How To Be More Disciplined as an ENFP / Campaigner personality type (From an ENFP with ADHD)

So last night, I was walking through the streets here of Prague and talking to my friend about how I used to be so much more disciplined, and comfortable with being uncomfortable.

The example I used is – back home in Vancouver, I would get up and it didn’t matter if it was dark, rainy, cold outside, I would get up for a morning run and run, five kilometers in the rain, it didn’t matter, and how I had much more of that kind of discipline to follow through on things.

In this post, what I want to go through is some of the ways to build your discipline.

Being more disciplined as an ENFP

Discipline is a muscle and we have a limited amount of it.

There was a study done a few years ago where they had people come in to solve an unsolvable math problem. So the whole point of the test was just to see how long people would try before they gave up, basically testing their determination or discipline.

In the waiting room, you had two different setups. In one group, there was a table of radishes, and they were told, not to eat those radishes while they’re waiting. Not a very hard task, right? You don’t use a lot of discipline to not eat radishes. Now in the other group, they had freshly baked cookies put out in front of them, and you know that cookie smell. They were told not to eat the cookies no matter what.

So you have these people sitting in a waiting room for 20 minutes and there are these freshly baked cookies in front of them that they can eat. Guess what this does, it uses discipline. Basically, every second, you’re kind of telling yourself not to eat them.

So the people who were in the cookies waiting room actually spent about half the time less, if I remember right, it was about 12 minutes, on the problem, whereas the people who were in the radishes group spent 20 minutes on the problem. So that’s a significant drop in discipline, just based on resisting cookies.

So what this study basically told us, and it’s since been duplicated again, is that we have a limited amount of willpower or discipline. You want to keep this in mind always in terms of being strategic with it and how you use it.

ENFP Discipline tip: Do not make a lot of small decisions during the day.

So this is my first tip around it – do not have a lot of small decisions in your day. If you want to “save” that discipline eliminate small decisions and temptations from your day.

Building up your word to mean something for yourself can be a really positive way to build your discipline.

You could also do it in small things like committing to go for a walk for 15 minutes every day at a certain time or whatever that is, and then you can gradually grow this and do more and more and more. This is a really good way to build up basically your word and your follow through, which is building up your discipline.

Now, there’s another thing here that I have to share with you – Extremes and musts.

ENFPs will follow through an extreme easily

So what I have found personally is that having an extreme, clear black and white rule is quite easy for me to follow, but If I give myself gray area, things get bad, pretty quick.

I’ve never ever been able to follow sort of a “count your calories / try to eat healthy” that sort of thing diet, but I’ve been able to just quit eating wheat entirely, or take a year and a half off drinking.

So to recap on being more disciplined as an ENFP, and give you some steps to follow. First, eliminate day to day willpower, draining decisions that are unnecessary.

Number two, take small steps to build up your word to mean something which is essentially building up your discipline.

The third thing is try using extremes. So doing bigger, clear black and white rules for yourself. They don’t always have to be extreme. The most important thing is that they’re clear.

Extremes work for me because they’re kind of motivating. It’s a challenge. But you don’t have to be extreme. It can just be a very clear rule.

Ready to be more disciplined? Good. You can use that discipline now to check out my Dreams Around The World Youtube Channel and subscribe. 🙂