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Discipline: Be The Machine

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74 pointsmoconnor28 comments

I liked the general sentiment of the article, but this jumped out at me: "There’s not some finite amount of self-control to get through each day..." as I thought recent research had proven the opposite (your daily supply of willpower appears to be finite). Have I misunderstood that?

Really? That sounds fascinating - have you got any references I could follow up on? It's always felt like it should be true, but after acting as if it isn't for a while it didn't seem to hold to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=tough-choic...

Some studies have found willpower to be a limited resource. It is often likened to a muscle, because using it depletes its power in the immediate-term, but regular exercise increases its strength in the long-term. Wikipedia article on this phenomenon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion

The Wikipedia article is quite dry, however, and I suggest this readable NYTimes article instead: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/opinion/02aamodt.html

Or this one: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/how-to-boost-your-w...

That second NYTimes link mentions that the mechanism of willpower depletion might be glucose depletion. Drinking a sugary drink restores willpower. (This effect has also been shown to be true of the self-control of dogs: http://www.miller-mccune.com/health/dogs-offer-clues-to-self...)

Regulating your emotions also depletes willpower (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/mu-rda092409.... but it doesn't go into detail on the regulating emotions part). I have observed that tolerating irritating people harms my productivity.

I warn that at least one study has failed to replicate the willpower depletion result: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1fe/antiakrasia_technique_structured...

The fact that you didn't know this is evidence that you've been following your own advice. Bravo!

Personally I'm skeptical of most of the conclusions I've read about ego depletion. I think it's like anything else: there's a balance to be found between self control and self release. And the more you work at it, the more you can yield and still stay balanced.

Full disclosure: I'm writing this comment when I should be working... ;)

I think the advice is reasonable, but a little simplistic. It could all be roughly summarized as "just buck up and get er' done," which isn't really that enlightening. More interesting, imho, would be something that provides insight into why our short term needs/wants often trump our long term goals, and why we can be so easily distracted. There are certain built in features of our cognitive landscape that I think are better tricked than simply countermanded via force of will.

FWIW, one thing that sorta works for me is using a little tool called Temptation Blocker, which prevents me from running chrome/firefox for a set period of time. In cases where I have to google something work related, I'll have to open up IE, which is annoying and lacks my usual bookmarks. Although I can still find ways to cheat and go to brain candy websites -- just by grabbing my iPhone, for example -- it makes it difficult enough to help a little.

I believe the following bit about the pomodoro technique is a bit underinformed:

"Take the pomodoro technique (45 minutes work, 15 minutes slacking off for being a good boy) – what they’re really trying to say is “be disciplined for just 45 minutes – you can manage that, can’t you?” That’s a lot like Joel’s advice to “be funny” when we write - it sounds great but leaves out the important bit, like: what can we actually do when we start getting distracted?"

The breaks are neither slacking nor rewards for being a good boy - they are for preparing oneself for the next high focus period. And the original pomodoro paper (free pdf, google it) provides quite a lot of advice about dealing with distractions. Last but not least it's not 45/15 but rather 25/5, which makes a difference.

Is "relentlessly resourceful" really equal to "discipline" ? This equivalence seemed to be the weakest part of the post.

Discipline (which I define as "doing what ought to be done in preference what you feel like doing" seems to be a different quality than "resourcefulness" relentless or otherwise.

Besides, deciding what "ought to be done" is easy for things like "Go to the gym everyday" but not so easy for "what to do today in my startup ".

+ 1 Ressourcefullness is more a "yes maybe it's possible", "let's try this" "why not". Discipline is more saying "no" or "you have to" to certain things.

OP here - this is a fair point but I think the comparison stands; in the post I defined discipline as taking the easy way out (in this case avoidance and/or giving up) off the table and forcing yourself to keep looking for other ways to make progress. It struck me that this was another definition of 'relentlessly resourceful' - not giving up just because you've reached a wall, but instead continuing to look for other ways you can keep moving forwards. No?

I would categorize relentlessly resourceful under determination, but there's a strong connection between discipline and determination. They're all part and parcel.

Discipline, as you define it, sounds pretty tortuous. I prefer a way of life where what I ought to be doing and what I want to be doing are the same thing.

Good luck with that, especially since emotions are so funy and... irrational.

Decent post, but mentioning Paul Graham worship is pretty weak. I think you would have had stronger post without appealing to his perceived authority.

It looks like you're targeting the HN crowd though so I see how slipping in a PG reference would feel right.

Also I'll recommend in addition to your list to try out RescueTime. Might find yourself spending too much time on HN or reddit.

I thought that this was a brilliant article. I often suffer from the problem of starting work only to find myself compiling some code and then taking a quick HN break and then 45 mins later asking myself what I was doing.

I created a very simple tool that measures minutes spent consuming vs minutes spent producing. Now my goal each day is to increase the ratio. It's worked well.

Hmmm. That's like bio-feedback techniques, but cyber-feedback instead.

2 things help me:

1. RescueTime (http://rescuetime.com) Pushing your productivity index up to top 5% can be addictive, but it can also be exhausting. I found I have to pause RT for 30 or 60 mins every now and then and let myself "breathe". Even with breaks, the productivity index is a pretty good proxy for discipline.

2. Instapaper (http://instapaper.com) But not standalone. I use it to push selected articles to my Kindle. Since I generally only use my Kindle during down time (late night reading, leisure time) it helps postpone the distraction without worrying that I'm missing good content.

Best of both worlds.

Treat yourself like a machine

I think that would require some serious change in my wiring so that's a no go. Still, interesting article even if the ideas in it aren't anything new. One of the previous comments mentioned that it was a little simplistic and I tend to agree. I've had problems with just getting things done before but that's not easily fixed as suggested here. Previously, advice like that has dragged me deeper down since I thought there was something wrong with me since I couldn't get things done. I guess they work depending on where you stand in life. Now, they might work better than before. Who knows. I might try.

Yeah yeah yeah. Discipline is something you're born with or have had beaten into you as a kid. I sneered at my Dad when he'd yadda on about self-control and discipline, "yeah, big man, whatever" and I literally had no cognitive grasp of the notion and I _did not care_. If I could go back in time to my younger self this is the one area of my personality that I'd like to change. I shudder to think of the countless hours in my life that I've devoted to useless potentially deforming time sinks - including reading Hacker News. I'll never have discipline and I'm cursed because of it, I coulda been a contender, meh.

Honestly, I like the overall goal of your article. I just wanted to make 2 comments. 1) being disciplined in an of itself is not a good thing. It is a fairly common thing to be disciplined in a practice that is either futile or damaging to your best interests. 2) on this same line discipline for disciplines sake can lead to work for works sake, which wastes a lot of time.

Discipline is a great force multiplier, when used appropriatly. It is important to note that discipline should be a tool overlay to an existing beneficial goal or plan. Or in developing that goal or plan.

That's usually the hard part.

Also, I do know many highly disciplined WoW players

The trouble with being a machine is that you're not a machine. It can be a good short-term strategy, but if you do it for too long your system will start to rebel.

I think the point was that there's a large gap between the threshold of "I need my force myself just to focus for another half hour" and "I've completely overdone it."

The article finally convinced me to install leechblock for Firefox. In my day job (finance - corporate actions related) we finished our busy season a month or so ago and I cannot remember the last time I sat down and coded something. 2 months of working 13 hour days hardly inspires you to come home and do more mentally challenging tasks. Time to get back on the wagon!

I call it being ruthlessly resourceful.

Teddy Atlas to heavyweight contender Mchael Moorer, on his motivation problems:

"Don't you understand anything about commitment, about being a pro, about sticking with what you say you wanna be? You don't do it just when you feel good. You don't do it just when you're not tired. You don't do it just when it's sunny. You do it every day of your life. You do it when it hurts to do it, when it's the last thing in the world that you wanna do, when there are a million reasons not to do it. You do it because you're a professional."

Thank you for reminding of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obdd31Q9PqA

It's Warhawk Matt Scott in Nike's "No Excuses" Commercial

That is really good advice. I came to that realisation too but it is not easy. There is something about being a "machine" and really hard on yourself, but it is really the best way. Otherwise you're just drifting. But it is hard to begin with as you have all sorts of habits and schemata and conditioning which would need to all be reformulated, so to begin with you would need much attention and focus and operate without the help of at least unconscious automatism, but a habit is just a habit and the great thing about them is that once they are set, they are difficult not to be followed.

So, are you "happier"?

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