Time Management Tuesday: Starting Down The Self-Discipline Road

I'm searching for self-discipline, in my undisciplined way. While I'm not discovering a lot written on self-discipline, I'm finding more on self-control. Psychology Today, for instance, maintains a blog on the subject. What I'm finding, both at the PT blog, Don't Delay, and elsewhere is that writing on self-control often relates to dealing with problems, such as over-eating, smoking, etc. and not some kind of development of over all self-control.

I guess you could say that the self-discipline/self-control aspect of time management that I'm interested in also deals with problems--problems with staying on task, putting off work, and organizing time, for starters. These past few months I've sometimes thought about managing time in terms of budgeting, the way we think of money, another common control problem. Mainly what I've thought is that we can't budget and save time for use in the future, the way we can money. (Or maybe we can. Hmm. I will have to think about that for a future post.)

Some recent posts from the PT blog Don't Delay that might be of interest to us:

Self-Control Is More Than Strength and Brute Resistance--Dr. Timothy Pychyl, Don't Delay's keeper, writes about Backsliding: Understanding Weakness of Will . He talks about "skilled resistance" and "applying particular self-control skills in particular situations." Yes! Yes! I want to find skills I can learn!

External Supports for Your Willpower--This post is about "extended will" and "distributed willpower" and how people support their willpower by "offloading" some of their mental work/working memory to their environment. An example is using writing for creating lists. I assume breaking your work into 45-minute units, as we discussed earlier this year, and using a timer to do that is another because you are relying on something outside your mind--the timer and even the concept of the unit, perhaps--to assist you.