Of course it does. Self-discipline is the best way to get anything done.
An American study has found that a school pupil's self-discipline is a stronger predictor of their future academic success than their IQ, leading researchers to conclude that self-discipline may be the "royal road" to building academic achievement.
Self-discipline also matters in business. You can be smart, but if you never do anything, it doesn't matter. The best way to develop self-discipline?… practice it.
A related conclusion, which I saw in a study quoted several years ago, is that if you compliment students by telling them “You worked hard on this,” there future performance is better than if you tell them “You are smart.”
Rob…not sure where I am on this. It’s hard to make a blanket statement about either one of these factors in a vacuum. I’ve known plenty of disciplined people with little talent and, more often, some very talented folks with little self-discipline. I want a nice blend of both to work for our company.
Brock,
No, I don’t intentionally delete anything except spam, but since I upgraded Movable Type, I’ve had lots of comment pRoblems. If I have time over the holidays, I’ll switch the whole blog over to WordPress. Shoot me an email when your comments don’t get posted.
Will do.