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I commend you for your success and self-discipline. But as advice it seems almost circular. How do you actually not give up and power through? I have often pus

I commend you for your success and self-discipline. But as advice it seems almost circular. How do you actually not give up and power through? I have often pushed myself with big projects and challenging work. More often than not it results in me literally sobbing under my desk.

mckravchyk 4y ago
(Not the parent but I can relate) I'm not much accomplished yet but I have been maintaining a 60h+ work week for the past 3 years (ok, not every single week is a 60h one but most are). I never look at my feelings, I sit down and do the work no matter what. The concept of having to motivate myself to do something sounds extremely foreign. It's not just that I'm a workalcoholic, I always end work on time and I always wish I had more time for other things. I have the discipline but I think the key is discipline + actually loving it, loving the thing that you are doing on average. Loving the process of discipline + loving the vision that you are working towards. I think that the passion and inspiration alone are not sufficient because there are always things you don't want to work on and you may really not feel like it sometimes, on the other hand, discipline for the sake of discipline without appreciation - having to push yourself... no. There must be both push and pull. If you don't feel any pull or if it's much weaker than the push then it most likely means that the sacrifice is not worth it or maybe you are doing way too much and not scheduling any time to appreciate the present moment.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  > the key is discipline + actually loving it Oh, yeah. I do luvs my programming. I couldn't imagine doing this for something I hate. I should add that having a completely finished product, actively being used by end-users is also a very good feeling.
  - mckravchyk 4y ago
    I imagine so, not there yet. To me, it's certainly not just about programming but the project / product in particular as well as how much ownership / leadership over the thing I would have. If it feels like it's a part of the bigger picture and I get to develop skills I want to develop, that could be quite fun, even if I was doing it for someone else. My experience to date with other people's projects was not that exciting though but I liked it because I had the time to work on my own thing alongside. I remember working 2 months on a client's project exclusively while not having any time for mine, I was approaching 50h/week just for that project. I liked it on average but I remember the last week was tough, I really felt like I had enough and just thinking through some ideas about a potential future product / project felt like gasping for air while being underwater for too long. I think that's the general theme of this. So long as a significant chunk of the work (i.e. 1/3) is genuinely enjoyable just for what it is, the other, more boring work is also more pleasant because: 1) - it feels like a part of the bigger picture that you like (i.e. whether you are doing something really boring or maybe earning money to buy yourself more time) and 2 - just conditioning, getting good emotions from one part of the work is partially transferred to the boring stuff and it needs to happen on an ongoing basis. The fact that there are boring parts to it (which one can still learn to appreciate) provides the contrast and makes the highs much higher. However, there's also something I did not mention initially. I'm spending considerable time on appreciating the now, I would set aside 40 min every day to do Zen meditation and it really does help with the discipline / will power but perhaps most importantly - appreciating work that's boring - if I can get myself to enjoy sitting still or walking circles around the room, I can treat boring work not unlike extra Zen practice that sharpens me further. It does not have to be Zen practice but just ensuring that you are spending some time enjoying the now basically every day is critical when you you are often trying to make predictions about the future which is stress and anxiety inducing.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
      > I would set aside 40 min every day to do Zen meditation That sounds like an excellent practice (and it also requires discipline).
- annie_muss 4y ago
  It's great to hear your success story. I love tech and I love programming, but 60h a week of a it sounds completely superhuman to me. It's like someone telling me they just ran a marathon in 2.5 hours. Sure, I know it's theoretically possible but I can't image what it takes to get here. This thread has really made me realize what a disability ADHD is. I struggle to watch a movie from start to finish, even one I have been really looking forward to. I dream of being able to concentrate and work on what I want to do for an entire day. My ratio at the moment is about 1-2 hours of work in every 8 hour day.
  - mckravchyk 4y ago
    It comes at some personal life sacrifice though and I will be looking to reduce it slightly in the coming years. It's basically a lifestyle of work and not much else, I set aside some time for a hobby which also involves socializing and that's why it's 60h/week (63h/week being theoretical max if nothing comes up) and not 70h/week. Hitting the time on a regular day (not every day is like that) requires ongoing effort to sustain it. I spend 20 min / day doing time tracking and performance analysis (I think it makes more time than it costs). So for example if I want to hit 10h on a day which is purely dedicated to work, I wake up at 6, I end work at 8 and go to sleep at 9:30. That gives me 14h between 6 and 8, so it means that the combined time for the morning and midday routines must be under 4h. I don't stress about doing too little work on any given day, but I will always look at it the next day and consider what I could do better with the execution of the previous day . Then it mostly becomes a habit, I would just do it like a robot. Not every day is like that, but most are. I'm sorry to hear about your disability. I don't know much about ADHD but perhaps you would find the following tips useful. You could look into Zen meditation - a good book with the how is 3 Pillars of Zen, feel free to discard the supernatural stuff and just focus on regular practice. One of the main benefits of Zen practice is increasing your attention span. It's extremely challenging to sustain focus on nothing and I still struggle with this despite doing it regularly for 5 years. It could be as simple as counting exhales and resetting the count every 10 breaths, expect to lose track fast but you get better at it with regular practice and this directly translates to your attention span when doing other things. Maybe you could also benefit from journaling - try to successively increase work blocks by a small amount every week or so and keep track of it. Other tips: avoid scrolling social media, get good sleep - you may need up to 8.5h of bed time / 8h of sleep, it's easy to be chronically sleep depleted without being aware about it and everything is much harder without good sleep, do quick breaks while working, i.e. 1 minute pause every 15 min just looking at the timer (not email!).
- deterministic 4y ago
  Why on earth do you want to work 60+ hours a week? It absolutely boggles my brain that anybody would be proud to work that many hours. Unless you are an entrepreneur working for yourself and love doing it.
  - mckravchyk 4y ago
    I don't want it, it's been a necessity. Now I'm cutting it down a bit actually and putting my entrepreneurial pursuits on hold for some 4 - 5 years because there was just too much conflict with missing out on some other things in life that I find valuable.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
> How do you actually not give up and power through? Sorry it took so long to respond. I browse HN on my breaks, and it's catch-as-catch-can. I keep my eyes on the prize at the end. For me, it's all about having a finished product after all the agita. There's also a lot of (in my case) interest in the Mission of the project. One project that I did, took ten years to really start coming into its own. During that time, I was pretty much left on my own, and even outright abused (by the end users, and also "gatekeepers," who wanted to control the project). It all came out great, in the end. The project was taken over by a new team, and very little of my original code remains in the current version. I'm happy about that. Most of what I wanted to do, was push the idea of the project (an infrastructure-level resource locator).
lr1970 4y ago
> How do you actually not give up and power through? Break big problem into sequence of small and achievable goals. Getting small gratifications by completing small steps helps to maintain mental balance and avoid burn-out and dead-lock.
chii 4y ago
it's actually counter intuitive, but being "disciplined" is actually not great for finishing projects. Rather, it's better to setup a habit and routine, and stick to it for a long time, whether you accomplish anything during that time or not. E.g., work on blah for 30mins, at 9:30pm before sleeping, or at 6am when awake. Don't change this time, and don't do more time than originally planned (regardless of progress or lack thereof). Habits are more powerful than self-control and discipline.
- CMCDragonkai 4y ago
  You're describing discipline. Habit is discipline.
  - starfallg 4y ago
    They're related but not the same. Discipline can be used to form habits wilfully, but habits are can be formed without discipline. What the parent was trying to say is that you can form healthy habits even if you're not disciplined.
  - spoiler 4y ago
    I think it's more nuanced than that. I like to simplify these complex topics to myself by gamifying them a little. Imagine every time you make a conscious decision to do something you expend willpower points. You have a only a set number of willpower points a day. Some things you like, some things you don't, and that depends how much they will cost. Choosing not to do something can also costs points, because it's a habit. Habits are a way to reduce or discount this choice associated cost. Now, I recently thought a lot about discipline, motivation, dreaming (for the future) and hope. And I think the problem with discipline is that, everyone has a different definition on it, and it also changes between context. Military discipline is not the same as daily discipline. Soldiers are plenty undisciplined in their daily lives. When people talk about discipline they think "doing things that one doesn't want doing" but it's really not that simple. It all ties to hopefulness and dreaming for the future. And s someone who's experienced this first hand due to a traumatic childhood: People who don't value themselves won't be disciplined for their own sakes, but they can be incredibly disciplined for the sake of others. So, there's a component of seeing value in what you do, or believe that there is value even if you don't see it. So, like everything in life, discipline is multi faceted. As an example, people talk about dopamine and motivation, but I've realised that it's probably closely tied to discipline too. You need to be motivated to be disciplined. I've recently started becoming more "disciplined" by being incredibly intentional about trying to regulate my dopamine baseline throughout the day. I started doing it to feel less miserable throughout the day, but ended up being more disciplined as a side effect. And I've also realised that this has increased my daily "willpower" budget from earlier.
apsurd 4y ago
best info i got on this topic is from weight training videos. applies to everything though, give it a shot. it's long but you can easily see from the slides what he's saying https://youtu.be/zNePCoXjC4s https://youtu.be/zNePCoXjC4s quick gist is when people say motivation to train or do anything there's really a specific process we go through that determines to what extent we stick with anything 1 inspiration 2 motivation 3 intention 4 discipline 5 habit 6 passion discipline is great but it's the part that takes willpower and it's not sustainable so if you don't like to do something you need the willpower to do it. it's not gonna last ever day for years. that people have to suffer to sustain things is misguided advice. the math doesn't check out. sibling comment is correct here, discipline is necessary but only 1/6 of the framework. for long term sustainability we need habits plus higher order reasons to want to do it. passion ideally, or boosts of positive energy from inspiration and motivation.
- elenaferrantes 4y ago
  What helps me doing something I don’t like on a daily basis (pull up for example) is thinking : I don’t have the choice. That way I consume much less willpower
  - layer8 4y ago
    How does one make oneself think that? It always remains circular. Doing X to compel you to do Y just shifts the problem from Y to X. There is no “bottom” that is guaranteed to work.
  - kevviiinn 4y ago
    Personally I think of lifting weights like brushing teeth. It needs to be done for health, there is no choice in the matter
vaylian 4y ago
> More often than not it results in me literally sobbing under my desk. Sometimes you just need to get things out of your system. I feel much better after a good sob. The brain is not a perfectly designed machine, but a bug-ridden contraption that can do some amazing things. Of course, it would be much better to not feel the need to sob. But sobbing can be used to regain focus if you give yourself the freedom to let loose.
- annie_muss 4y ago
  At home it's not such a big problem but at work you will quickly be labelled as "too emotional". Even sympathetic people will feel uncomfortable.
- spoiler 4y ago
  You're spot on. It's unfortunate we see crying as a weakness. Even machines need an outlet. Electronics need cooling; cars need an exhaust. So, it should be okay for humans to let it out, too.

mckravchyk 4y ago

(Not the parent but I can relate) I'm not much accomplished yet but I have been maintaining a 60h+ work week for the past 3 years (ok, not every single week is a 60h one but most are). I never look at my feelings, I sit down and do the work no matter what. The concept of having to motivate myself to do something sounds extremely foreign. It's not just that I'm a workalcoholic, I always end work on time and I always wish I had more time for other things. I have the discipline but I think the key is discipline + actually loving it, loving the thing that you are doing on average. Loving the process of discipline + loving the vision that you are working towards. I think that the passion and inspiration alone are not sufficient because there are always things you don't want to work on and you may really not feel like it sometimes, on the other hand, discipline for the sake of discipline without appreciation - having to push yourself... no. There must be both push and pull. If you don't feel any pull or if it's much weaker than the push then it most likely means that the sacrifice is not worth it or maybe you are doing way too much and not scheduling any time to appreciate the present moment.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
> the key is discipline + actually loving it Oh, yeah. I do luvs my programming. I couldn't imagine doing this for something I hate. I should add that having a completely finished product, actively being used by end-users is also a very good feeling.
- mckravchyk 4y ago
  I imagine so, not there yet. To me, it's certainly not just about programming but the project / product in particular as well as how much ownership / leadership over the thing I would have. If it feels like it's a part of the bigger picture and I get to develop skills I want to develop, that could be quite fun, even if I was doing it for someone else. My experience to date with other people's projects was not that exciting though but I liked it because I had the time to work on my own thing alongside. I remember working 2 months on a client's project exclusively while not having any time for mine, I was approaching 50h/week just for that project. I liked it on average but I remember the last week was tough, I really felt like I had enough and just thinking through some ideas about a potential future product / project felt like gasping for air while being underwater for too long. I think that's the general theme of this. So long as a significant chunk of the work (i.e. 1/3) is genuinely enjoyable just for what it is, the other, more boring work is also more pleasant because: 1) - it feels like a part of the bigger picture that you like (i.e. whether you are doing something really boring or maybe earning money to buy yourself more time) and 2 - just conditioning, getting good emotions from one part of the work is partially transferred to the boring stuff and it needs to happen on an ongoing basis. The fact that there are boring parts to it (which one can still learn to appreciate) provides the contrast and makes the highs much higher. However, there's also something I did not mention initially. I'm spending considerable time on appreciating the now, I would set aside 40 min every day to do Zen meditation and it really does help with the discipline / will power but perhaps most importantly - appreciating work that's boring - if I can get myself to enjoy sitting still or walking circles around the room, I can treat boring work not unlike extra Zen practice that sharpens me further. It does not have to be Zen practice but just ensuring that you are spending some time enjoying the now basically every day is critical when you you are often trying to make predictions about the future which is stress and anxiety inducing.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    > I would set aside 40 min every day to do Zen meditation That sounds like an excellent practice (and it also requires discipline).
annie_muss 4y ago
It's great to hear your success story. I love tech and I love programming, but 60h a week of a it sounds completely superhuman to me. It's like someone telling me they just ran a marathon in 2.5 hours. Sure, I know it's theoretically possible but I can't image what it takes to get here. This thread has really made me realize what a disability ADHD is. I struggle to watch a movie from start to finish, even one I have been really looking forward to. I dream of being able to concentrate and work on what I want to do for an entire day. My ratio at the moment is about 1-2 hours of work in every 8 hour day.
- mckravchyk 4y ago
  It comes at some personal life sacrifice though and I will be looking to reduce it slightly in the coming years. It's basically a lifestyle of work and not much else, I set aside some time for a hobby which also involves socializing and that's why it's 60h/week (63h/week being theoretical max if nothing comes up) and not 70h/week. Hitting the time on a regular day (not every day is like that) requires ongoing effort to sustain it. I spend 20 min / day doing time tracking and performance analysis (I think it makes more time than it costs). So for example if I want to hit 10h on a day which is purely dedicated to work, I wake up at 6, I end work at 8 and go to sleep at 9:30. That gives me 14h between 6 and 8, so it means that the combined time for the morning and midday routines must be under 4h. I don't stress about doing too little work on any given day, but I will always look at it the next day and consider what I could do better with the execution of the previous day . Then it mostly becomes a habit, I would just do it like a robot. Not every day is like that, but most are. I'm sorry to hear about your disability. I don't know much about ADHD but perhaps you would find the following tips useful. You could look into Zen meditation - a good book with the how is 3 Pillars of Zen, feel free to discard the supernatural stuff and just focus on regular practice. One of the main benefits of Zen practice is increasing your attention span. It's extremely challenging to sustain focus on nothing and I still struggle with this despite doing it regularly for 5 years. It could be as simple as counting exhales and resetting the count every 10 breaths, expect to lose track fast but you get better at it with regular practice and this directly translates to your attention span when doing other things. Maybe you could also benefit from journaling - try to successively increase work blocks by a small amount every week or so and keep track of it. Other tips: avoid scrolling social media, get good sleep - you may need up to 8.5h of bed time / 8h of sleep, it's easy to be chronically sleep depleted without being aware about it and everything is much harder without good sleep, do quick breaks while working, i.e. 1 minute pause every 15 min just looking at the timer (not email!).
deterministic 4y ago
Why on earth do you want to work 60+ hours a week? It absolutely boggles my brain that anybody would be proud to work that many hours. Unless you are an entrepreneur working for yourself and love doing it.
- mckravchyk 4y ago
  I don't want it, it's been a necessity. Now I'm cutting it down a bit actually and putting my entrepreneurial pursuits on hold for some 4 - 5 years because there was just too much conflict with missing out on some other things in life that I find valuable.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

> How do you actually not give up and power through? Sorry it took so long to respond. I browse HN on my breaks, and it's catch-as-catch-can. I keep my eyes on the prize at the end. For me, it's all about having a finished product after all the agita. There's also a lot of (in my case) interest in the Mission of the project. One project that I did, took ten years to really start coming into its own. During that time, I was pretty much left on my own, and even outright abused (by the end users, and also "gatekeepers," who wanted to control the project). It all came out great, in the end. The project was taken over by a new team, and very little of my original code remains in the current version. I'm happy about that. Most of what I wanted to do, was push the idea of the project (an infrastructure-level resource locator).

lr1970 4y ago

> How do you actually not give up and power through? Break big problem into sequence of small and achievable goals. Getting small gratifications by completing small steps helps to maintain mental balance and avoid burn-out and dead-lock.

chii 4y ago

it's actually counter intuitive, but being "disciplined" is actually not great for finishing projects. Rather, it's better to setup a habit and routine, and stick to it for a long time, whether you accomplish anything during that time or not. E.g., work on blah for 30mins, at 9:30pm before sleeping, or at 6am when awake. Don't change this time, and don't do more time than originally planned (regardless of progress or lack thereof). Habits are more powerful than self-control and discipline.

CMCDragonkai 4y ago
You're describing discipline. Habit is discipline.
- starfallg 4y ago
  They're related but not the same. Discipline can be used to form habits wilfully, but habits are can be formed without discipline. What the parent was trying to say is that you can form healthy habits even if you're not disciplined.
- spoiler 4y ago
  I think it's more nuanced than that. I like to simplify these complex topics to myself by gamifying them a little. Imagine every time you make a conscious decision to do something you expend willpower points. You have a only a set number of willpower points a day. Some things you like, some things you don't, and that depends how much they will cost. Choosing not to do something can also costs points, because it's a habit. Habits are a way to reduce or discount this choice associated cost. Now, I recently thought a lot about discipline, motivation, dreaming (for the future) and hope. And I think the problem with discipline is that, everyone has a different definition on it, and it also changes between context. Military discipline is not the same as daily discipline. Soldiers are plenty undisciplined in their daily lives. When people talk about discipline they think "doing things that one doesn't want doing" but it's really not that simple. It all ties to hopefulness and dreaming for the future. And s someone who's experienced this first hand due to a traumatic childhood: People who don't value themselves won't be disciplined for their own sakes, but they can be incredibly disciplined for the sake of others. So, there's a component of seeing value in what you do, or believe that there is value even if you don't see it. So, like everything in life, discipline is multi faceted. As an example, people talk about dopamine and motivation, but I've realised that it's probably closely tied to discipline too. You need to be motivated to be disciplined. I've recently started becoming more "disciplined" by being incredibly intentional about trying to regulate my dopamine baseline throughout the day. I started doing it to feel less miserable throughout the day, but ended up being more disciplined as a side effect. And I've also realised that this has increased my daily "willpower" budget from earlier.

apsurd 4y ago

best info i got on this topic is from weight training videos. applies to everything though, give it a shot. it's long but you can easily see from the slides what he's saying https://youtu.be/zNePCoXjC4s https://youtu.be/zNePCoXjC4s quick gist is when people say motivation to train or do anything there's really a specific process we go through that determines to what extent we stick with anything 1 inspiration 2 motivation 3 intention 4 discipline 5 habit 6 passion discipline is great but it's the part that takes willpower and it's not sustainable so if you don't like to do something you need the willpower to do it. it's not gonna last ever day for years. that people have to suffer to sustain things is misguided advice. the math doesn't check out. sibling comment is correct here, discipline is necessary but only 1/6 of the framework. for long term sustainability we need habits plus higher order reasons to want to do it. passion ideally, or boosts of positive energy from inspiration and motivation.

elenaferrantes 4y ago
What helps me doing something I don’t like on a daily basis (pull up for example) is thinking : I don’t have the choice. That way I consume much less willpower
- layer8 4y ago
  How does one make oneself think that? It always remains circular. Doing X to compel you to do Y just shifts the problem from Y to X. There is no “bottom” that is guaranteed to work.
- kevviiinn 4y ago
  Personally I think of lifting weights like brushing teeth. It needs to be done for health, there is no choice in the matter

vaylian 4y ago

> More often than not it results in me literally sobbing under my desk. Sometimes you just need to get things out of your system. I feel much better after a good sob. The brain is not a perfectly designed machine, but a bug-ridden contraption that can do some amazing things. Of course, it would be much better to not feel the need to sob. But sobbing can be used to regain focus if you give yourself the freedom to let loose.

annie_muss 4y ago
At home it's not such a big problem but at work you will quickly be labelled as "too emotional". Even sympathetic people will feel uncomfortable.
spoiler 4y ago
You're spot on. It's unfortunate we see crying as a weakness. Even machines need an outlet. Electronics need cooling; cars need an exhaust. So, it should be okay for humans to let it out, too.