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Comment by vcool07 | Hacker News Reader

IMO, more than motivation, more than all the tip/tricks/productivity hacks, the one thing that keeps a person going for long periods of time is sheer discipline. When you make something a part of your daily routine, irrespective of the external/internal stimuli, you just keep at it. Not because there's some mega reward at the end of it, not because you're passionate about it, but just because you are "used to it" ! I think this was brilliantly explained by Scott Adams in his Goals vs Systems article. Instead of looking for motivation/passion and stuff, try to build a system / discipline around what you want to learn / want to be. Rest everything follows automatically. Even if it doesn't give immediate results, a system just doesn't stop, it keeps going !

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I agree with this, with one caveat: I think 'discipline' is a misleading word for what you're describing. That's what's so counter-intuitive -- once you build the habits of excellence, then executing on those habits is actually trivial, and requires almost no effort. Talking about 'discipline' makes it sound like you're bearing down and getting on with the heroic business of self-denial, when the real trick is to burn in these beneficial behaviors to the point where it would be nearly as hard to not do them as to do them. I guess that's a kind of discipline (maybe discipline-in-outcome), but the usual idiomatic sense seems to be more discipline-in-exhibited effort. Two very different things.

You paint a pretty picture of life once you have attained "habits of excellence".

I've been going to the gym 4+ times a week for the last 5 years. And yes it has gotten easier, and 80% of the time really I enjoy it. But there are days where I am tired, or just don't feel like it.

Those days are where discipline is the most important. The ability to do that which you must, wether you want to or not.

tldr: I think real success is a balance of both, good habits and the discipline to stay the course.

'Habit' is definitely a better word. The Power of Habit is actually a great book that pretty much articulates its title.

Willpower/discipline is better used to build individual habits. "Good habits" will build on each other and give you huge returns in productivity, time management, and psychological well-being.

I generally agree with your sentiment to an extent but let me also play devil's advocate:

Whittling your entire life down to process makes you almost robotic and strips you of creativity, spontaneity, and just....that je ne sais quoi of life. It's just too boring.

As always, it's a balance and depends on context. Gymtime? Make it a process. Hanging out with friends? Yeah...don't schedule that in your calendar. Just go hang out with them.

Actually, the reverse is true. Cognitive load actually reduces creativity, so by having systems in place to reduce cognitive load you free brainpower to be creative.

That being said, I agree that planning too far in advance is a bad idea, mostly because like the weather, there is an element of chaos in people's lives that makes the best possible action at any given moment hard to predict farther than a few days out.

I fundamentally disagree that process prevents creativity in any way. On the contrary, I think creativity requires process. The idea that creativity is just something that "comes" to you is an extremely harmful myth.

I fundamentally disagree that creativity requires process. Creativity requires inspiration and the most common analogy that I think people use to drive this point home is children at play.

Creativity requires both.

You have a problem to solve. You first spend time understanding the problem. This process continues until you understand the problem.

You then start to turn potential solutions over in your head. Lots of research and thought required - this includes inspiration. You must feed your brain. You continue this process indefinitely until...

Epiphany. A special kind of inspiration. You come across something unrelated and your mind connects it to the problem. Ideas in the shower are a typical example. The epiphany gives you a rush - out of nowhere you have the solution.

Creativity is a process where inspiration is a key part. They don't have to be exclusive.

Creativity is applicable to scenarios in which there is no problem to solve. What about undirected creative play?

There is always a problem to solve and there is always process, we simply don't tend to notice it because we take it as a given (i.e., evolution/survival).

What objective function is a four-year-old maximizing when pretending to be Batman with friends?

I don't think a kid would be intentionally optimizing anything in this situation. So if you mean that creativity is not only a tool to be used conciously, I agree.

I just mean I think it's difficult to argue that anything we humans do can be viewed as anything else but problem solving.

So in the case of the kid there might be millions of direct reasons (e.g., boredom > want to solve that), but I think it would still be possible to map any of them to some form of problem > effect or cause > effect relationship. Nothing happens without a reason (without religious connotation).

The problem of boredom with reality.

It's funny because my friends who are musicians or work with art and such all have a process to get creative. That don't sit around waiting for it, they strive towards it. I've heard and read the same from both books and online that most creative people have a process which they use to become inspired.

Which is not to say that you can't just suddenly have a moment of sudden inspiration, just that they are far more rare than the creativity you work for.

Inspiration is not something that just happens. Children at play aren't being distracted by HN or Reddit. You have to sit down and put the work in.

Bad writers wait until they have an idea to start writing. Good writers know the ideas don't happen until after they've started writing.

I agree with you in that inspiration is not something that just happens. It comes from a variety of avenues...from you doing many different things, from you going outside your comfort zone, hearing a new idea, going deeper into a subject etc. And it's probably your own responsibility to put yourself in a position where inspiration can strike (e.g. doing things!).

What I meant to express is that chopping up your week into a pre-defined routine that you do every week for years under the guise of discipline is the wrong way to approach it.

I think we're mis-communicating because neither of us defined what "process" means to us. Perhaps we really agree with each other.

You probably are in agreement. The point of putting in any time is that you have to develop an appreciation and sometimes new skills or techniques for whatever it is you're doing, before you can act on it in more than a cursory surface way. Hot takes based on textbook knowledge are easy and everyone can do those.

Recognizing that, then the problem is just one of how and when you put in that time to go in deep on ideas, when nobody is asking you to. For a lot of folks including myself, routine helps: "I will spend two hours each day on the hard thing I don't know how to solve and have no actionables on," and usually within those two hours something happens to develop your thought process.

For younger folks, deliberate engagement in "designed creativity" is something that isn't just not taught, but actively discouraged by the lack of external feedback, role models or conversations. So it's much harder than just picking up a skill by copying and subsequently making some surface changes to the copy.

Creativity requires constraints. The constraints that surround the challenges we face force us to come up with creative solutions.

Given how much people schedule "play dates" for their kids, I wonder how much your point may still hold :)

> Hanging out with friends? Yeah...don't schedule that in your calendar. Just go hang out with them.

this is easy to do when you're younger but after 30 becomes difficult.

Deliberate practice in discipline. Working backwards from a vision helps as well, no matter how unrealistic the 'end goal' is. That whole cliche about landing amongst the stars if you shoot for the moon or something.

Yes, I've started to apply this to a lot of things. Moreso than discipline though, it's habit.

Think about whatever you want to do like brushing your teeth. There's no end-goal in mind. You're never done brushing your teeth. You just do it, at more or less the same time every day because it's part of your routine. If something happens and you don't do it for a day, you don't throw up your hands and say "Oh no! My tooth-brushing progress ruined! I better give up!", you just pick up where you left off the next day.

Agreed. And I think the OP is saying that these tricks or methods are part of their system.

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