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>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 helplessnes

>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.
      - hoosieree 4y ago
        But leaving curtains open lets in too much light at night. Especially cities and suburbs which are never truly dark, but even in the country when the moon is bright. Now I want to build an "alarm" that silently opens curtains...
        zozbot234 4y ago
        It's still a great tradeoff. Even comparatively strong LED lights are generally a small fraction of the intensity of true natural light. You get used to it.

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.
    - hoosieree 4y ago
      But leaving curtains open lets in too much light at night. Especially cities and suburbs which are never truly dark, but even in the country when the moon is bright. Now I want to build an "alarm" that silently opens curtains...
      - zozbot234 4y ago
        It's still a great tradeoff. Even comparatively strong LED lights are generally a small fraction of the intensity of true natural light. You get used to it.