r/getdisciplined: rules, karma requirements and posting culture

Who posts here

Most posters are starting from zero: students who cannot stop scrolling, people who keep restarting the same routine, adults who describe themselves as at rock bottom. Nobody is told to go and read first, and replies explain ideas in plain words. What gets rejected is low effort, not low knowledge. A two-line plea is removed by AutoModerator for being too short.

• Students, many in their late teens and early twenties, fighting phone use, exams and sleep schedules.
• Working adults who are organised at work and cannot make themselves do anything at home.
• People in a hard spot, including debt, depression, addiction recovery or family trouble, asking where to start.
• Daily check-in regulars who post plans and day counts for accountability.
• App builders and coaches looking for testers or readers, who get little patience.

Karma and account requirements

What it takes to get a post through in r/getdisciplined.

What you can post

What happens to a new post

Where the most recent posts ended up. Sample size: 400.

• Stayed up47%
• Removed by Reddit's filters13%
• Removed by moderators39%
• Deleted by the author2%

Reddit counts a removal by the subreddit's own AutoModerator rules as a moderator removal, so that share is not all human. Held by AutoModerator means the post is waiting in the mod queue.

The rules, in the mods' words

1. 1

   Promote discussion. No one-liners or quotes.

   Include a few sentences about where you want the discussion to go, no matter what you are posting. Do not create low-effort posts, or repost old content as your own.

2. 2

   Care about quality and respect.

   Be helpful and constructive. Do not insult, taunt or mislead. Do not threaten others, or threaten to cause harm to yourself.

3. 3

   Always include a flair in your post title.

4. 4

   Do not post any links before reading our content rules.

   Do not post any links to content from your blog or website before reading this post.

These are the rules as archived in January 2025. Rules change. Check the sidebar before you post.

The culture

r/getdisciplined is where people come to admit they cannot make themselves do the thing. The standard post is a long first-person account: what the person wants, what keeps going wrong, how long it has been going on, and a request for advice. The median post is about 230 words and roughly 3 in 10 titles are questions. Common subjects are studying, phones and scrolling, sleep, the gym and procrastination.

Replies are gentle and practical. Commenters share the one small change that worked for them, reframe the problem, or recommend a well-known habit book. Comments run about 27 words and almost none carry a link. Alongside the advice threads there is a steady accountability habit: a moderator posts daily and weekly plan threads, and some members keep numbered day logs of a challenge they have set themselves.

The pressure on the room comes from people with something to sell. Habit apps, 90 day systems and accountability groups show up constantly, often written as a personal breakthrough story. Moderators removed close to 4 in 10 posts in our sample, and polished advice posts with a tidy lesson are a large part of that. There is a Tool flair, but it accounts for only about 3% of posts.

What lands

• A direct question to people who have already figured it out, asking how they actually live a disciplined life. The top recent post was this.
• An open prompt that invites short personal answers, such as which habit people underestimated.
• An honest, detailed account of a bad situation with a clear ask. These get fewer upvotes but real, careful replies.
• A sharp observation about your own behaviour, like being reliable for an employer and useless on your own weekend.
• Plan and check-in posts that say what you will do today and report back.

What gets removed or ignored

• Posts too short to discuss. A bare cry for help or a greeting as a title gets pulled, and AutoModerator tells you to add detail and try again.
• Advice posts that read like a pitch, such as a transformation system someone spent months building or a neat list of what finally worked.
• Motivational one-liners and quotes posted as if they were a discussion. The first rule bans them.
• Questions fishing for app recommendations, and recruitment for off-site accountability groups.
• Posts not in English, and the same post submitted again under a different flair.

The unwritten rules

• Upvotes are scarce. Outside the top couple of posts, most sit in single or low double digits. Judge a post by the replies.
• Write it yourself and leave it rough. The posts that stay up are personal, specific and a bit messy. The ones removed often have a headline that sounds like a blog post.
• Give age, situation and what you have already tried. Replies get much better when people can see the details.
• If you built the tool you are describing, say so in the first line. The one tester request that stayed up in our sample opened with a full disclosure and had nothing to buy.
• Naming an app in a comment stands out, because only about 1% of comments contain a link and product mentions are rare.

Self-promotion

The written rule is short: do not post links or content from your blog or website before reading the moderators' rules for bloggers, YouTubers and website owners, and do not repost old content as your own. In practice the bar is stricter than that sounds. Posts are text only, so there is nowhere to drop a link, and moderators remove a lot of advice posts that build towards a product or a system. Disclosed requests for feedback under the Tool flair sometimes survive. A success story that turns out to be an advert does not, and the same story reworded and posted again is still treated as one.

How people write here

Typical post length

231 words

Typical title length

11 words

Titles phrased as a question

30%

Typical comment length

27 words

Comments that include a link

1%

Posts that carry a flair

93%

The regulars

The accounts that showed up most in our sample. Worth reading before you post: they set the tone, and they are usually the first to reply.

Top keywords

The words and phrases that show up far more often here than in other communities, from recent posts in r/getdisciplined.

• life 94 posts
• discipline 34 posts
• study 47 posts
• goals 35 posts
• motivation 29 posts
• disciplined 21 posts
• habits 28 posts
• habit 26 posts
• studying 30 posts
• accountability 23 posts
• stop 49 posts
• thread report 10 posts
• consistent 29 posts
• sleep 33 posts
• productive 18 posts
• gym 22 posts
• scrolling 19 posts
• procrastination 12 posts
• wake 21 posts
• routine 25 posts
• become 35 posts
• winter arc 7 posts
• phone 33 posts
• lazy 17 posts
• stay 31 posts
• progress 22 posts
• procrastinating 9 posts
• everything 52 posts
• tomorrow 20 posts
• nothing 41 posts
• brain 22 posts
• plans 20 posts
• helped 25 posts
• screen dependency 6 posts
• cycle 19 posts
• finally 31 posts
• encouragement 11 posts
• consistency 15 posts
• tired 23 posts
• change 35 posts

Recurring topics: app, self, discipline, life, advice, help, looking for, plan, habit, motivation.

Posts that did well

• People who lead a disciplined life, HOW???134 upvotes · 62 comments · 🤔 NeedAdvice
• What habit did you underestimate at first?107 upvotes · 38 comments · 💬 Discussion
• I keep sabotaging my education and goals and don't know why.21 upvotes · 19 comments · 🤔 NeedAdvice
• I’m 18 and I think I’m about to be homeless19 upvotes · 25 comments · 🤔 NeedAdvice
• 2dys 12hrs and 28mins until I'm 1yr Alcohol free and 5yrs Drug free.12 upvotes · 0 comments · 💡 Advice
• I keep waiting to feel motivated and I'm starting to think that's the problem12 upvotes · 11 comments · 💬 Discussion
• i need to bother you with my boring day10 upvotes · 7 comments · 💬 Discussion

Growth

1. 201214k
2. 201369k
3. 2014112k
4. 2015151k
5. 2016193k
6. 2017267k
7. 2018377k
8. 2019510k
9. 2020694k
10. 20231.6M
11. 20241.8M
12. 20252.1M
13. 20262.2M

Related subreddits

• r/ChronicPain
• r/Life
• r/sixwordstories
• r/LifeAdvice
• r/DecidingToBeBetter
• r/adhdwomen
• r/depression_help
• r/Procrastinationism
• r/HomeschoolRecovery
• r/motivation

Common questions