12 ms·

Against Discipline

166 points by robtherobber 4y ago

zdragnar 4y ago
I think the author is confusing discipline with... something. Discipline is not simply doing things you don't like. It's a trained mentality that helps you do what needs doing (or not doing, such as procrastinating). Making some activities more playful, and therefore pleasant, has it's own merits, but life isn't so kind as to make the whole of your existence a playground. At some point, you really do have to buckle down, whether or not it is fun. A disciplined attitude will definitely be a benefit.
- eckza 4y ago
  Get comfortable being uncomfortable, and you'll never be uncomfortable. Whenever someone starts to talk about their own problems and shortcomings, and then tries to get _you_ to agree that those shortcomings aren't really _their fault_, be careful; not only are you being lied to by them, but they are also being lied to by them. And if they get _you_ to concur, then the defense against change has succeeded. The status quo remains untouched. If this lady ever starts swimming more often, it won't be because a bunch of other people agreed with her idea that discipline is the enemy; it will be because she found some.
  - rob_c 4y ago
    > not only are you being lied to by them, but they are also being lied to by them. In a nutshell. Perfectly phrased. > if they get _you_ to concur, then the defense against change has succeeded. This is (unfortunately) a very common trap people fall into psychologically I'm convinced. And I can point to when in life I've done it, and continue to do it. It seems more related to 'feeling good' and then finding a way of (mentally) rewarding the fact that you didn't do something that you should have done. Unfortunately, in large doses and in the long run, it's not very healthy and it's very close to how people get wrapped in conspiracy theories. E.g. it's not my fault everyone is against me. Why should I try when they're just going to reset the economy. Why should I have done differently, they still would have done X, Y, Z to me... It's a comfort blanket pretending that there is some external barrier preventing you from doing things even if they are normally enjoyable.
  - achenet 4y ago
    > If this lady ever starts swimming more often, it won't be because a bunch of other people agreed with her idea that discipline is the enemy; No, it will be because she tells herself "hey self! let's go swimming, it'll be fun", as opposed to "hey, we HAVE to go swimming". The whole point of the article is about managing one's 'inner child'/monkey mind via effective salesmanship.
- copperx 4y ago
  Yes. Discipline is purposeful pain seeking. Procrastination is pain avoidance. Accepting that pain is inevitable is not easy, and it gets harder in an environment that caters to comfort. Surprisingly, I have done my best work when depressed: I knew I would be in pain whether I was procrastinating or not, so I sought the fleeting euphoria one gets when a task is completed. When I'm on antidepressants, I feel almost no emotional pain, and I avoid tasks that can be painful, which means I don't achieve much. I just want to continue feeling no pain.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    I wish that had been the case for me. Anxiety and depression go hand in hand with me, so being apathetic and procrastinating via escapism (games and fiction books) were my only solace. As you can imagine, that spiraled out of control rather quickly. It took finally accepting that I needed structure to start turning things around (along with medicine). I can hold the anxiety and depression at bay if I don't procrastinate, but I suspect it will forever be a temptation to take the easy way out when I get stressed about anything. Short term pleasure is easy to come by, but discipline is thev only path to contentment, joy and peace for me.
  - filoleg 4y ago
    I havent thought about it much before. But the part about being your most productive and doing the best work when depressed is a bit too relatable. I can confidently say my productivity and quality of output just shined their brightest in the few lowest points i had.
  - rob_c 4y ago
    > Yes. Discipline is purposeful pain seeking. Procrastination is pain avoidance. ? I'm not sure I can ever agree to that. Discipline is more about having commitment to a thing. It's not about grasping nettles each day until you develop a callus, it's about doing something you have some interest in some way until you get better at it. No professional sports player ends up professional in the field because they hate sports. No professional musician ends up that good and trained because they hate music. No scientist ends up good at their job because they hate it. It's not about seeking pain, if you've convinced yourself it is you will likely burn out as you're not following something you actually enjoy or have an interest in. You may have found disciplin in that, but frankly it will just be 'disciplin to embrase pain' which may be another skill in and of itself. Don't get me wrong, loving science doesn't prepare you for the hours you will spend getting your head around the maths that underpin it. No love of sports will prepare you for waking up with your muscles exhausted. No love of music will prepare you for freaking out when you can't get that the right notes or timing on a piece after days of effort. These are not the things you're developing a disciplin in. And imo is dangerous to mistake the fact that tou are. You're developing a disciplin in the topics you enjoy and discovering the real world (unfortunately) isn't all about disney musicals. (Which if you assume it is, sorry buddy, you're not going to be randomly selected to join NASA to go to the moon tomorrow, you're not a trained test pilot/astronaught)
- astro19238_ 4y ago
  Discipline has no value of it's own. It's a method, among others. There's no way to deduce from a perfectly orgamized garage weather it is because the oganizer had discipline or if he had fun.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    That presupposes that any activity can be fun for any person[1]. I simply do not believe that to be true. I might not be able to tell if your garage is clean because you find cleaning to be fun, but there's a fair bet the inverse will be apparent. 1: Perhaps I should rephrase this as every activity for any person. At some point, you'll need to do something you don't find fun, and can't be gamified.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      Every activity is fun relative to worse activities. So when confronted about something you don't find fun, you can perhaps frame it in a way to make it still preferable to something else. Perhaps through boredom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iow5V3Qlvwo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iow5V3Qlvwo
- phnofive 4y ago
  I'm afraid you're right: > The problem is that the person we’re actually rebelling against is ourselves. Yes, you manage that feeling with decision-making that's outcome oriented. Willpower, discipline, self-control, whatever you want to call it, is of course in limited supply, but for many, it is also trainable and simply neglected.
- makach 4y ago
  I agree. I was expecting something else. The real gold from the article comes, as many other times, from the aggregated knowledge from all our minds moderated here.
- deleted 4y ago
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- adrianmsmith 4y ago
  > I think the author is confusing discipline with... something. Discipline is not simply doing things you don't like. It's a trained mentality that helps you do what needs doing (or not doing, such as procrastinating). The article is about author saying that she can't even persuade herself to do the things she does like.
- CaptWillard 4y ago
  While I can relate to the author, I also agree with this. As much as I'd like to remember in the moment that riding my bike or some creative project is fun, and get excited to get up and at it ... I don't. In my better times, discipline has worked like a starter motor, getting me over that initial resistance in a way that no conscious thought really could.
Animats 4y ago
Genius does what it must. Talent does what it can. You do what you're told.
- deleted 4y ago
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- neotrope 4y ago
  love this. had to look it up https://www.quora.com/What-are-your-thoughts-on-Talent-does-what-it-can-genius-does-what-it-must-Edward-George-Bulwer-Lytton-1803-1873-1 https://www.quora.com/What-are-your-thoughts-on-Talent-does-...
  - ppppwwwww 4y ago
    It is interesting to see how different the responses in the Quora thread are to those in this thread.
- LesZedCB 4y ago
  i would prefer not to.
diego 4y ago
Discipline is what you have to use when you don't have a habit. Once you have built the habit to do the thing, discipline doesn't enter the picture. It's the default. You don't buy candy because buying candy is not a thing you do. You go running because it's 9 am on a Monday and that's what you do every Monday at 9 am.
- majormajor 4y ago
  This always is made to sound easy but I can count on one hand the number of "habits" I successfully built around things I didn't want to do. Getting up in the morning to go to work vs skipping morning classes back in college is the main one. But it's still unpleasant and I still just do it because that's how I get paid, not because it's a "default." "Not eating as much junk food" was a slightly easier one - because you don't buy it once when doing groceries and then it's not available during the week - but exercise or other un-fun decisions you have to make every day? Nope.
  - kalyantm 4y ago
    I agree with both your sentiments actually. A lot of the times, I do not like going to the gym on certain days. Like Friday morning leg days - I do not like it to this day. But I go anyway - why? Because friday 7 am is leg training day and it's like a habit/ritual at this point. I guess that's the aspect of discipline I like. Similar with moving away from my home office at 7pm. I have just trained myself to not go in there after 7pm, resisting the urge to check Slack or anything. I'll get a call if anything blows up, so it's become a habit at this point to not even glance over to my home office after 7pm
  - chillacy 4y ago
    I started having more success with setting up habits after reading up on habit formation science. The junk food example is one aspect on frequency and availability. There are other aspects to habit formation like understanding how habits are triggered (by system1) and creating or removing triggers, how location can play into habit triggers, how habits can be more easily bootstrapped on top of existing habits, etc I liked the book Good Habits Bad Habits which is more science based than the pop stuff but I would guess that Atomic Habits covers similar stuff.
m3kw9 4y ago
I think this article is a very narrow topic in how it once you can get yourself to enjoy that “tough task”, it excuses the need for discipline. It’s one of many ways to get yourself to do something, won’t work in a lot of tasks, or even very difficult. You’d need discipline just to try to make it like a game.
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Cupertino95014 4y ago
There is a lot of wisdom in this. "Discipline" is quite often "punitive." You think "if I don't force myself, I won't do it." The more you practice this, the less you trust yourself: "I'm bad, and if I'm not constantly on guard, I'll relapse into badness." If you think you'll never clean the garage unless you force yourself, you foreclose any chance that some day, you'll think "You know what? I feel like cleaning the garage right now." "That'll never happen!" you think? Such a low opinion you have of yourself.
- johnchristopher 4y ago
  "Discipline sets you free" -- Jocko Willink
  - Cupertino95014 4y ago
    "Freedom sets you free" -- someone else
- JetAlone 4y ago
  >The more you practice this, the less you trust yourself: "I'm bad, and if I'm not constantly on guard, I'll relapse into badness." This is learned helplessness. The solution I have found to that is to trust that if I try, for reasons unknown to my weak, finite self, things will be made possible for some degree of success and it will be enough. Then work backwards after a certain amount of time trying, look for something good. Embrace a happy memory or some tangible reward from the period of effort as enough for now, be grateful for it, and keep trying.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    Sounds like you've found a solution that's better than discipline.
    - JetAlone 4y ago
      I did give it a try, the whole Jocko Willink "wake up at 4:30 in the morning" shpiel. It works at first, but it's not sustainable. Someone or something is going to keep me awake significantly beyond 9 PM and I'd need to spend weeks running a "waking time" deficit pulling back the sleep schedule, so for my purposes it's simply an antipattern. Trust and gratitude are like a backdoor to acting as if I had discipline. I find it's easier to cultivate them being theist, but the approach should not be utterly anathema to anyone who disbelieves the "black pill" ideology. The people who do believe that spin what may well be real disadvantages into a convenient license to do basically nothing about anything important.
nine_k 4y ago
The thing about play is that it's not mandatory. When it's not fun, you are free to not do it. This is why it's a luxury, and most often it's not a thing you get paid to do. — One does not really need money. — It's fun to say so when you got the money. — It is, indeed!
TimTheTinker 4y ago
If life were a zero-sum game and I had no regard for others, I'd be glad about others not being self-disciplined, as that would mean more room for me to succeed by being disciplined myself. But it's not a zero-sum game. The more of us who work hard at important things in life, the better off we all will be. So please do apply self-discipline in your life. Having no discipline is like having a car with an engine that stops running frequently and won't exceed 2000 RPM. Hard work does get easier in time, like working a muscle. And just like working out, you need to pace yourself -- approach hard work wisely and don't overdo it, even if you're enjoying it immensely. I'm so glad my mom forced me to practice the piano - I wouldn't be the musician I am today without it... and I have no regrets about working hard at front-end web development. I owe my career in large part to the many hours I spent poring over JavaScript: The Definitive Guide and writing SPA web apps while others at my workplace were still using ASP and WebForms.
- jack_pp 4y ago
  I don't think you've understood the article or you do not have the problems the author is having. Disciplining myself is in a way like dealing with a child. If I force my inner child to do something it will resist, shut down, burn me out. The problem is I can't be creative if I can't convince my inner child that the activity we're doing is fun so I have to frame whatever work I'm doing in a playful way otherwise my inner child will go ”boooooooriiiiing” and either make me waste time on social media or, if I catch myself, battle me for control which is very tiring
  - manholio 4y ago
    I think they understand it, but maybe they believe that advice is misleading. If you are enjoying it and having fun, then you are in your comfort zone, and that means you are improving at a much lower rate than your potential. This is true for any activity, from physical fitness to academic pursuits. If you are in zone dominated by System 1 thinking and System 2 is on pause, then you are not building skill. There is nothing wrong with having fun in life for things that are not critical to you, but your core areas are developed with effort and focus. I have not met a single successful self-made person that found success without struggle and focus on their craft.
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josefrichter 4y ago
I think the self-help literature consensus is not on discipline, but on habits. Especially “atomic habits” are a popular term. While “discipline“ implies conscious effort, “habit” aims to move into subconscious, I guess.
closedloop129 4y ago
>What if the moment our better self suggests an early bedtime or a lap in the pool or writing a poem, it starts to sound like a scolding parent telling us what we ought to do. So we become a little like a stubborn child, asserting our independence by digging in and not moving. It's Freudian psychology [1] that adults are the ones who have integrated their super-ego into their ego. If there is a separation between 'self' and 'better self', then the development doesn't seem to be finished. Like the author, I don't like to do the stuff that the better self suggests. I can trick myself to follow the better self with discipline or by gamifying the task, but I don't know how to overcome the separation and make those tasks 'mine'. Does anybody know how to do the integration? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyche_(psychology)#Freudian_school https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyche_(psychology)#Freudian_s...
- catchclose8919 4y ago
  > then the development doesn't seem to be finished It's never finished, that's the point, if you want to keep growing the a part of you must separate a bit and drag itself towards the better possible future, then later drag the other lump of you either gently or kicking and screaming. But this "non integration" seems to be the "engine for growth". Even our society as a whole embraces a similar mechanism to "force growth". You can have integration and comfort, but... you'll need to oursource the growth and suffering that comes with it (think of the billionaines chillin' and vibin' while striving engineers and tormented artists do the real work towards the betterment of humanity). That's kind of the sad truth, some need to be non-integrated and under some amount of suffering for the wheels to keep turning.
- ordu 4y ago
  > It's Freudian psychology [1] that adults are the ones who have integrated their super-ego into their ego. It is impossible, if I understand Freud. Ego is defined as a place of a conflict between SuperEgo and Id. SuperEgo and Id are both play their essential roles, they are needed components, and the conflict between them stems from the fact that they are not the same. So the conflict is inevitable and Ego is the place to resolve it. > Like the author, I don't like to do the stuff that the better self suggests. What do you mean by a "better self"? Stuff like to make something nice to yourself, especially at the physical level is mostly about Id in a Freudian psychology. It is the work of Id to seek pleasant physical sensations. But SuperEgo says that you need to conform to social norms and to not allow yourself to force other people to have sex with you every time your Id feels that way. So Id and SuperEgo clash in Ego which finally makes a decision. The idea to let yourself to take pleasure going to bed early instead of resisting it seems to me as an Id idea. Though the idea to read twitter a little more before going to bed is also essentially the seeking of an instant gratification. I don't know how psychoanalysis handle it: a conflict of Id vs Id?
CloseChoice 4y ago
I just want to stress one thing: starting some activity is hard. Once I started an activity it is usually not that unpleasurable at all, even things like doing taxes, cleaning, writing this email I tried avoiding for weeks, etc. For me that means that reducing the barrier to start is the most important aspect to get things done, gamification (as suggested in the article) can help of course.
langsoul-com 4y ago
Welcome to hustle porn culture. Where your self worth is derived from what you're currently doing. Do nothing = worthless.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  Interesting contrast between this thread and the hustle porn thread. I suspect it depends on individual creativity. Some people have very little and don't miss it, and a hyper-managed & disciplined life makes them feel like they're achieving important things. Others do and they're always going to find it harder to find a balance between getting useful boring shit done and inventing and creating cool original stuff - an inherently non-linear process, which needs fallow periods and down time and a certain amount of chaos, as well as work and practice.
shahinghasemi 4y ago
Without discipline you get to nowhere. At the start discipline is hard because we are a human which our brain wants to do the easiest task available to preserve energy. to prevent this situation we have to train our brain to obey us not otherwise. repeating this pattern lets your mind knows that you are the boss not itself. The critical part here is *you have to separate yourself from your mind/brain*, in other words you are not your mind/emotions. You can control them or otherwise being over controlled by them.
- danielbln 4y ago
  I don't think "control" is the right term, maybe influence. Thoughts and emotions arise constantly, you can detach yourself from them, observe them and act accordingly. Trying to control a thought or emotion is a fool's errand.
thriftwy 4y ago
There's this metaphor where you have a King (discipline) and a Queen (spontaneousness). They have to "marry" in order for you to be the most productive person. If your King tries to command your Queen and she refuses, it's not going to go well. As the author has already seen, it's quite hard to go to sleep or have fun by a decree.
rob_c 4y ago
Not to be funny, but how is this not a case of self-inflicted victimhood? This is much less about disciplin and more just pining over spilt milk.
jiggywiggy 4y ago
Timing is hard. Sometimes I break up my day relaxing I come back and I'm super productive. But often, it's harder to get back to productivity. Especially when I got into social mode, it's hard to get back to focus mode. If I need more stress relief time I've easier to finish things in mornings, and then just do rest of day or days off.
- randallsquared 4y ago
  Yeah, I was struck by how "surely a refreshing swim would have improved my ability to focus" revealed a stark difference in psychologies.
danwee 4y ago
I guess somehow when I was a child my parents thought me something I cannot fully understand now. Nowadays I cannot enjoy entertaining myself if I haven't first finished my "homework" (as an adult, my homework is: work, chores,... the usual stuff). So, I have this kind of "discipline" not because I enjoy doing "homework" but because I want to fully enjoy my free time without thinking "damn, when I'm done playing video games I have to wash the dishes". As a kid I could never understood the other kids that on a Friday afternoon were going out to play knowing that they had homework to do in the weekend. I was like "I cannot enjoy playing basketball now knowing that later on or tomorrow I'll have to do the maths homework... so let's first finish the maths homework and then I'll have the entire day/weekend to do whatever the hell I want". Not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. It's normal to me at my age, though.
- PebblesRox 4y ago
  I have this mindset but the problem with it is that in my current life situation (working from home with 5 kids), the amount of work I have is unbounded. I am bad at taking time for high quality rest when I feel burdened by the chores I could be doing (which are endless and recurring) so I end up wasting time in ways that's not actually fun or restful.
zorrolovsky 4y ago
This topic has been on my mind for a couple years now, and it's interesting how I came to a similar conclusion as the author. There are a ton of things I really enjoy doing: running, boxing, playing music, writing, drawing... however, I always struggle to get started. It always feels like a chore and I'm baffled as to why. I should be excited about initiating any of those activities, but I'm not! The moment they enter a to-do list, I know they also enter the realm of procrastination and avoidance. It's weird. As I grow older and more experience, I realize "it's all in the mind". If you have the right mindset towards the activity you want to do, you have 80%+ of the job done. Using running as an example, I went from running a couple days per week to running every day. Why? Simply put, a mentality shift. Before, I would think about it as "I should run at least 30 mins, 3 days per week". Now, I think about it as: "Let's move a bit, go to that nice canal by the river". In a nutshell... I moved my mindset from "I must be disciplined" to "let's play", pretty much as the author states.
- highfrequency 4y ago
  > The moment a task enters a to-do list, I know it also enters the realm of procrastination and avoidance. It's weird. Well put! It's like our mind is telling itself: "if I need to be told to do this and reminded to do it, it must not be very fun."
- Jorchime 4y ago
  How do you apply the mind-shift to projects where you have to finish something in order to advance? I have a couple of songs here that need mixing, but since they entered my to-do list, they are in procrastination realm ... But sometimes the thing you like is mostly about doing the thing and leaves little room for playing.
martopix 4y ago
It's not clear to me what the author is suggesting. Yes, I agree we focus a bit too much on self improvement and perhaps should relax about certain things. But if I start to believe that, for medical reasons, or any other reason, I really should go to the gym, and I struggle doing it because I feel it's not my environment, how do I start without a bit of self-discipline? I could choose another sport, one that is actually fun and I look forward to -- I've done that, but even in that case, sometimes I feel lazy. What is it that I should do?
harryvederci 4y ago
Interesting read about overcoming resistance for creative work: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. It kinda has the opposite view of this "Against Discipline" post :)
chucktingle 4y ago
Love the false dichotomy of you either having to work hard or being yourself. People will go at amazing lengths to justify being lazy. :)
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Claude_Shannon 4y ago
This article felt like a way to lying to oneself. "I'm not lazy, I just want to be myself!". Life is painful. Sorry, that's the truth. If you won't work, someone else WILL and they WILL take your job.
- _oghd 4y ago
  wow, astute observation. i'm sure the author never realized that life is painful, or that the capitalist mode of production requires productive labor in a free market in order to survive. i'm sure they didn't bother to write this whole article because they have crushing anxiety about getting things done _in spite of_ the very astute facts you noted, and still found difficulty and failure. bravo. you really just see the world the way things are, ignatius. welcome to the confederacy
platistocrates 4y ago
This comment section is depressing. We take ourselves too seriously.
- PebblesRox 4y ago
  It's weird to me because so many of the commenters seem to take the author's point to be "no discipline ever" when she was actually talking about a very specific set of circumstances in which she considers discipline to be counter-productive. But almost nobody is engaging with that idea!
jakzurr 4y ago
The issues in the article seem quite complex to me. But every time I re-read the first three paragraphs, I cannot help but think, "Irina Dumitrescu is a sage."
Barrin92 4y ago
>"few people really need advice about how to live their lives. They know how they ought to be living their lives. The trick is learning how to follow their own best instinct." I don't think it's that simple. I think it's worth questioning whether the wants you have that you're battling so hard with are actually your wants rather than the desires of others. It's not so easy to figure out what your own instinct is. I think what manifests as a need for discipline quite often is people trying to mold themselves into something that they simply aren't without recognizing that fact. The author mentions sleep hygiene and that is an example for me. I've struggled with proper 'sleep hygiene' a lot, and of course I thought i just need more discipline. During the pandemic doing remote work I figured out that I actually love having a really weird sleep schedule, it's just hard to square with an ordinary work day. I think it's actually easy to declare oneself lazy and in need of discipline, rather than changing things up to do what you genuinely want to do.
tester756 4y ago
>I know, too, that slipping into bed is one of the most delicious sensations there is, so why do I postpone that feeling every night, as though determined to be miserable and tired the next day? hits too close to home
lotw_dot_site 4y ago
Does anybody know what the first popular "Against Something" was? My guess is it was Feyerabend's Against Method...
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BirAdam 4y ago
Discipline is a multifaceted thing. The discipline required for success is not merely a "go put yourself in the chair and type it out", nor is making the task "fun" or "play" quite the same thing. Discipline is also for the mind itself. To be more successful, one must curate the thoughts that he/she has. If there is a thought that is particularly destructive it might be time to apply some CBT/meditation/therapy to figure out why that thought is there and how to make it stop. There is a difference between doing the things one must do and fighting oneself the entire time, and doing the things that one must do and not minding doing so. In one of these, you have imposed discipline, and in the other you have self-discipline. I am still not as productive as many people I know, but if instead of comparing myself to others I compare to who I was vs who I am... I have made outrageous improvements. EDIT: To me, the single most glorious thing about being a human is that I can choose to change my mind and then actually do so. It may be difficult, it may take time, but I can change my nature unlike the other creatures of this Earth who seem to be a bit more static.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  If you don't mind doing the things you're doing, is "discipline" really a useful word for describing this? I'm not necessarily disagreeing; it just looks like an argument about definitions, and perhaps a bit pointless. Though I agree that CBT, meditation and introspection should be a part of your "making sure I don't find it painful to do some worthwhile things" toolkit, which is a very useful point.
yessirwhatever 4y ago
Well, discipline is nothing more really than a delayed gratification rule set. Kids refuse a bath usually not because they’re rebelling against themselves or the parents, but because they don’t get the concept of delayed gratification yet. You make little sacrifices in the present to ensure better future. This is going to sound slightly harsh, and by no means it’s an invitation to stop thinking or pondering, I think it’s kind of good to be skeptical and think of possible major oversights in the way we live our life, but this kind of hairsplitting wordsmithing is useless, and possibly what is causing this person to neglect that discipline is just a helpful concept. Reading “an embarrassing amount” of self-help books is not a good sign either, but yes, the majority of that crap is just that; crap. No one can teach you or force you to like exercise, until you do it and like it, then you understand, then you’ll probably fall off the wagon a couple of times, but at least you’ll know that you’re just being lazy, and that’s fine sometimes, but mostly you’ll have to gain experience in fighting laziness tendencies, and it’s probably harder for some people than others depending on many variables I can’t even list. Biggest factor for people not having discipline (or not wanting to have it, not liking it, etc…) is that they want a quick solution that makes sense, where the answer is that it’s always difficult, you just have to learn to enjoy it and find ways to come to terms with it. Practice more and do it again. The author is not rebelling against discipline, but really against the self help industry.
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- faceplanted 4y ago
  > Kids refuse a bath usually not because they’re rebelling against themselves or the parents, but because they don’t get the concept of delayed gratification yet I'm confused by this thought because there _isn't_ any delayed gratification in kids taking a bath, as she said, kids love it once they're in there, and they're usually not even running their own bath if they're the age I think she's talking about, so where's the delay, walking to the bathroom? There's certainly less delay than going swimming, and kids love that too. Getting kids into the bath, even though they like it once they're in there, and given, as she says in the article, that they've liked it before isn't a problem of delayed gratification. It's a problem of routine and requirement, of apathy and change. You have to stop whatever it is you're doing and go take a bath _every day_, my nephew absolutely loves going to the park, but if we did it every day there'd be so many days where he doesn't feel like it, even if he loves it every time he gets there. This is exactly the point the author is making, discipline is about doing things that need doing, the question is whether it's still discipline if it's something you're doing only for your own enjoyment, and whether finding enjoyment out of things you need to do is enough.
sebastianconcpt 4y ago
Generalized too much. Discipline is nothing but execution on an optimization. It would be a mistake by shallow analysis to blame discipline for an optimization that is not taking you to the destiny and journey you want in your life. She is totally right about Cross Fit, tho. That injury factory only benefits physiotherapists.
bslorence 4y ago
I suspect most of us have a serious imbalance in our lives between productive work, leisure, and recreation. See Louis Kelso and Mortimer Adler's book "The Capitalist Manifesto" for a rich discussion of these topics. They define 'leisure' somewhat counter-intuitively as work, but the sort of work that elevates the mind or advances the common good -- as opposed to the productive work one is required to do in order to earn a living. Leisure for them is very different from recreation, which is a kind of rest -- think board games, light reading, hiking, Netflix, etc. Everyone needs all three of these things in their lives (leisure, productive work, and recreation) but we often get them confused or end up overemphasizing one to the neglect of the others. I wonder if OP is saying something similar or at least resonant with this -- basically that we shouldn't treat everything in our lives like productive work.
derbOac 4y ago
Discipline is really about greater long term gains versus lesser short term costs. Determining whether the long term gains are actually greater in any given situation is one of the challenges.
swayvil 4y ago
Delayed gratification? That's one way to put it. Another way is "different gratification". Instead of eating chocolate you are eating a dream of future chocolate. So becoming disciplined could be called developing a taste for dreams. When the glow of accomplishing a step in your 12 step plan towards chocolate-accquirement is actually more satisfying than eating the chocolate, a shift in taste has occurred. And they call you "disciplined".
- yessirwhatever 4y ago
  That's something totally different. Delay of gratification, the act of resisting an impulse to take an immediately available reward in the hope of obtaining a more-valued reward in the future. The ability to delay gratification is essential to self-regulation, or self-control, aka discipline.
  - swayvil 4y ago
    What's the difference? In either case you are preferring the dream of future chocolate over actual immediate chocolate.
    - yessirwhatever 4y ago
      Discipline has nothing to do with whether you think chocolate is good or not, or if you should eat it or not.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
As a fairly "disciplined" person, it's easy for me to say "Yeah, but..." to this, but being open to serendipity has real benefits, when it comes to creativity and "big ideas." But she is not just talking about that. She's also talking about letting go of discipline, as tool for self-improvement, and mental health. I can see that. It would not work for me, but it is not a bad thing. The issue that I always have, about people prescribing What Works For Me, to others, is that it often doesn't work, in other people. Not judging others, when something that we do/take pride in does not apply, can be difficult. I enjoy living in a world of variety. People that are different from me, make my life richer. In order to have this richness, I need to accept those that differ from me. That can be a challenge. Getting back to "discipline," I have heard a quote: "Winners do what they have to do, and losers do what they want to do." I'm not a fan of the terms "winners" and "losers," but that's just me, and the approach I take. The quote does have a good message, if we don't get hung up on the terms used to describe people.
phkahler 4y ago
This got me thinking. For regularly scheduled activities don't tell yourself or others "I have to go XXX today" but instead "I get to go XXX today". This changes an obligation into an opportunity. You may laugh, but I've found the way I phrase things - even to myself - can have an effect on how I feel about them.
swayvil 4y ago
Sounds more like an issue of perspective. She repeatedly states that once she overcomes her resistence she's happy she did the thing. So she just needs to be able to be not-swimming yet able to see the fun of swimming. Some kind of broadening of perspective is called for. To contain these disparate states simultaneously. I think this would be the opposite of focus. Which could be the central problem. We love focus, or something.
fleddr 4y ago
The dutch word "prestatiemaatschappij" is fitting here, meaning "performance society". It suggests that life is fast, nothing but duties, must-dos, which when fully internalized will also apply to leisure. Relaxing is a task as is keeping in touch with friends. As you engage in the task, your thoughts are with the next task. You're never in the moment, nothing is spontaneous, it's robotic. You're juggling 10 balls and are doing an adequate job in not dropping any of them. You master a "full" life. But you don't. You've removed life itself.
jgerrish 4y ago
"So we become a little like a stubborn child, asserting our independence by digging in and not moving." Some people look outside at the pool and hear the play people call them racist terms. They get bullied into things they dont want. They try over and over, and they couldn't help the racist people be better. And the adults they went to for help laughed and joked about them. Saucy unfunny jokes that are going to stick with them for life, jokes that minimize their own stories. So they're exhausted. So exhausted. Some of them didn't even want to be authors, they said no to typewriters at garage sales, but still it didn't stop. But they won't give up. Life is wonderful and goes on for several more years. And the crappy part is people like that, who had a history of voting for progressive causes, lose a little empathy and trust. Because they said stop.

166 points by robtherobber 4y ago

I think the author is confusing discipline with... something. Discipline is not simply doing things you don't like. It's a trained mentality that helps you do what needs doing (or not doing, such as procrastinating). Making some activities more playful, and therefore pleasant, has it's own merits, but life isn't so kind as to make the whole of your existence a playground. At some point, you really do have to buckle down, whether or not it is fun. A disciplined attitude will definitely be a benefit.

eckza 4y ago
Get comfortable being uncomfortable, and you'll never be uncomfortable. Whenever someone starts to talk about their own problems and shortcomings, and then tries to get _you_ to agree that those shortcomings aren't really _their fault_, be careful; not only are you being lied to by them, but they are also being lied to by them. And if they get _you_ to concur, then the defense against change has succeeded. The status quo remains untouched. If this lady ever starts swimming more often, it won't be because a bunch of other people agreed with her idea that discipline is the enemy; it will be because she found some.
- rob_c 4y ago
  > not only are you being lied to by them, but they are also being lied to by them. In a nutshell. Perfectly phrased. > if they get _you_ to concur, then the defense against change has succeeded. This is (unfortunately) a very common trap people fall into psychologically I'm convinced. And I can point to when in life I've done it, and continue to do it. It seems more related to 'feeling good' and then finding a way of (mentally) rewarding the fact that you didn't do something that you should have done. Unfortunately, in large doses and in the long run, it's not very healthy and it's very close to how people get wrapped in conspiracy theories. E.g. it's not my fault everyone is against me. Why should I try when they're just going to reset the economy. Why should I have done differently, they still would have done X, Y, Z to me... It's a comfort blanket pretending that there is some external barrier preventing you from doing things even if they are normally enjoyable.
- achenet 4y ago
  > If this lady ever starts swimming more often, it won't be because a bunch of other people agreed with her idea that discipline is the enemy; No, it will be because she tells herself "hey self! let's go swimming, it'll be fun", as opposed to "hey, we HAVE to go swimming". The whole point of the article is about managing one's 'inner child'/monkey mind via effective salesmanship.
copperx 4y ago
Yes. Discipline is purposeful pain seeking. Procrastination is pain avoidance. Accepting that pain is inevitable is not easy, and it gets harder in an environment that caters to comfort. Surprisingly, I have done my best work when depressed: I knew I would be in pain whether I was procrastinating or not, so I sought the fleeting euphoria one gets when a task is completed. When I'm on antidepressants, I feel almost no emotional pain, and I avoid tasks that can be painful, which means I don't achieve much. I just want to continue feeling no pain.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  I wish that had been the case for me. Anxiety and depression go hand in hand with me, so being apathetic and procrastinating via escapism (games and fiction books) were my only solace. As you can imagine, that spiraled out of control rather quickly. It took finally accepting that I needed structure to start turning things around (along with medicine). I can hold the anxiety and depression at bay if I don't procrastinate, but I suspect it will forever be a temptation to take the easy way out when I get stressed about anything. Short term pleasure is easy to come by, but discipline is thev only path to contentment, joy and peace for me.
- filoleg 4y ago
  I havent thought about it much before. But the part about being your most productive and doing the best work when depressed is a bit too relatable. I can confidently say my productivity and quality of output just shined their brightest in the few lowest points i had.
- rob_c 4y ago
  > Yes. Discipline is purposeful pain seeking. Procrastination is pain avoidance. ? I'm not sure I can ever agree to that. Discipline is more about having commitment to a thing. It's not about grasping nettles each day until you develop a callus, it's about doing something you have some interest in some way until you get better at it. No professional sports player ends up professional in the field because they hate sports. No professional musician ends up that good and trained because they hate music. No scientist ends up good at their job because they hate it. It's not about seeking pain, if you've convinced yourself it is you will likely burn out as you're not following something you actually enjoy or have an interest in. You may have found disciplin in that, but frankly it will just be 'disciplin to embrase pain' which may be another skill in and of itself. Don't get me wrong, loving science doesn't prepare you for the hours you will spend getting your head around the maths that underpin it. No love of sports will prepare you for waking up with your muscles exhausted. No love of music will prepare you for freaking out when you can't get that the right notes or timing on a piece after days of effort. These are not the things you're developing a disciplin in. And imo is dangerous to mistake the fact that tou are. You're developing a disciplin in the topics you enjoy and discovering the real world (unfortunately) isn't all about disney musicals. (Which if you assume it is, sorry buddy, you're not going to be randomly selected to join NASA to go to the moon tomorrow, you're not a trained test pilot/astronaught)
astro19238_ 4y ago
Discipline has no value of it's own. It's a method, among others. There's no way to deduce from a perfectly orgamized garage weather it is because the oganizer had discipline or if he had fun.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  That presupposes that any activity can be fun for any person[1]. I simply do not believe that to be true. I might not be able to tell if your garage is clean because you find cleaning to be fun, but there's a fair bet the inverse will be apparent. 1: Perhaps I should rephrase this as every activity for any person. At some point, you'll need to do something you don't find fun, and can't be gamified.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    Every activity is fun relative to worse activities. So when confronted about something you don't find fun, you can perhaps frame it in a way to make it still preferable to something else. Perhaps through boredom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iow5V3Qlvwo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iow5V3Qlvwo
phnofive 4y ago
I'm afraid you're right: > The problem is that the person we’re actually rebelling against is ourselves. Yes, you manage that feeling with decision-making that's outcome oriented. Willpower, discipline, self-control, whatever you want to call it, is of course in limited supply, but for many, it is also trainable and simply neglected.
makach 4y ago
I agree. I was expecting something else. The real gold from the article comes, as many other times, from the aggregated knowledge from all our minds moderated here.
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adrianmsmith 4y ago
> I think the author is confusing discipline with... something. Discipline is not simply doing things you don't like. It's a trained mentality that helps you do what needs doing (or not doing, such as procrastinating). The article is about author saying that she can't even persuade herself to do the things she does like.
CaptWillard 4y ago
While I can relate to the author, I also agree with this. As much as I'd like to remember in the moment that riding my bike or some creative project is fun, and get excited to get up and at it ... I don't. In my better times, discipline has worked like a starter motor, getting me over that initial resistance in a way that no conscious thought really could.

Animats 4y ago

Genius does what it must. Talent does what it can. You do what you're told.

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neotrope 4y ago
love this. had to look it up https://www.quora.com/What-are-your-thoughts-on-Talent-does-what-it-can-genius-does-what-it-must-Edward-George-Bulwer-Lytton-1803-1873-1 https://www.quora.com/What-are-your-thoughts-on-Talent-does-...
- ppppwwwww 4y ago
  It is interesting to see how different the responses in the Quora thread are to those in this thread.
LesZedCB 4y ago
i would prefer not to.

diego 4y ago

Discipline is what you have to use when you don't have a habit. Once you have built the habit to do the thing, discipline doesn't enter the picture. It's the default. You don't buy candy because buying candy is not a thing you do. You go running because it's 9 am on a Monday and that's what you do every Monday at 9 am.

majormajor 4y ago
This always is made to sound easy but I can count on one hand the number of "habits" I successfully built around things I didn't want to do. Getting up in the morning to go to work vs skipping morning classes back in college is the main one. But it's still unpleasant and I still just do it because that's how I get paid, not because it's a "default." "Not eating as much junk food" was a slightly easier one - because you don't buy it once when doing groceries and then it's not available during the week - but exercise or other un-fun decisions you have to make every day? Nope.
- kalyantm 4y ago
  I agree with both your sentiments actually. A lot of the times, I do not like going to the gym on certain days. Like Friday morning leg days - I do not like it to this day. But I go anyway - why? Because friday 7 am is leg training day and it's like a habit/ritual at this point. I guess that's the aspect of discipline I like. Similar with moving away from my home office at 7pm. I have just trained myself to not go in there after 7pm, resisting the urge to check Slack or anything. I'll get a call if anything blows up, so it's become a habit at this point to not even glance over to my home office after 7pm
- chillacy 4y ago
  I started having more success with setting up habits after reading up on habit formation science. The junk food example is one aspect on frequency and availability. There are other aspects to habit formation like understanding how habits are triggered (by system1) and creating or removing triggers, how location can play into habit triggers, how habits can be more easily bootstrapped on top of existing habits, etc I liked the book Good Habits Bad Habits which is more science based than the pop stuff but I would guess that Atomic Habits covers similar stuff.

m3kw9 4y ago

I think this article is a very narrow topic in how it once you can get yourself to enjoy that “tough task”, it excuses the need for discipline. It’s one of many ways to get yourself to do something, won’t work in a lot of tasks, or even very difficult. You’d need discipline just to try to make it like a game.

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Cupertino95014 4y ago

There is a lot of wisdom in this. "Discipline" is quite often "punitive." You think "if I don't force myself, I won't do it." The more you practice this, the less you trust yourself: "I'm bad, and if I'm not constantly on guard, I'll relapse into badness." If you think you'll never clean the garage unless you force yourself, you foreclose any chance that some day, you'll think "You know what? I feel like cleaning the garage right now." "That'll never happen!" you think? Such a low opinion you have of yourself.

johnchristopher 4y ago
"Discipline sets you free" -- Jocko Willink
- Cupertino95014 4y ago
  "Freedom sets you free" -- someone else
JetAlone 4y ago
>The more you practice this, the less you trust yourself: "I'm bad, and if I'm not constantly on guard, I'll relapse into badness." This is learned helplessness. The solution I have found to that is to trust that if I try, for reasons unknown to my weak, finite self, things will be made possible for some degree of success and it will be enough. Then work backwards after a certain amount of time trying, look for something good. Embrace a happy memory or some tangible reward from the period of effort as enough for now, be grateful for it, and keep trying.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Sounds like you've found a solution that's better than discipline.
  - JetAlone 4y ago
    I did give it a try, the whole Jocko Willink "wake up at 4:30 in the morning" shpiel. It works at first, but it's not sustainable. Someone or something is going to keep me awake significantly beyond 9 PM and I'd need to spend weeks running a "waking time" deficit pulling back the sleep schedule, so for my purposes it's simply an antipattern. Trust and gratitude are like a backdoor to acting as if I had discipline. I find it's easier to cultivate them being theist, but the approach should not be utterly anathema to anyone who disbelieves the "black pill" ideology. The people who do believe that spin what may well be real disadvantages into a convenient license to do basically nothing about anything important.

nine_k 4y ago

The thing about play is that it's not mandatory. When it's not fun, you are free to not do it. This is why it's a luxury, and most often it's not a thing you get paid to do. — One does not really need money. — It's fun to say so when you got the money. — It is, indeed!

TimTheTinker 4y ago

If life were a zero-sum game and I had no regard for others, I'd be glad about others not being self-disciplined, as that would mean more room for me to succeed by being disciplined myself. But it's not a zero-sum game. The more of us who work hard at important things in life, the better off we all will be. So please do apply self-discipline in your life. Having no discipline is like having a car with an engine that stops running frequently and won't exceed 2000 RPM. Hard work does get easier in time, like working a muscle. And just like working out, you need to pace yourself -- approach hard work wisely and don't overdo it, even if you're enjoying it immensely. I'm so glad my mom forced me to practice the piano - I wouldn't be the musician I am today without it... and I have no regrets about working hard at front-end web development. I owe my career in large part to the many hours I spent poring over JavaScript: The Definitive Guide and writing SPA web apps while others at my workplace were still using ASP and WebForms.

jack_pp 4y ago
I don't think you've understood the article or you do not have the problems the author is having. Disciplining myself is in a way like dealing with a child. If I force my inner child to do something it will resist, shut down, burn me out. The problem is I can't be creative if I can't convince my inner child that the activity we're doing is fun so I have to frame whatever work I'm doing in a playful way otherwise my inner child will go ”boooooooriiiiing” and either make me waste time on social media or, if I catch myself, battle me for control which is very tiring
- manholio 4y ago
  I think they understand it, but maybe they believe that advice is misleading. If you are enjoying it and having fun, then you are in your comfort zone, and that means you are improving at a much lower rate than your potential. This is true for any activity, from physical fitness to academic pursuits. If you are in zone dominated by System 1 thinking and System 2 is on pause, then you are not building skill. There is nothing wrong with having fun in life for things that are not critical to you, but your core areas are developed with effort and focus. I have not met a single successful self-made person that found success without struggle and focus on their craft.

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josefrichter 4y ago

I think the self-help literature consensus is not on discipline, but on habits. Especially “atomic habits” are a popular term. While “discipline“ implies conscious effort, “habit” aims to move into subconscious, I guess.

closedloop129 4y ago

>What if the moment our better self suggests an early bedtime or a lap in the pool or writing a poem, it starts to sound like a scolding parent telling us what we ought to do. So we become a little like a stubborn child, asserting our independence by digging in and not moving. It's Freudian psychology [1] that adults are the ones who have integrated their super-ego into their ego. If there is a separation between 'self' and 'better self', then the development doesn't seem to be finished. Like the author, I don't like to do the stuff that the better self suggests. I can trick myself to follow the better self with discipline or by gamifying the task, but I don't know how to overcome the separation and make those tasks 'mine'. Does anybody know how to do the integration? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyche_(psychology)#Freudian_school https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyche_(psychology)#Freudian_s...

catchclose8919 4y ago
> then the development doesn't seem to be finished It's never finished, that's the point, if you want to keep growing the a part of you must separate a bit and drag itself towards the better possible future, then later drag the other lump of you either gently or kicking and screaming. But this "non integration" seems to be the "engine for growth". Even our society as a whole embraces a similar mechanism to "force growth". You can have integration and comfort, but... you'll need to oursource the growth and suffering that comes with it (think of the billionaines chillin' and vibin' while striving engineers and tormented artists do the real work towards the betterment of humanity). That's kind of the sad truth, some need to be non-integrated and under some amount of suffering for the wheels to keep turning.
ordu 4y ago
> It's Freudian psychology [1] that adults are the ones who have integrated their super-ego into their ego. It is impossible, if I understand Freud. Ego is defined as a place of a conflict between SuperEgo and Id. SuperEgo and Id are both play their essential roles, they are needed components, and the conflict between them stems from the fact that they are not the same. So the conflict is inevitable and Ego is the place to resolve it. > Like the author, I don't like to do the stuff that the better self suggests. What do you mean by a "better self"? Stuff like to make something nice to yourself, especially at the physical level is mostly about Id in a Freudian psychology. It is the work of Id to seek pleasant physical sensations. But SuperEgo says that you need to conform to social norms and to not allow yourself to force other people to have sex with you every time your Id feels that way. So Id and SuperEgo clash in Ego which finally makes a decision. The idea to let yourself to take pleasure going to bed early instead of resisting it seems to me as an Id idea. Though the idea to read twitter a little more before going to bed is also essentially the seeking of an instant gratification. I don't know how psychoanalysis handle it: a conflict of Id vs Id?

CloseChoice 4y ago

I just want to stress one thing: starting some activity is hard. Once I started an activity it is usually not that unpleasurable at all, even things like doing taxes, cleaning, writing this email I tried avoiding for weeks, etc. For me that means that reducing the barrier to start is the most important aspect to get things done, gamification (as suggested in the article) can help of course.

langsoul-com 4y ago

Welcome to hustle porn culture. Where your self worth is derived from what you're currently doing. Do nothing = worthless.

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
Interesting contrast between this thread and the hustle porn thread. I suspect it depends on individual creativity. Some people have very little and don't miss it, and a hyper-managed & disciplined life makes them feel like they're achieving important things. Others do and they're always going to find it harder to find a balance between getting useful boring shit done and inventing and creating cool original stuff - an inherently non-linear process, which needs fallow periods and down time and a certain amount of chaos, as well as work and practice.

shahinghasemi 4y ago

Without discipline you get to nowhere. At the start discipline is hard because we are a human which our brain wants to do the easiest task available to preserve energy. to prevent this situation we have to train our brain to obey us not otherwise. repeating this pattern lets your mind knows that you are the boss not itself. The critical part here is *you have to separate yourself from your mind/brain*, in other words you are not your mind/emotions. You can control them or otherwise being over controlled by them.

danielbln 4y ago
I don't think "control" is the right term, maybe influence. Thoughts and emotions arise constantly, you can detach yourself from them, observe them and act accordingly. Trying to control a thought or emotion is a fool's errand.

thriftwy 4y ago

There's this metaphor where you have a King (discipline) and a Queen (spontaneousness). They have to "marry" in order for you to be the most productive person. If your King tries to command your Queen and she refuses, it's not going to go well. As the author has already seen, it's quite hard to go to sleep or have fun by a decree.

rob_c 4y ago

Not to be funny, but how is this not a case of self-inflicted victimhood? This is much less about disciplin and more just pining over spilt milk.

jiggywiggy 4y ago

Timing is hard. Sometimes I break up my day relaxing I come back and I'm super productive. But often, it's harder to get back to productivity. Especially when I got into social mode, it's hard to get back to focus mode. If I need more stress relief time I've easier to finish things in mornings, and then just do rest of day or days off.

randallsquared 4y ago
Yeah, I was struck by how "surely a refreshing swim would have improved my ability to focus" revealed a stark difference in psychologies.

danwee 4y ago

I guess somehow when I was a child my parents thought me something I cannot fully understand now. Nowadays I cannot enjoy entertaining myself if I haven't first finished my "homework" (as an adult, my homework is: work, chores,... the usual stuff). So, I have this kind of "discipline" not because I enjoy doing "homework" but because I want to fully enjoy my free time without thinking "damn, when I'm done playing video games I have to wash the dishes". As a kid I could never understood the other kids that on a Friday afternoon were going out to play knowing that they had homework to do in the weekend. I was like "I cannot enjoy playing basketball now knowing that later on or tomorrow I'll have to do the maths homework... so let's first finish the maths homework and then I'll have the entire day/weekend to do whatever the hell I want". Not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. It's normal to me at my age, though.

PebblesRox 4y ago
I have this mindset but the problem with it is that in my current life situation (working from home with 5 kids), the amount of work I have is unbounded. I am bad at taking time for high quality rest when I feel burdened by the chores I could be doing (which are endless and recurring) so I end up wasting time in ways that's not actually fun or restful.

zorrolovsky 4y ago

This topic has been on my mind for a couple years now, and it's interesting how I came to a similar conclusion as the author. There are a ton of things I really enjoy doing: running, boxing, playing music, writing, drawing... however, I always struggle to get started. It always feels like a chore and I'm baffled as to why. I should be excited about initiating any of those activities, but I'm not! The moment they enter a to-do list, I know they also enter the realm of procrastination and avoidance. It's weird. As I grow older and more experience, I realize "it's all in the mind". If you have the right mindset towards the activity you want to do, you have 80%+ of the job done. Using running as an example, I went from running a couple days per week to running every day. Why? Simply put, a mentality shift. Before, I would think about it as "I should run at least 30 mins, 3 days per week". Now, I think about it as: "Let's move a bit, go to that nice canal by the river". In a nutshell... I moved my mindset from "I must be disciplined" to "let's play", pretty much as the author states.

highfrequency 4y ago
> The moment a task enters a to-do list, I know it also enters the realm of procrastination and avoidance. It's weird. Well put! It's like our mind is telling itself: "if I need to be told to do this and reminded to do it, it must not be very fun."
Jorchime 4y ago
How do you apply the mind-shift to projects where you have to finish something in order to advance? I have a couple of songs here that need mixing, but since they entered my to-do list, they are in procrastination realm ... But sometimes the thing you like is mostly about doing the thing and leaves little room for playing.

martopix 4y ago

It's not clear to me what the author is suggesting. Yes, I agree we focus a bit too much on self improvement and perhaps should relax about certain things. But if I start to believe that, for medical reasons, or any other reason, I really should go to the gym, and I struggle doing it because I feel it's not my environment, how do I start without a bit of self-discipline? I could choose another sport, one that is actually fun and I look forward to -- I've done that, but even in that case, sometimes I feel lazy. What is it that I should do?

harryvederci 4y ago

Interesting read about overcoming resistance for creative work: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. It kinda has the opposite view of this "Against Discipline" post :)

chucktingle 4y ago

Love the false dichotomy of you either having to work hard or being yourself. People will go at amazing lengths to justify being lazy. :)

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Claude_Shannon 4y ago

This article felt like a way to lying to oneself. "I'm not lazy, I just want to be myself!". Life is painful. Sorry, that's the truth. If you won't work, someone else WILL and they WILL take your job.

_oghd 4y ago
wow, astute observation. i'm sure the author never realized that life is painful, or that the capitalist mode of production requires productive labor in a free market in order to survive. i'm sure they didn't bother to write this whole article because they have crushing anxiety about getting things done _in spite of_ the very astute facts you noted, and still found difficulty and failure. bravo. you really just see the world the way things are, ignatius. welcome to the confederacy

platistocrates 4y ago

This comment section is depressing. We take ourselves too seriously.

PebblesRox 4y ago
It's weird to me because so many of the commenters seem to take the author's point to be "no discipline ever" when she was actually talking about a very specific set of circumstances in which she considers discipline to be counter-productive. But almost nobody is engaging with that idea!

jakzurr 4y ago

The issues in the article seem quite complex to me. But every time I re-read the first three paragraphs, I cannot help but think, "Irina Dumitrescu is a sage."

Barrin92 4y ago

>"few people really need advice about how to live their lives. They know how they ought to be living their lives. The trick is learning how to follow their own best instinct." I don't think it's that simple. I think it's worth questioning whether the wants you have that you're battling so hard with are actually your wants rather than the desires of others. It's not so easy to figure out what your own instinct is. I think what manifests as a need for discipline quite often is people trying to mold themselves into something that they simply aren't without recognizing that fact. The author mentions sleep hygiene and that is an example for me. I've struggled with proper 'sleep hygiene' a lot, and of course I thought i just need more discipline. During the pandemic doing remote work I figured out that I actually love having a really weird sleep schedule, it's just hard to square with an ordinary work day. I think it's actually easy to declare oneself lazy and in need of discipline, rather than changing things up to do what you genuinely want to do.

tester756 4y ago

>I know, too, that slipping into bed is one of the most delicious sensations there is, so why do I postpone that feeling every night, as though determined to be miserable and tired the next day? hits too close to home

lotw_dot_site 4y ago

Does anybody know what the first popular "Against Something" was? My guess is it was Feyerabend's Against Method...

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BirAdam 4y ago

Discipline is a multifaceted thing. The discipline required for success is not merely a "go put yourself in the chair and type it out", nor is making the task "fun" or "play" quite the same thing. Discipline is also for the mind itself. To be more successful, one must curate the thoughts that he/she has. If there is a thought that is particularly destructive it might be time to apply some CBT/meditation/therapy to figure out why that thought is there and how to make it stop. There is a difference between doing the things one must do and fighting oneself the entire time, and doing the things that one must do and not minding doing so. In one of these, you have imposed discipline, and in the other you have self-discipline. I am still not as productive as many people I know, but if instead of comparing myself to others I compare to who I was vs who I am... I have made outrageous improvements. EDIT: To me, the single most glorious thing about being a human is that I can choose to change my mind and then actually do so. It may be difficult, it may take time, but I can change my nature unlike the other creatures of this Earth who seem to be a bit more static.

zozbot234 4y ago
If you don't mind doing the things you're doing, is "discipline" really a useful word for describing this? I'm not necessarily disagreeing; it just looks like an argument about definitions, and perhaps a bit pointless. Though I agree that CBT, meditation and introspection should be a part of your "making sure I don't find it painful to do some worthwhile things" toolkit, which is a very useful point.

yessirwhatever 4y ago

Well, discipline is nothing more really than a delayed gratification rule set. Kids refuse a bath usually not because they’re rebelling against themselves or the parents, but because they don’t get the concept of delayed gratification yet. You make little sacrifices in the present to ensure better future. This is going to sound slightly harsh, and by no means it’s an invitation to stop thinking or pondering, I think it’s kind of good to be skeptical and think of possible major oversights in the way we live our life, but this kind of hairsplitting wordsmithing is useless, and possibly what is causing this person to neglect that discipline is just a helpful concept. Reading “an embarrassing amount” of self-help books is not a good sign either, but yes, the majority of that crap is just that; crap. No one can teach you or force you to like exercise, until you do it and like it, then you understand, then you’ll probably fall off the wagon a couple of times, but at least you’ll know that you’re just being lazy, and that’s fine sometimes, but mostly you’ll have to gain experience in fighting laziness tendencies, and it’s probably harder for some people than others depending on many variables I can’t even list. Biggest factor for people not having discipline (or not wanting to have it, not liking it, etc…) is that they want a quick solution that makes sense, where the answer is that it’s always difficult, you just have to learn to enjoy it and find ways to come to terms with it. Practice more and do it again. The author is not rebelling against discipline, but really against the self help industry.

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faceplanted 4y ago
> Kids refuse a bath usually not because they’re rebelling against themselves or the parents, but because they don’t get the concept of delayed gratification yet I'm confused by this thought because there _isn't_ any delayed gratification in kids taking a bath, as she said, kids love it once they're in there, and they're usually not even running their own bath if they're the age I think she's talking about, so where's the delay, walking to the bathroom? There's certainly less delay than going swimming, and kids love that too. Getting kids into the bath, even though they like it once they're in there, and given, as she says in the article, that they've liked it before isn't a problem of delayed gratification. It's a problem of routine and requirement, of apathy and change. You have to stop whatever it is you're doing and go take a bath _every day_, my nephew absolutely loves going to the park, but if we did it every day there'd be so many days where he doesn't feel like it, even if he loves it every time he gets there. This is exactly the point the author is making, discipline is about doing things that need doing, the question is whether it's still discipline if it's something you're doing only for your own enjoyment, and whether finding enjoyment out of things you need to do is enough.

sebastianconcpt 4y ago

Generalized too much. Discipline is nothing but execution on an optimization. It would be a mistake by shallow analysis to blame discipline for an optimization that is not taking you to the destiny and journey you want in your life. She is totally right about Cross Fit, tho. That injury factory only benefits physiotherapists.

bslorence 4y ago

I suspect most of us have a serious imbalance in our lives between productive work, leisure, and recreation. See Louis Kelso and Mortimer Adler's book "The Capitalist Manifesto" for a rich discussion of these topics. They define 'leisure' somewhat counter-intuitively as work, but the sort of work that elevates the mind or advances the common good -- as opposed to the productive work one is required to do in order to earn a living. Leisure for them is very different from recreation, which is a kind of rest -- think board games, light reading, hiking, Netflix, etc. Everyone needs all three of these things in their lives (leisure, productive work, and recreation) but we often get them confused or end up overemphasizing one to the neglect of the others. I wonder if OP is saying something similar or at least resonant with this -- basically that we shouldn't treat everything in our lives like productive work.

derbOac 4y ago

Discipline is really about greater long term gains versus lesser short term costs. Determining whether the long term gains are actually greater in any given situation is one of the challenges.

swayvil 4y ago

Delayed gratification? That's one way to put it. Another way is "different gratification". Instead of eating chocolate you are eating a dream of future chocolate. So becoming disciplined could be called developing a taste for dreams. When the glow of accomplishing a step in your 12 step plan towards chocolate-accquirement is actually more satisfying than eating the chocolate, a shift in taste has occurred. And they call you "disciplined".

yessirwhatever 4y ago
That's something totally different. Delay of gratification, the act of resisting an impulse to take an immediately available reward in the hope of obtaining a more-valued reward in the future. The ability to delay gratification is essential to self-regulation, or self-control, aka discipline.
- swayvil 4y ago
  What's the difference? In either case you are preferring the dream of future chocolate over actual immediate chocolate.
  - yessirwhatever 4y ago
    Discipline has nothing to do with whether you think chocolate is good or not, or if you should eat it or not.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

As a fairly "disciplined" person, it's easy for me to say "Yeah, but..." to this, but being open to serendipity has real benefits, when it comes to creativity and "big ideas." But she is not just talking about that. She's also talking about letting go of discipline, as tool for self-improvement, and mental health. I can see that. It would not work for me, but it is not a bad thing. The issue that I always have, about people prescribing What Works For Me, to others, is that it often doesn't work, in other people. Not judging others, when something that we do/take pride in does not apply, can be difficult. I enjoy living in a world of variety. People that are different from me, make my life richer. In order to have this richness, I need to accept those that differ from me. That can be a challenge. Getting back to "discipline," I have heard a quote: "Winners do what they have to do, and losers do what they want to do." I'm not a fan of the terms "winners" and "losers," but that's just me, and the approach I take. The quote does have a good message, if we don't get hung up on the terms used to describe people.

phkahler 4y ago

This got me thinking. For regularly scheduled activities don't tell yourself or others "I have to go XXX today" but instead "I get to go XXX today". This changes an obligation into an opportunity. You may laugh, but I've found the way I phrase things - even to myself - can have an effect on how I feel about them.

swayvil 4y ago

Sounds more like an issue of perspective. She repeatedly states that once she overcomes her resistence she's happy she did the thing. So she just needs to be able to be not-swimming yet able to see the fun of swimming. Some kind of broadening of perspective is called for. To contain these disparate states simultaneously. I think this would be the opposite of focus. Which could be the central problem. We love focus, or something.

fleddr 4y ago

The dutch word "prestatiemaatschappij" is fitting here, meaning "performance society". It suggests that life is fast, nothing but duties, must-dos, which when fully internalized will also apply to leisure. Relaxing is a task as is keeping in touch with friends. As you engage in the task, your thoughts are with the next task. You're never in the moment, nothing is spontaneous, it's robotic. You're juggling 10 balls and are doing an adequate job in not dropping any of them. You master a "full" life. But you don't. You've removed life itself.

jgerrish 4y ago

"So we become a little like a stubborn child, asserting our independence by digging in and not moving." Some people look outside at the pool and hear the play people call them racist terms. They get bullied into things they dont want. They try over and over, and they couldn't help the racist people be better. And the adults they went to for help laughed and joked about them. Saucy unfunny jokes that are going to stick with them for life, jokes that minimize their own stories. So they're exhausted. So exhausted. Some of them didn't even want to be authors, they said no to typewriters at garage sales, but still it didn't stop. But they won't give up. Life is wonderful and goes on for several more years. And the crappy part is people like that, who had a history of voting for progressive causes, lose a little empathy and trust. Because they said stop.