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> Is there a failure mode from having too much willpower? Yes. I was a terribly undisciplined child and carried much of that with me into college and early ad
by breckinloggins 3y ago
> Is there a failure mode from having too much willpower?
Yes.
I was a terribly undisciplined child and carried much of that with me into college and early adulthood, so I spent over a decade doing "self discipline workouts".
I'm happy to report that it worked: I now have the ability to tell myself "you need to do X" and I will indeed do X. No matter how unpleasant. No matter how long it takes.
I'm unhappy to report that it worked: I can willpower myself into burnout easily and only notice how unhealthy I was being when I force myself (or my partner gently forces me) to take a vacation.
Overall I'm happy with the tradeoff, but it is possible to become an incredibly unhealthy version of yourself by overcorrecting on procrastination.
- nvarsj 3y agoHah this sounds familiar. My life is a series of waves of high productivity and career growth, followed by troughs of burnout and depression. I just don’t know if I’m wired to be hyper productive, or if anyone is, really.
- jgauth 3y agoWhat is a self discipline workout?
- breckinloggins 3y agoSomeday I should write an entire blog post about that, but basically: 1. Promise yourself you will do thing tomorrow 2. If you do thing tomorrow, make another promise and repeat (but maybe a more challenging thing) 3. If you fail to do thing tomorrow, make another promise and repeat (but a WAY less challenging thing) Example: 1. I will do 1 pushup tomorrow 2a. Tomorrow happens, I do pushup. I promise myself I'll do 2 pushups tomorrow. 2b. Tomorrow happens, I don't do pushup. I promise myself I'll bend my knees in something vaguely resembling a squatting stance tomorrow I definitely recommend books like "Atomic Habits" and "The Power of Habit" for getting ideas that might work for you.
- tpoacher 3y ago"Someday"
- breckinloggins 3y agoNobody's perfect, and besides... I haven't promised myself yet, so technically it isn't procrastination! :)
- dylan604 3y agoWhen someday arrives, I'm going to be really friggin' busy
- dkarras 3y agohow does it work though? sounds like you are being rewarded for not holding your own end of the promise (next day you do less challenging thing). I'm not saying punishment should work better but curious how it works.
- breckinloggins 3y ago> sounds like you are being rewarded for not holding your own end of the promise That's a risk, but I find that overall I pick things just hard enough to be challenging but just easy enough to make myself do. Then I do those things consistently until they become my new baseline and I increase the challenge. (2 pushups, 10, 20 pushups + putting on jogging shoes, ...). The big idea is to pick things that you're almost certain you'll do. Falling back to smaller promises should be the exception. > curious how it works. Slowly, with lots of restarts, but the advantage of this method is that no matter how many times you fall off the wagon (and no matter how far you fall) you have something simple to start again. Starting over at the proverbial "1 pushup" after you've spent time and effort building it up to so much more than that definitely sucks, but it's far better than other alternatives I've tried (such as waiting until I have the massive motivation needed to restart from exactly where I stopped). Edit: I think it works for me because it slowly builds up self trust, which then becomes a positive feedback loop.
- natdempk 3y agoOut of curiosity, what did you do as "self-discipline workouts"?
- quijoteuniv 3y agoLooks interesting, i ll save it to read later.
- chinchilla2020 3y agoThis sounds similar to the book 'atomic habits'
- TeMPOraL 3y agoI'll happily buy this skill off you - it's still better than attempting to willpower myself into doing anything and failing.
- dylan604 3y agoYou just need to find the right loot box to upgrade your abilities
- comet-engine 3y ago[dead]
- q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 3y agoYou don't have to buy it at all, though. It's free! Looks like OP explained his system below, but it's really just an instantiation of The General System: 1. Try something. 2. If it worked, go back to step 1, and try to do better. 3. If it didn't work, go back to Step 1, and try to do better. (There are some tricky parts to the system, like defining "works" and "better" — but on the other hand, everyone has to define those for themselves anyway.) Also, FWIW, "failure" might not be the most useful way to frame whatever's happening for you. Sometimes, I like to say instead, "an embarrassingly high price to pay for learning a simple lesson... but at least I've learned it now." (Usually, when I frame it that way, it also becomes clear that I passed up many earlier opportunities to buy the lesson for a much cheaper price. And that's sort of a nice realization, too, because it restores a fair bit of agency.)
- jimmydddd 3y agoReminds me of an article I read about some people who were unhappy in their careers as doctors. Basically, they had such strong willpower that they were able to force themselves to do all the years of hard work and studying to become doctors while over riding all of their feelings of not liking the profession. Basically, they were victims of their ability to over ride their feelings to achieve any goal they had set.
- kirso 3y agoThis is so interesting but not sure if this is healthy. For things that really bring you benefit in the end like gym it seems reasonable. With hating your profession and overriding it can IMO cause some serious mental issues but maybe I am wrong.
- HeartStrings 3y agoWhat workout?
- flangola7 3y ago* May not work for the neurodivergent No type or amount of discipline training has ever dented the impervious armor surrounding my neocortex.
- adave 3y agoYeah this is a problem faced by perfectionist types who end up being very successful but hate their lives every day.