There Are No Hacks, Just Discipline

You probably won’t finish this post.

Not because it’s too long or complicated, but because most of us lack the attention span and discipline to stick to something until it’s done these days. The moment excitement fades, or results don’t come fast enough, we drop everything and look for the next “big thing.” It’s the same reason most resolutions fade by February, and most side hustles disappear after a few months.

Most of what we stick to isn’t driven by passion or internal motivation. It’s enforced by external pressures; deadlines, bills, bosses, social expectations. Our so-called discipline often comes from fear of consequences, not from a real inner drive to see something through.

Shift your attention to personal growth, health, personality, or any personal goal, how many have you already abandoned because they got hard, boring, or slow? Be honest.

It’s probably because success didn’t come as fast as the 1-minute TikTok video you watched at 2x speed. You’re disappointed two years of work didn’t condense into one week like your favourite influencer promised in her “get ready with me” video.

To be honest, success is painfully boring. There are no hacks. No secret formulas. No overnight wins. Just long, ugly, repetitive work. It’s not glamorous. It’s not filled with fireworks or viral moments. It looks like quiet work, done consistently, for months or years, without applause or certainty. But that’s not what most people want to hear.

We live in a culture obsessed with shortcuts. “Top 5 habits of millionaires.” “How I made $100K in 3 months.” “This one hack changed everything.” These stories go viral because they sell hope. Fast hope. And when things don’t happen fast for us, we think we’re doing something wrong.

But here’s the truth no one wants to accept: There are no hacks. No cheat codes. No overnight wins. Just work. Even the 1-minute TikTok’s you watch take about six hours to create, but somehow, we rarely think about that and instead buy into the 1-minute dreams that are sold.

Success is barely exciting. Most days, it’s routine. The same emails. The same training. The same outreach. The same learning curve. Progress feels like a whisper, not a scream. You keep doing the thing until the gears start to shift. And then? You do it again. A repetitive, emotionless endeavour.

The people who eventually “make it” aren’t necessarily smarter or luckier. They’re just the ones who stuck with the boring part longer. They understood that mastery doesn’t look like constant growth, it looks like staying in the process even when it’s dull, thankless, and unrewarded.

That’s the real reason people give up, not because they failed, but because they expected success to feel different. We’ve romanticized the end result so much that we’ve forgotten what it takes to get there. So, when the grind kicks in, when it stops being exciting, we panic. We jump to something new. Chase a new idea, a new method, a new path.

And we start over. Again, and again. In the wrong direction.

But real success? It’s in the repetition. The showing up. The ordinary days. The mundane tasks. The quiet decisions that no one claps for.
If you’re frustrated right now, good. That means you’re in it. That means you’re doing the part that actually matters.

No one talks about this part. But maybe we should.

And if you read this far, well maybe there is hope for us after all.