"Play more, play only a limited number of champions, die less, learn to farm in custom games, ward a lot" - these are tips you are going to read when you look up typical "Improve Your ELO in These 10 Easy Steps!" articles. In general, those tips are valuable, but they cannot teach you good decision making when you are in a ranked game - after all, every game of League of Legends is different, and to win most of them, you cannot simply apply "These 10 Easy Steps" without any obstacles in every game. You might simply get outclassed in lane due to your worse skillshot accuracy compared to your lane opponent, or their jungler continuously camps your lane, making it difficult to keep up in CS and lane pressure. So how do you still make a difference in these situations? The answer is through more discipline than your opponents.

Now, what does discipline mean?

Discipline in general means having a certain goal and not getting distracted on the way to reach that goal, controlling yourself to not pursuit other things that may harm it. It is important in all parts of life, and easily projected on all types of video games. In those, you will always have to ask yourself "am I going to have more fun doing weird stuff (like going into a 5v1 as Illaoi because I've seen enough montages of Illaoi pentakills to know what I'm doing) or winning?"

Going into the League of Legends related part of it though, it is easier to explain from the opposite direction. Everyone reading this has already been in situations in which people in their game lacked discipline. For example, your team sieges a tower and then someone in your team dives with the tower being at 20% HP, resulting in a throw. Or your 0-2 toplane Olaf, who tries to dive an enemy low HP Nasus without calculating his ultimate. Or someone on the enemy team who prematurely starts the Baron despite being told not to, which damages the whole enemy team and ends in an ace and a Baron for your team. Basically every situation where someone thought "I maybe shouldn't do that", does it anyways, and after it failed thinks, "I shouldn't have done that."

Discipline means knowing what to do in a situation and sticking to the plan instead of getting distracted by a friendly Morgana binding hitting their support. It means playing according to your own strengths compared to your opponents' instead of engaging into fog of war because "What can happen?". It also means not chasing the 20% HP enemy Janna as the team tank while your Miss Fortune in the backline gets dove by an Amumu and a Renekton. You know you need your ADC alive after the fight to push towers more than the Janna dead. So why are you chasing her?

So, how do you gain more discipline then?

You need to actively influence your thought process while playing the game. From spectating and talking to a lot of my Silver- and Bronze ranked friends, I am always surprised by how much they know about the game. The only issue is they don't apply it, because they don't think properly while in-game - it's like them perfectly setting up a mathematical formula, but then failing to calculate it. What you basically have to do every single time you think "This is the right play, but this play is a lot more fun" in a ranked game is opt for the right play. It is a lot more rewarding in the long term (winning is more fun than insec-ing that Amumu into your team, right?). Not going for that cannon minion because you know the jungler is around your lane sucks because you give up a nice amount of gold, but thinking about the risk involved versus the reward involved enough to not take the minion and die makes you win the game in the long term if you make enough of those right decisions during it. Keep in mind that your opponents may also lack discipline. They are going to stupidly dive when ahead. They are going to not sweep the Baron of wards because they are too lazy, resulting into a good fighting opportunity. They are also going to overextend for that cannon minion ("I need it for my Null-Magic Mantle powerspike!"), and that is your moment to punish them. Give them a demonstration of your superior judgement!

It also means being constantly critical about what you did, whether it is after a successful play or a failed one. There are going to be situations where you did the right thing with all the information you have, but still die or give up a tower. And there are also going to be situations where you get away with making a wrong decision and still getting rewarded for it. If you want to climb fast, you need to analyze yourself in real-time, and learn from both.

Sometimes, discipline also means treating every opponent you meet in a game with respect; Even pro players regularly get punished because they disrespect their opponents too much. A recent example would be the following situation at the World Championship 2016, where C9's Jensen disrespects Faker's Syndra stun, then dies because of jungler follow-up (which he saw on the map 10-20 seconds before he got stunned) and loses the lane really hard afterwards (which ultimately leads to losing the game).

<iframe style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/UAqjPYnYnU0" width="510" height="350"></iframe>in this video at 16:05 (5:20 in-game time), Jensen disrespects the Syndra/Elise combo from SKT.

If you disrespect your opponent, it means you underestimate their ability to beat you, which very often leads to... well, them beating you. Keep in mind that you are in that ranked game because your skill at this point is similar to the other people in the game! They could be thinking about the matchup, the jungler help, the CS just as much as you do, in which case not estimating champion and player strength correctly can cost you a kill, a tower or a dragon. Be disciplined and wait for moments where you know the opponent just outplayed himself instead of just hoping it. You are definitely not miles better than your opponent, otherwise you would just crush him and win the game through a basic snowball. Know the full extent of your own strength, or, as Lee Sin puts it: "Master yourself, master the enemy."

Discipline is not everything in League of Legends - but it is something basically every high-ranked player has in game compared to low-ranked players. Knowing the game and being mechanically good is only half of what makes a good player. Applying what you learned in the right way without doing stupid things that you actually know better not to do is going to get you very far.

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