In The Zone

The Myth Of Mental Discipline

"What I really need, Doc, is more personal discipline. If I were just a little more disciplined, I would be able to________." Fill in the blank with whatever activity you like: get in better shape, be better prepared for fishing trips, fill out your tax forms before April 14th. I promise you, that if I had a dollar for every time I heard that self-discipline comment during my professional career, I could buy a small body of water, like oh, say Sam Rayburn Reservoir in Texas, and retire!

In fishing, as in life, you are probably in that large group of people (read: almost everyone) who have more ideas, plans, and things to do than time in which to do them. Good intentions fall by the wayside and become part of the famous pavement on the road to You-Know-Where! Deadlines are set and missed, plans that seemed airtight the day you made them are abandoned, and try as you might, you just don't finish all the things on your list! You may eventually, in frustration, turn on yourself and make a proclamation like the one above that the problem is you lack personal discipline. Alternately, you may give up, deciding that self-discipline is beyond your reach. Let me suggest another path.

You read it here first: personal discipline is overrated. Yeah, I know, there are some people out there who are extraordinarily self-directed, self-motivated, and self-disciplined. You may have a neighbor, or (your wife may remind you!) a relative who creates and executes plans like clockwork. You may even know an angler or two who are extraordinarily well-prepared, conscientious, and consistent about doing what they say they will do. However, I am also willing to bet your experience matches what performance psychology research tells us-that such individuals are rare indeed. People like my ol' fishin' pal Tom, who is naturally disciplined, thorough, and tenacious, are few and far between.

Tom was a star athlete; held a couple of state high school track records in Iowa.......for a long time.....yes, he did. After high school, Tom went off to college, and then medical school. In there somewhere he got married and had a couple of kids. There was a residency in psychiatry and then a headfirst dive into a time-consuming medical career. But he never gave up being an athlete. He didn't much care what the sport was, if it involved a workout, Tom did it. Tennis, broomball, golf, racquetball, canoeing down nameless rivers in Alaska, you name it. If he hadn't grown up in Iowa, he probably would have been a heck of a hockey player. One by one his athletic partners dropped off as middle age took them out, but Tom just switched over to individual sports like running, rollerblading, and cross-country skiing. This guy, I'm here to tell you, would wear out the Energizer Bunny. And so there he was, well past 50, standing on a dock in Nowheresville, Ontario, waiting for the float plane, wearing his high school letter jacket that still fit like the day he bought it!

But I promise you, you should not try to be like Tom, and here's why.

Answer this question: Can you run 100 meters in less than 10 seconds? I thought so. Neither can I. It obviously wouldn't make sense for you or me to race against someone who could, right? More importantly, if you're not naturally built like a world-class sprinter, no amount of conditioning, weight training or "self-discipline" will allow you to break 10 seconds in a 100 M race. Similarly, striving for greater mental or personal discipline is most likely an exercise in futility. Trying to force yourself to become the disciplined person you are not is likely to result in recurrent frustration.

Consistency = Routines, Repetition, and Resilience

When people talk to me about wanting greater self-discipline, they typically are not interested in self-discipline itself. Instead, what they really desire is more consistency in one area of life or another. But you don't really need spectacular self-discipline to become consistent. Most people who are consistent have developed routines or healthy habits that end up looking like mental discipline. Consider your own experience.

Think back to high school or maybe grade school when you played in the band or competed on a sports team. There the path to success included a practice book, a practice schedule, and a lot of other to people to practice with! While some individual effort was required, many practice sessions were conducted in a group setting. With teammates, social support from friends and family, a reasonable amount of structure, a teacher or coach, and repeated practice, your skill level and your performance improved! No surprise there, right? Without much effort on your part, you used a system, a set of routines, and a schedule for practicing that allowed you to be successful.

Fast forward to today and your fishing career. Whether or not you fish tournaments, look at what you now expect yourself to do: perform tedious, joyless tasks; and work alone, with little structure, minimal guidance, and inconsistent social support. (Sure, you have guys you fish with, but I know you don't get together to do practice casting or to sharpen hooks!) So is the culprit really lack of self-discipline? I don't think so. If someone had handed you a trumpet in the third grade without the systems, routines, people and schedules noted above, it's extremely unlikely you would have ended up first chair in the high school jazz band!

What to do? Start over, that's what. Begin by recognizing that some tasks are intrinsically rewarding and enjoyable, while many others are not. What would you rather do-Fish or clean your reel? Drive around the lake and look for visible cover or underwater structure, or re-spool your line? "Duh", you say. Okay, well, let's use that insight to your advantage.

You already know about the importance of tracking tools like calendars, journals, notebooks, and planners. Find your Bass Edge In the Zone notebook and write down 4 or 5 tasks you think your lack of self discipline leads you to neglect. A couple of these are likely to be equipment maintenance issues, though you may also put off fundamental dimensions like pre-tournament practice planning, map study, or communicating effectively with your fishing partners.

After each item write down how much time you should devote to this, and how often. You might go through a "What? When? Where? How? How often?" sequence with each task. Then, rank these less-than-rewarding tasks in order of importance, with the most critical ones at the top of your list. Now find your calendar and commit each task to a specific day and time. For example, if you believe you should change your line once a month during your fishing season, write "Change Line" on, say, the first Sunday of the month. It may turn out that some first Sundays come and go without your line getting changed, but I promise you if it's on your calendar, you'll wind up with fresh line more often than you would otherwise.

If you have not read Steven Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People I suggest you do. The key to the entire book, however, is in the title. Covey doesn't talk about the seven skills, attributes, talents, or traits of highly effective people; instead, he talks about seven behaviors that people practice until they become habitual, that then lead to greater professional and personal efficacy. You can use this idea to make a number of different tasks habitual, and pretty soon your fishing buddies will think you're more self-disciplined!

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Jay T. McNamara Ph.D., L.P. is a psychologist, and also an avid bass and walleye angler. With more than 30 years of professional experience complemented by participation in competitive fishing at local and national levels, he is uniquely qualified illustrate how Performance Psychology principles apply to fishing. His writing has appeared in both recreational and competitive fishing journals.