Here’s a great talk about being a disciplined musician by drummer Dante Roberson. The meaning of discipline here is keeping time and playing for the song, not the other kinds of discipline many musicians have trouble with.
Practicing playing to a click track is one of the most important things you can do as a drummer, if you don’t play impeccable time, what use are you?
People like to moan about how using a metronome in practice or performance makes music mechanical, limits expression and even robs them of their souls. A click can make your playing mechanical and limit your expression if you haven’t spent enough time getting used to having a relentless pulse in your ear and you’re paying too much attention to it. The trick is to practice playing time with a metronome until you are comfortable enough to let it be part of your temporal machinery without it taking any of your focus away from what you’re playing.
Check out Dante’s talk here and then go practice with a click. (Note, just to nitpick, what he refers to as the Funky Drummer groove isn’t.)