Things Leaders Do — Live With Discipline

It was somewhere around Day 118 that I stopped caring about the number.

Day 30? One month. Felt like a big deal.
Day 100? Three digits. Felt like a big deal.

But then, you get into the mess of days that don’t feel like milestones. At the point where you’re simply trying to stack good days.

It’s somewhere in there — the unremarkable, completely forgettable middle — that I stopped tracking it as an achievement and started treating it as a standard.

That’s when the streak became something else entirely.

Jayson Schmidt@JaysonSchmidt

Day 200 ✅ Run 1 mile

9:47 PM · Nov 19, 2025 · 22 Views

For the record: I’ve run at least one mile every single day for over a year.

Not every run was pretty. Some were 11-minute miles in the heat of a South Florida summer at 10 p.m. Some were done with zero desire and maximum obligation. Some were done on crappy hotel treadmills. Some were done sick, some were done exhausted, and yet…

Every. Single. Day.

Jayson Schmidt@JaysonSchmidt

Day 365, run at least 1 mile ✅

11:45 AM · May 4, 2026 · 24 Views

1 Like

Here’s what nobody tells you about discipline.

It’s not about motivation. Motivation is a visitor. It’s like the Detroit Lions in the playoffs through my childhood; it shows up when it feels like it, leaves without saying goodbye, and often times goes missing for years on end.

(Thank God for Dan Campbell.)

Discipline is the friend who shows up at 6 a.m. when you need them. Even when you’re not fun to be around. Even when the weather’s bad.

The difference between the two has changed my life.

I’ve worked for and alongside leaders who were brilliantly motivated. They could light up a room and cast vision like the best of them. But when the room was empty? When nobody was watching?

Different story.

The leaders I respect most are the ones who do the work when there’s nothing to prove to anyone but themselves.

There are three things I’ve learned about discipline from a year of not stopping:

One mile is almost comically achievable. On purpose. The whole point is that there is no acceptable excuse not to do it. Lots of people have asked me recently:

• “Are you going for two years?”

• “When will you stop?”

And my response is usually “can I really not spare ten minutes in a day?”

When you set the bar too high, you give yourself an out. A standard that lives in the “it depends” territory will be subject to “it depends” behavior. If you want discipline, remove the gray area entirely.

One mile. Every day. That’s the deal.

I don’t run every day because I want to. I run every day because not running would mean breaking something I’ve built.

It’s a small, powerful shift and maybe more importantly, it says that choosing to not run goes against the person you’ve created yourself to be. As much as it’s a streak, it’s just who I am.

I am a person who runs.

Your people feel this too. A culture of discipline isn’t created by telling people to be disciplined. It’s created by building something worth protecting. A standard. A streak. A reputation.

Something that exists beyond any single day’s feeling.

There are exactly zero highlight reels for running one mile alone at 11:30 at night.

And I’ve been in that moment dozens of times.

(Ask Kelsey: I’m the king of showering when she wants to go to bed.)

But even if (!!) you decide that your day is more important than your standards, you still have to make that daily deposit.

It’s just you versus you. No crowd. No applause. You’re not broadcasting to the world on Periscope or whatever we called it.

Just you. The pavement. And the decision you made about who you’re going to be.

Because the people in your life are watching how you show up.

They’re seeing if you do what you say you’re going to do. They want to know if you’re all talk, no action. Or if you’re not even talk.

I know it, because it’s why I started doing this in the first place.

I got to the place of running every day for a year because I first got to the place of needing to re-anchor.

Life was in control of me and not the other way around. I was turning into a lesser husband, business owner, and athlete. All while proudly stating that I wasn’t a victim of my own circumstances.

But you can’t lie to yourself forever.

Because the most important person you will ever lead is yourself.

If you can’t hold the line with yourself — quietly, consistently, when there’s nothing on the line — don’t be surprised when holding the line with the people you’re leading becomes impossible.

The best leaders I know aren’t the loudest or the most charismatic. They’re the ones with a standard. Some kind of unbroken commitment to something that they care about, carried quietly day after day.

You don’t have to run a mile. You don’t have to do it every day.

But you have to do something. The same thing. In a rhythm, long past the point where it still feels remarkable.

That’s discipline. And discipline is what leaders do.

This is the second article in a series titled, Things Leaders Do. It (laughably) comes 3+ years after the first edition, which you can read below.

Pick one thing you’ve been saying you’ll do consistently but haven’t. Set the bar embarrassingly low — low enough that there’s no excuse not to do it today.

Do it today. Then do it tomorrow. Tell no one.

That’s how a streak starts.

*The Little Win is a call-to-action to help us become the best version of ourselves.

Thanks for reading. Creating Future Wins is my personal blog about leadership, sports, and well, creating wins in your life. I’m going to post here very sporadically and you’re going to be okay with that. If this post resonated with you, I’d love to hear about it: email me or @ me on Threads or X (@JaysonSchmidt).