6 ms·

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 l

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.
    - heavenlyblue 4y ago
      I think there's a lot of wisdom behind "Believe in the process". I am not a theist, but it took me a while to understand that some processes take much longer to realise their potential and our abilities to detect the differences are limited to seeing differences on a certain scale. What I mean by that is that if a process takes about a month to get a (visible) result, so if you only spend one day doing it and try to measure the differences after it you would see no difference.
    - matwood 4y ago
      Because the 4:30 thing is so jarring for effect, it's easy to get caught up on the exact time, but what Jocko really pushes is having that purpose that gets you out of bed. It's finding time where you can be alert and focused with zero distractions. For some that's night time, but personally I've never been productive at night. For me, I wake up around 6am every morning and haven't used an alarm in years. I workout, and have a couple hours of mostly uninterrupted time to work on projects, go surf, or just sit and think. One final note, even Jocko breaks his own rule when he's out late from traveling or doing events. That is the part where freedom comes out of discipline.
      - zozbot234 4y ago
        The simple step of letting natural light into your bedroom makes it a lot easier to wake up near dawn, which generally gives you quite a bit of unstructured time to prepare for the day. Of course the flip side is that you'll be a bit more tired in the evening and at night, but that also makes for a nice self-sustaining pattern. It's a good example of replacing self-enforced "discipline" with natural adaptation.
cinntaile 4y ago
Discipline is getting things done without relying on something as finicky as your motivation of the day. Some days you will be motivated and some days you won't be, but you want to try and have consistency in whatever goal you are trying to achieve. It helps you get there more reliably.
- faceplanted 4y ago
  I've heard this explanation so many times but it feels like it has an enormous missing piece, like, maybe I just have fucking ADHD or something but never in my life has doing things and going places I don't want to ever gotten easier with repetition or consistency, it still needs motivation because ability to get up and do things is what motivation _is_. Unless by discipline people mean literally disciplining myself when I fail I'm just gonna remain confused.
  - cinntaile 4y ago
    If you are doing things or going places you don't want to then they're clearly not things you want to achieve?
    - faceplanted 4y ago
      Sorry I wasn't clear about what I mean. I don't mean the ends, I mean the means. like exercising, or studying, or even brushing my fucking teeth have never in my life stopped being a manual decision. I want the ends obviously, like everyone else does, want them a lot in fact, but discipline just seems like an impossible thing for me because it _never_ seems to stop needing motivation to do things I need to do however long of a streak I do manage to build.
the_omegist 4y ago
Why negative reinforcement would be necessarily bad? If you only do what you feel like doing, at the moment you feel like doing it, that's the perfect recipe for disaster. I am against the modern hedonistic zeitgeist and, on the contrary, think a lot of current social issues could be mitigated by more discipline and "hard work". On a side note : am I the only one who is tired of the current (decade(s)-long...) trend in blogs/articles of "deconstructing" positive/common-sense behaviors? "The dangers of tidiness", "Embrace your bipolarity", "Why I stopped aiming for excellence" etc... (I am not denying the risks of being too extreme and I understand the "click-bait" need of those writers, but still, it is very telling...)
- achenet 4y ago
  mmm, there is something to be said for perfection being the enemy of productive. Eg for software, at some point you have to stop tweaking and just ship. More generally, sometimes habits that are recommended in order to boost productivity and/or happiness can act in such a way as to reduce productivity and/or happiness. Maybe that's not what you were talking about though?
  - the_omegist 4y ago
    Sure, am also all for efficiency and if something gives marginal improvement for a disproportionate amount of time or efforts,then most of the time it's not needed. I was more against this current "let it be" mindset that leads to all those buggy and low-quality things. But even more about in daily life, with people embracing their "mediocre-self".
- Cupertino95014 4y ago
  > I am against the modern hedonistic zeitgeist and, on the contrary, think a lot of current social issues could be mitigated by more discipline and "hard work" While I sympathize totally with this, I'll also stand on what I said. F. Scott Fitzgerald's quote about "holding two opposite ideas in your mind at the same time, etc. etc." If you don't have any work ethic at all ("the modern hedonistic zeitgeist") then maybe you won't ever exercise or keep your weight down. Or clean the garage. If you really do, you don't have to keep beating yourself up about it. Although you're right that, for some people, that might be a Good Thing.
KronisLV 4y ago
> You think "if I don't force myself, I won't do it." Sometimes this is true, at least for any meaningful timescale. For example, I figured that I'd finish a showcase of my past projects on my homepage, yet the task itself just looms over me - needing to go through years of notes, figure out what even can get disclosed and then actually finishing the functionality for displaying them in my site. Since I haven't forced myself to do it, that task has now not been finished for about 8 months. The most progress I made was fixing some technical debt of the site itself, which still doesn't really solve the actual problem that I should have been solving, even when doing so is like pulling teeth. Ergo, if you want results, sometimes you need discipline, instead of counting on fickle motivation.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  > For example, I figured that I'd finish a showcase of my past projects on my homepage, yet the task itself just looms over me - needing to go through years of notes, figure out what even can get disclosed and then actually finishing the functionality for displaying them in my site. A common solution to a "looming" task is to break it into subtasks. Figure out what's the smallest unit of this work that you can complete successfully, and just get at it. The goal is to attack the problem gradually and reduce the feeling of discomfort around it over time.
  - KronisLV 4y ago
    > A common solution to a "looming" task is to break it into subtasks. Definitely, which is also why techniques like Pomodoro are so useful - also making you approach working in smaller increments, so its less intimidating. Unless you end up taking pleasure in padding your backlog instead of actually solving problems, like what almost happened to me before I purged some of it and actually got around to doing things instead of planning. Still need to finish the homepage, though.
- achenet 4y ago
  Or you could try the strategy recommended in the article - trick yourself into wanting to do it. Wouldn't going through years of notes be fun? Instead of dreading it, shouldn't you be eagerly anticipating the walk down memory lane that this showcase will entail?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

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.
  - heavenlyblue 4y ago
    I think there's a lot of wisdom behind "Believe in the process". I am not a theist, but it took me a while to understand that some processes take much longer to realise their potential and our abilities to detect the differences are limited to seeing differences on a certain scale. What I mean by that is that if a process takes about a month to get a (visible) result, so if you only spend one day doing it and try to measure the differences after it you would see no difference.
  - matwood 4y ago
    Because the 4:30 thing is so jarring for effect, it's easy to get caught up on the exact time, but what Jocko really pushes is having that purpose that gets you out of bed. It's finding time where you can be alert and focused with zero distractions. For some that's night time, but personally I've never been productive at night. For me, I wake up around 6am every morning and haven't used an alarm in years. I workout, and have a couple hours of mostly uninterrupted time to work on projects, go surf, or just sit and think. One final note, even Jocko breaks his own rule when he's out late from traveling or doing events. That is the part where freedom comes out of discipline.
    - zozbot234 4y ago
      The simple step of letting natural light into your bedroom makes it a lot easier to wake up near dawn, which generally gives you quite a bit of unstructured time to prepare for the day. Of course the flip side is that you'll be a bit more tired in the evening and at night, but that also makes for a nice self-sustaining pattern. It's a good example of replacing self-enforced "discipline" with natural adaptation.

cinntaile 4y ago

Discipline is getting things done without relying on something as finicky as your motivation of the day. Some days you will be motivated and some days you won't be, but you want to try and have consistency in whatever goal you are trying to achieve. It helps you get there more reliably.

faceplanted 4y ago
I've heard this explanation so many times but it feels like it has an enormous missing piece, like, maybe I just have fucking ADHD or something but never in my life has doing things and going places I don't want to ever gotten easier with repetition or consistency, it still needs motivation because ability to get up and do things is what motivation _is_. Unless by discipline people mean literally disciplining myself when I fail I'm just gonna remain confused.
- cinntaile 4y ago
  If you are doing things or going places you don't want to then they're clearly not things you want to achieve?
  - faceplanted 4y ago
    Sorry I wasn't clear about what I mean. I don't mean the ends, I mean the means. like exercising, or studying, or even brushing my fucking teeth have never in my life stopped being a manual decision. I want the ends obviously, like everyone else does, want them a lot in fact, but discipline just seems like an impossible thing for me because it _never_ seems to stop needing motivation to do things I need to do however long of a streak I do manage to build.

the_omegist 4y ago

Why negative reinforcement would be necessarily bad? If you only do what you feel like doing, at the moment you feel like doing it, that's the perfect recipe for disaster. I am against the modern hedonistic zeitgeist and, on the contrary, think a lot of current social issues could be mitigated by more discipline and "hard work". On a side note : am I the only one who is tired of the current (decade(s)-long...) trend in blogs/articles of "deconstructing" positive/common-sense behaviors? "The dangers of tidiness", "Embrace your bipolarity", "Why I stopped aiming for excellence" etc... (I am not denying the risks of being too extreme and I understand the "click-bait" need of those writers, but still, it is very telling...)

achenet 4y ago
mmm, there is something to be said for perfection being the enemy of productive. Eg for software, at some point you have to stop tweaking and just ship. More generally, sometimes habits that are recommended in order to boost productivity and/or happiness can act in such a way as to reduce productivity and/or happiness. Maybe that's not what you were talking about though?
- the_omegist 4y ago
  Sure, am also all for efficiency and if something gives marginal improvement for a disproportionate amount of time or efforts,then most of the time it's not needed. I was more against this current "let it be" mindset that leads to all those buggy and low-quality things. But even more about in daily life, with people embracing their "mediocre-self".
Cupertino95014 4y ago
> I am against the modern hedonistic zeitgeist and, on the contrary, think a lot of current social issues could be mitigated by more discipline and "hard work" While I sympathize totally with this, I'll also stand on what I said. F. Scott Fitzgerald's quote about "holding two opposite ideas in your mind at the same time, etc. etc." If you don't have any work ethic at all ("the modern hedonistic zeitgeist") then maybe you won't ever exercise or keep your weight down. Or clean the garage. If you really do, you don't have to keep beating yourself up about it. Although you're right that, for some people, that might be a Good Thing.

KronisLV 4y ago

> You think "if I don't force myself, I won't do it." Sometimes this is true, at least for any meaningful timescale. For example, I figured that I'd finish a showcase of my past projects on my homepage, yet the task itself just looms over me - needing to go through years of notes, figure out what even can get disclosed and then actually finishing the functionality for displaying them in my site. Since I haven't forced myself to do it, that task has now not been finished for about 8 months. The most progress I made was fixing some technical debt of the site itself, which still doesn't really solve the actual problem that I should have been solving, even when doing so is like pulling teeth. Ergo, if you want results, sometimes you need discipline, instead of counting on fickle motivation.

zozbot234 4y ago
> For example, I figured that I'd finish a showcase of my past projects on my homepage, yet the task itself just looms over me - needing to go through years of notes, figure out what even can get disclosed and then actually finishing the functionality for displaying them in my site. A common solution to a "looming" task is to break it into subtasks. Figure out what's the smallest unit of this work that you can complete successfully, and just get at it. The goal is to attack the problem gradually and reduce the feeling of discomfort around it over time.
- KronisLV 4y ago
  > A common solution to a "looming" task is to break it into subtasks. Definitely, which is also why techniques like Pomodoro are so useful - also making you approach working in smaller increments, so its less intimidating. Unless you end up taking pleasure in padding your backlog instead of actually solving problems, like what almost happened to me before I purged some of it and actually got around to doing things instead of planning. Still need to finish the homepage, though.
achenet 4y ago
Or you could try the strategy recommended in the article - trick yourself into wanting to do it. Wouldn't going through years of notes be fun? Instead of dreading it, shouldn't you be eagerly anticipating the walk down memory lane that this showcase will entail?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]