Mind the (discipline) gap!

Somewhere between deciding what matters and actually doing it, there’s a gap. It’s not caused by laziness or lack of ambition. It’s something quieter, more persistent, and harder to admit: the discipline gap.

I’ve fallen into it more times than I’d like to admit. The roadmap is clear. The ideas are good. There’s even momentum. And yet, weeks go by and what once felt urgent slowly turns into background noise. Life intervenes. New tasks sneak in. The important work waits politely at the bottom of the list, never pushed, never delivered.

There’s an inertia that builds around half-done work. From the outside, it looks like progress: meetings happen, tasks are updated, presentations get made. But internally, there’s a weight. A quiet discomfort that nothing is truly moving forward. That quiet pressure does more damage to your confidence than an actual failure.

I don’t need more goals. I need fewer open loops. I don’t need more ideas. I need more finishes.

Because the hard part usually isn’t knowing what to do, it’s staying with it. This isn’t about motivation or energy. It’s about showing up, again and again, long after the spark has faded. Nobody celebrates the person who works on the same thing for three weeks in a row. There’s no applause for revisiting the same draft or model or roadmap for the tenth time. But that’s where the real work usually happens: not in bursts, but in the steady, sometimes boring act of following through.

I learned what discipline really looks like not in a boardroom or a strategy book, but by watching how bands like Metallica and Iron Maiden approach their craft. Beneath the volume, chaos, and noise, there’s something else: structure, practice, obsession. These aren’t just artists, they’re machines of consistency. Metallica rehearses like clockwork, tours relentlessly, and refines their music over time with every note and military focus. That kind of routine, gritty, unglamorous, and uncompromising, leaves a mark. Turns out, execution in business has more in common with a great rhythm section than a flashy solo.

Or take a classic (and yes, literally military) example: Admiral William McRaven’s advice in Make Your Bed. His point wasn’t really about beds, it was about starting your day with a win. Finishing something small, every day, builds the muscle for finishing bigger things later. It’s not about motivation. It’s about rhythm. The kind of quiet consistency that builds confidence, not just in outcomes, but in yourself.

Strategy may sound impressive, but it doesn’t build anything on its own. Clarity helps, but even that fades without consistent follow-through. What actually moves things forward most of the time is disciplined repetition: showing up, pushing through, finishing. As Steve Jobs put it, “Real artists ship.” Ideas aren’t the problem. The real killer of momentum is the lack of return — the daily work of turning intention into output.

Execution doesn’t happen just because we hope it will. And no, hope is not a strategy, it’s a delay mechanism with a nicer name. Strategy gives you direction. But execution gives you movement. Calendars do. Focus does. Repetition does. That’s what turns plans into outcomes.

There’s a stat often shared in sales training: the average salesperson gives up after three follow-up calls. Yet most sales close after the seventh. That gap between the third and the seventh call is where outcomes are won or lost, not because of genius, but because of staying with the process longer than others are willing to.

It’s the same with everything: writing, shipping, launching, building. From the outside, it may eventually look like a great idea or an overnight success. But the people doing the work know: it was just Tuesday, and they showed up again.

The hardest part is rarely the task itself. It’s the voice that says, “I’ll finish this when it’s perfect,” or “when I have more time.” That voice is always convincing, and always wrong. Every time I’ve pushed through and finished something I delayed, the same thought comes back: this wasn’t nearly as hard as avoiding it.

Execution doesn’t fail because we don’t care enough. It fails because we don’t protect space for it, the kind of space that’s quiet, slow, and repetitive. The kind of space that asks more of our patience than our creativity.

Discipline isn’t about willpower. It’s about showing up: not once, but again and again. Quietly. Consistently. Especially when it’s no longer exciting. It won’t get applause. It won’t go viral. But it will get the thing built. Maybe not the thing you imagined — but the one you actually finished. And in the end, even an imperfect result beats unlimited potential left unrealized.