You Don’t Need More Discipline—You Need Less Noise

Discipline is having a moment right now.

Cold plunges. 4am alarms. 75-day challenges.
Track everything. Grind daily. Stay hard. Push through.

We’ve tried it.

And some of it works—until it doesn’t.

Because the truth is:

Mental noise.
Digital noise.
Emotional clutter.
Decision fatigue.
Background stress that never gets turned down.

You don’t need a stricter routine.
You need space to hear yourself again.

The myth of willpower

We used to think we had a discipline problem.

Couldn’t wake up early.
Struggled to focus.
Too many unfinished projects.
Too inconsistent with routines.

So we kept trying to force our way through it:

• More planning
• More tools
• More hacks
• More guilt

Until one day, we stepped away from it all—literally.
We unplugged. We hit the road. We reset.

And something happened:

Noise is the hidden enemy of alignment

It shows up like this:

• You can’t focus, so you blame your habits
• You can’t start, so you blame motivation
• You feel scattered, so you blame your character

But you’re not broken.
You’re just overstimulated.

The modern world is loud.
It’s always on. Always demanding. Always comparing.

Trying to build a better life without turning down the noise is like trying to meditate at a concert.

What happened when we cleared the noise

Once we unplugged from the chaos, we didn’t need:

• 3-hour morning routines
• Complex to-do systems
• Motivation hacks

We needed:

• Silence
• Simplicity
• Fewer tabs open
• Fewer voices in our head
• More natural light, less artificial input

And with that… discipline came naturally.

We didn’t “try harder.”
We just had less to resist.

Stillness reveals what’s essential

We now design our life to reduce noise by default:

• Phones off until after breakfast
• No notifications except direct messages
• Limited inputs: podcasts, newsletters, social media
• Simple systems that don’t break when life gets messy
• Unscheduled blocks of time—every day

What we stopped doing

❌ Forcing creative time when our minds were fried

❌ Pretending we could multitask

❌ Living in reaction mode to every ping

❌ Piling more obligations on top of old ones

❌ Shaming ourselves for needing rest

What we do now:

• Create margin
• Honor energy cycles
• Protect quiet
• Say no more often
• Let things go when they stop serving

It’s not sexy. But it works.

You don’t need to get tougher.

You need to get quieter.

Try this:

• Want to write more? Cut your inputs by 50%
• Want to work out more? Remove friction, not add pressure
• Want to be more present? Turn down the volume—not just the sound, but the mental chatter

You don’t need to force your future self into submission.
You need to clear the path for them.

This Week’s Shift:

Identify one area of your life that feels “undisciplined”—and reduce the noise around it.

Ask:

• What’s pulling my attention away?
• What inputs do I keep letting in?
• What systems would make this easier—not harder?

Then:
Make one change.
Not to “push through,” but to move with less resistance.

Because your future self doesn’t need more punishment.
They need more peace.

—Indy & Kitty
​Nomadists