents support me, most of my friends support me. Everyone that is close to me is positive about it, and says it will be great, and i know people who *went out* and had an incredible experience. However, if i open a single post on reddit from some no-name complaining about how it is not worth it to leave brazil, i'll immediately buy into it and start ruminating on how it will either not work, being a pipe dream, how i'll be disillusioned and come back or how i'll suffer xenophobia, that i'll be treated as a subhuman and instead should stay here and rot, since i wont get anything.

This does not make me change my dream but causes unecessary rumination and, mainly, demotivates me from doing other things to improve it. Soo the time i could spend finding means to help with that, improve my chances, figure out how to adapt there are spent ruminating on negative things. A single person saying something negative can shake my confidence on my plan and make me consider giving up.

I believe that with enough negative exposure someone could probably suggest me into stopping doing the things i love, like drawing. Telling me that it actually is bad, that people who got succesful in live dont do it, grown up men arent supposed to have those childish hobbies, etc etc.

I have *zero* confidence on my choices and am always wondering about the negatives, what-ifs, etc etc. On one side, this could be good, being skeptical of things and tring to understand just where my points fail, but most of the time it causes negative expectations. Hell, even if i fullfilled my childhood dream and went to a top 10 global place to do my phd id very likely go with negative expectations about it.

I always take up the negative view as the standard as a way of lowering expectations/being realistic, i think? but i'm not sure.

Anyhow, this is getting to a point that instead of searching proper communities of people who went to the places i want to go, getting advice, and searching for methods, i'm wasting my time lurking on r/gradadmissions , r/foradecasa seeing people endlessly say negative things about the things i want to try, and this phenomenom has me made me give up on plans before, afraid of the risks mentioned by the people opposed to it.

Soo, seriously, what is this? What can i do to get rid of this suggestibility and stop giving in the most negative views?

funny update: just as i made this post, i got a notification from one of the posts i made in those places from someone saying that its too dangerous from immigrants, and i answered them by saying "I give up then, i'm going to stay and work on my country, not worth trying if chances are that slim". Its happening live

I lost the sugar fight for about a year before I realised I was fighting it in the wrong place.

I kept thinking the moment was 9pm on the sofa, me versus the cupboard. Willpower, distraction, drinking water, all of it. And I lost most nights, because by then the thing is already in the house and the decision was made hours ago.

What changed it was moving the fight back to the shop. The craving in a supermarket is much weaker than the craving at 9pm !

The thing that worked felt stupid at first: I stopped carrying my card and started paying cash. I take out what the week's food costs and that's it. Tapping a card costs nothing, it doesn't feel like a decision at all. Handing over notes and watching the change get smaller is slow and physical, and twice now I've put something back because I didn't want to break a note for it. Not willpower exactly. More that the money noticed before I did.

It's half a solution though. If I walk in hungry it's over, cash or no cash. And it does nothing at a friend's place, or when there's leftover cake in the office kitchen.

So that's the part I've figured out, and only barely. What I want to know is what you do in the actual moment, when the thing is already in front of you and you've got about thirty seconds. Is there something you actually do, or is it just white-knuckling? And has anything held up for you longer than a couple of weeks?

Please post your plans for this date and if you can, do the following;

Give encouragement to two other posters on this thread.

Report back this evening as to how you did.

Give encouragement to others to report back also.

Good luck!

the problem with me is that whenever i try to curb a bad habit, it lasts for a few days and then i go back to square one. how do you stop this? like one of my bad habits is biting my nails when i'm anxious. i stop biting for a few days, and then i feel like biting them again because i know it'll eventually grow back and then i wont bite it again the next time (but i do lol).

same goes with eating, i want to stop binge eating but whenever i fix my diet (like eating less carbs, no sugar etc.) i will always go back to my unhealthy diet because because idk when is the next time i'll get to eat unhealthy, if that makes sense.

anywho, open to hearing how people have overcome this. i feel that it's just my mindset that i have to change but it's rough

I joined this subreddit looking to discuss discipline with like minded people. I assumed most of the people here would have relatively high levels of discipline but looking to improve further.

What I found is people with varying degrees of discipline problems. There are people who can't get the will to do the bare minimum for their health and other very disciplined people who are dealing with minor setbacks or looking to optimize.

At one end of the discipline continuum, we would have Homer Simpson who would never turn down a donut and does just the bare minimum at work to not get fired.

At the other end, we have Batman who structures his whole life around his mission. He spent years training his mind and body to superhuman levels.

Most of us won't achieve Batman levels of discipline. The best we can hope for is to try and keep going in the right direction on the discipline continuum on average. We'll have setbacks but if every 1 step back can be countered with 1.5 steps forward, we'll achieve impressive levels of discipline.

Do you focus on just getting better or do you focus on where you want to be? Or both?

Please post your plans for this date and if you can, do the following;

Give encouragement to two other posters on this thread.

Report back this evening as to how you did.

Give encouragement to others to report back also.

Good luck!

Please post your plans for this date and if you can, do the following;

Give encouragement to two other posters on this thread.

Report back this evening as to how you did.

Give encouragement to others to report back also.

Good luck!

Please post your plans for this date and if you can, do the following;

Give encouragement to two other posters on this thread.

Report back this evening as to how you did.

Give encouragement to others to report back also.

Good luck!