Excitement & Discipline: You Need Both in Order to Succeed

The start of a new project is often defined by an abundance of excitement, energy, and ideas.

It’s easy to sit down and do the work, and in fact, may even be difficult to focus on anything other than the project.

But that level of energy and enthusiasm rarely lasts. Sooner or later, the easy early wins become smaller and momentum begins to slow.

You may still be excited about the long term prospects of the project, but it’s not quite as fun as it was just a few short weeks or months ago.

Sooner or later, you’re bound to face significant challenges that will force you to reckon with how badly you really want to continue slogging away at the project.

When things get hard, it’s only natural that you should look for ways to end the frustration.

The easiest way to do this is to quit.

This is particularly easy to do when the project started out as a side hustle, hobby, or experiment.

With little riding on the outcome, there’s little incentive to continue.

Every project will present challenges and require work that isn’t fun. In these moments you need to be prepared to fall back on your discipline to put your head down, do the work, and press onward.

For the projects worth continuing, however, you should be able to maintain a sense of excitement throughout the process.

You may not be excited about the work itself in every given moment, but you should at least retain some enthusiasm about the future prospects of what the work has the potential to achieve, for both yourself and others.

Projects with excitement but no discipline are doomed to fail. But the opposite is also true.

Take regular stock of your stores of both attributes and then recommit or move on to something new.

What's a project you're currently working on that isn't as exciting as it used to be?

What's keeping you motivated to push through it?