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Why is this downvoted? Questioning the motivation vs discipline dichotomy is a very right thing. You may disagree with arguments, but then present the counterar

• johnchristopher 4y ago
  It's being downvoted because it's moving the definition around under the premise of science while it's just semantic drifting. Linguistic has a better track record to understand words and their definition than psychology. So, discipline is not the same as motivation. Discipline is doing things even if you think you don't have enough energy or motivation at the moment. discipline dis· ci· pline ˈdi-sə-plən 1 a: control gained by enforcing obedience or order b: orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior c: self-control 2: punishment 3: training that corrects, molds, or perfects the mental faculties or moral character [..] motivation noun [ C/U ] us /ˌmoʊ·t̬əˈveɪ·ʃən/ willingness to do something, or something that causes such willingness: [ C ] One motivation for reducing the staff was the need to cut costs. [ U ] You need a lot of motivation to succeed. > So I do agree that talking about motivation and discipline as two fundamentally different things is wrong, and reframing in through the lens of science of motivation can yield better understanding and actionable conclusions. And yet this conversation here doesn't provide any actionable conclusion, doesn't provide example of how motivation beats discipline and just jumps into a debate of abstract idea(ls). Is the word discipline the problem ? Would regularity feel better ? > You may disagree with arguments, but then present the counterarguments. The original argument is here: > Discipline, by contrast, separates outwards functioning from moods and feelings and thereby ironically circumvents the problem by consistently improving them. Redefining words is not a counter argument. It's always the same dynamic in this debate, it's like people don't want to hear the world discipline and want motivation to just be enough to act on ?
  • divan 4y ago
    > Discipline is doing things even if you think you don't have enough energy or motivation at the moment. Motivaion is anything that makes people do stuff. Gun at your head is also motivation - you'll be willing to do things even if you don't have energy or desire to do this. It's just external motivation and external regulation - it can be very powerful, but short-term (it'll stop working as soon as punishment or reward is removed). So the theory I mentioned (Self-Determination Theory) is the central theory in psychology that studies motivation. It originated in clinical psychology, very mature (70+ years) and has shown high predictive power in thousands of studies. If you think about it, motivation (="energy that makes people do things") is what underpins everything - from parenting and relationships to education, sports and politics. So why not study it as deep as we can? What you refer to "don't have motivation" would be better expressed as "don't have intrinsic motivation", which is just one of the types of motivation. So, sure, if you only consider "intrinsic motivation" as being worthy called "motivation", then discipline vs motivation makes sense. But if you consider full spectrum of external motivations (integrated, identified, introjected and external), than it's very clear that discipline is just one of the forms of identified or introjected) external motivations. External motivations can be very powerful, but the further they're on the spectrum the more short lived they are. As for the actionable items - again. SDT gives you tools and frameworks how to apply this on the per-case basis. Have you heard the phrase "you should read what you love to start love reading"? That's one of the things that makes perfect sense from the SDT perspective - instead of focusing on "discipline for the sake of discipline", i.e. forcing yourself to stick with this external type of motivation, you could use this as a tool to move your motivations (there could be few at the same time) into the side of intrinsic motivation as much as possible, if you want this behaviour to stick. SDT is actually quite approachable and actionable itself. I think gamedev is quite familiar with it, and they use the tools to make computer games intrinsically motivated.