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In my opinion, based on my personal observations, reading and listening to smart people of the past and present, the most important skill, even meta-skill, for every time and epoch is self-discipline - the ability to do things you need to do tolerating discomfort and suffering. Suffer now to thrive later.

The epoch one lives in and their social position will dictate critical skills an individual requires to survive and move up - be it martial prowess, persuasion, focus. People with strong discipline can grow those skills quicker and farther.

A good inspirational example for me was in David Goggins’ book “Can’t Hurt Me”, where he vividly describes his inner fight against his mind that always wants comfort now; he shares that the main reason he tortures himself with physical challenges is not to become physically strong, but to grow an armored mind, one that is prepared for real life struggles.

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Self discipline is one of the psychology things which might not actually be a thing though. Often cited in this sort of discussion is the "marshmallow test" which has been found to be BS. Maybe there's something to willpower, but the discussion is stinky right now because of the replication issues. Same for "flow" which is another smell this article and related discussions have.

I find that I can be incredibly self disciplined when I setup my environment so that I don't have to fight myself. How do I fight distractions from my phone when I'm out with friends? I don't bring my phone. And yet somehow I always manage to meet with people at the time and place we decide on. I know not everyone can do this, I'm just using it as an example.

A feeling of a lack of self discipline is a symptom, much like procrastination. It's a mess of things all clumped together like a rats nest of wires. Everyone has their answer to procrastination (the book is in progress!) but beating procrastination isn't a skill because it isn't the root problem. Much like a headache could mean that you are going to die from cancer or you might just need some rest. If you feel you have procrastination problems, it's because something broke upstream and now you are blaming it on procrastination.

ETA: Herding my own actions is about preparation and personal story telling. If I setup a clear path for the next day and get good sleep, then it will work. If I get a bad night of sleep and I'm unorganized, then it's going to be a disaster and I'm going to complain about procrastination. If I see a cake which looks good and I have a weak reason not to eat it, I'm going to eat the thing. If I manage to convince myself to join the cult of low-carbs, then I wouldn't be caught dead with a piece of cake. If I'm working with people who are laid back, then I become laid back. If I'm working with people who are ultra-competitive, then I become competitive. It's all about pouring the kool-aid and then convincing myself to drink it. ;)

I think you summed it up pretty nicely, I might have even used the same words.

But in a sense, procrastination is "natural" as much as the taste of sugar is natural, but if you allow yourself to be carried out by it then it becomes a problem.

Which wouldn't be a problem if sugar was still scarce. It's the abundance of food and distractions which messes us up.

Correct, that's the reason why discipline is important, which absolutely does not mean shutting yourself completely from those things

Yet that just doesn't work for many (most?) people. Even for those that claim it does I'm sceptical.

I work at home for myself, every morning I sit at my desk and start coding. I could claim I'm disciplined however it seems far more likely to me that I just built a habit of coding in the mornings.

I agree, there are a lot of people who have difficulties handling it (and a lot of crappy advice)

Isn’t setting your environment an act of discipline in itself?

Again, the idea of self discipline right now is stinky for the reasons I mentioned above.

Self discipline is more about going against what your monkey brain wants to do. It's not about just any action. If you don't want to get out of bed and you do it anyways, then a book writer might call that "self discipline" and write an article about it. On the other hand, maybe you have been laying in bed so long that you need to get up to avoid bed sores. In that case, getting out of bed isn't self-discipline.

So, I guess you would have to assume that "setting your environment" is something you don't feel like doing. Like I said, if that's the case then there is likely something off further upstream. Like maybe your schedule says you should get out of bed but really you should stay in bed because an idiot (you) didn't pencil in enough sleep in the free template.

The root of the problem is not enough caffeine. I don't have the energy to discipline myself until I have enough of it. I tried quitting caffeine. It resulted in three months of staying in bed.

It's just too easy to play music and read stuff all day when you don't have the energy to get out of bed.

Yet caffeine disturbs my sleep and hence my work. It's almost like we are all individuals.

A usual advice here on HN is to check on ADHD with a good doctor. You can decide then if you want to jump on medications, but I can share that it improves the lives of many people.

Medications can help temporarily, but then tolerance appears and you need to up the dose. I think they are mostly helpful in the range of a few months up to a year, as a crutch to help someone sort their life out (professionally and/or academically), and also in terms of setting up efficient organizational techniques, developing helpful practices for focusing (meditation, exercising, diet). It helped me a lot in this way, I was then able to quit ADHD meds while retaining a much improved focus ability.

I'll throw my own anecdote into the ring here. As a person who's been on ADHD meds for 20+ years I've noticed that although tolerance does build up, it doesn't build up to the point that medication is ineffective, just less effective. Also, fairly short periods of no medication (a few days) can go a long way towards resetting tolerance to a meaningful degree. Despite being on these medications for decades, being on or off them continues to be huge factory in my day-to-day ability to execute tasks of any kind.

In your experience, do ADHD meds improve your brain functioning in a long term? I heard that amphetamine can stimulate and heal some deficiencies in the brain of people with ADHD. Did you notice something like that considering your 20+ years of med.

I'm 36, got diagnosed with ADHD when I was 25 or so. I took meds when I first got diagnosed but hated them and went off after a couple of weeks. Since then, I've never taken any amphetamines for ADHD.

I've also noticed an increase in functioning and ability to succeed and manage the symptoms of ADHD as time has gone on. I'm less inclined to think it's the drugs and more leaning towards it being the person learning to manage their symptoms more effectively as they get older.

You sort of just learn to live with how your brain works and processes things. No idea if uppers help that process or not. It wasn't necessary for me.

> I'm 36, got diagnosed with ADHD when I was 25 or so.

I was diagnosed at 7, and am currently 30.

> I'm less inclined to think it's the drugs and more leaning towards it being the person learning to manage their symptoms more effectively as they get older.

Why do you say that if you were only ever on those drugs for a couple of weeks? Moreover, while your ADHD wasn't severe enough that your life wasn't negatively impacted in a significant way by not medicating it, why do you think that experience is likely to align with others' experiences? What if others stay on those drugs because the quality of life impact is greater than the downsides of those drugs?

I don't enjoy taking drugs for ADHD. I take them because my ability to be a functioning and productive member of society is greatly impacted if I don't. Perhaps I could learn to live without them, but that's not something that would happen in a day, or a week, or even a month or more, and during that time my ability to perform at my job and take care of my own well-being would go out the window.

> No idea if uppers help that process or not.

My understanding of the neurological underpinnings of ADHD (or at least some varieties of it) is that it is caused by poor operation of the "executive function" system of the brain. This is the system that allocates cognitive resources to tasks and the difficulty encountered by those with ADHD getting and staying on task is due to the system failing to allocate the necessary resources. So stimulants work because they ramp up that system. Note that the "hyper-focus" that many with ADHD experience is also a result of poor performing executive function in that it is an over-allocation of cognitive resources.

Do note that what I've written is a medical knowledge informed, but ultimately still layperson, understanding of the brain.

> You sort of just learn to live with how your brain works and processes things.

I agree in the sense that you can learn to accept any chronic condition, including its detrimental effects. However I see that as giving up, at least as far as my own quality of life is concerned.

Considering I went on ADHD medication during childhood it would be very difficult for me to know if (though I assume it has) and in what specific ways that's altered my cognitive development.

Caffeine is just an antagonist of adenosine receptors. In other words, it supresses feeling of fatigue, but the fatigue itself didn't go away actually.

Counterexample to your person experience is my personal experience :) -- my body comes to a norm within 1-2 weeks after switching off caffeine.

The phenomenon of self discipline is known and discussed way before modern psychology is born.

Do we all know that some people surrender quickly to physical or mental challenges, and some last longer? Our brain cries at us to stop doing challenging things, stop pushups, stop working on a hard problem. Self discipline in my definition is how you react on those brain calls. Can you shut them down for a while, or will you find an excuse to stop?

Currently I am experimenting on myself, by reflecting and talking to my brain under stress (the best exercise I found for it is the plank).

You should have a strong inner reason why you want to tolerate suffering. Kool-aid, external motivation helps, but up to some point. When I am suffering trying to keep plank it helps to clearly remind myself why I am doing that.

Yet hear you are, procrastinating with all of us.

You comment actually touches some interesting points.

First, one procrastinates only if they decided they should be doing something else at this moment. I am now relaxed and interested in spending some time on HN - you can actually learn something here as well.

Second, being constantly busy, optimising, and improving is a new fashion and decease. It's an unrealistic demand that causes anxiety. You also need to relax, reflect, play, do nothing. https://youtu.be/3qHkcs3kG44?t=1102

Third, it also depends on what is your life goal - be happy, be super successful. I am happy to spend some time on HN, and I do not stress myself over it.

It matches my experience much better than the « self-motivation » theory. If you have self-motivation, it’s because you are in the correct chemistry, brainwise. Maybe you are loved, maybe you eat well, maybe you live in a building that has proper O2 venting. But being able to motivate yourself for work and sports and friends is the result.

When one says « Motivate yourself and all will be better! », they are just saying that they are in a fortunate situation and they don’t see why others wouldn’t be. It’s similar to a rich man telling a poor man: « Spend and you will be rich, that’s what I do all the time! » No, you are not « able to go through tough times because of the strength of character» but because you are still well despite temporarily being disappointed.

Example: > Self discipline in my definition is how you react on those brain calls. Can you shut them down for a while, or will you find an excuse to stop?

Ok, this guy is healthy. Probably loved, probably has expectations for the future, he probably has reasons to work hard, because he gains hard when he works hard.

> Currently I am experimenting on myself,

« Currently I am feeling good, so I can spend this extraordinary energy into something that will make me even healthier »

> by reflecting and talking to my brain under stress

I assure you this is not how the brain works. Basically he has hope for the future, so he can sell hope to his brain.

It is extremely important for the future of USA, because USA is currently experimenting a « Boy Crisis » (from the title of the book) where men can’t get motivation, and they spiral into drugs. Particularly in the mid-west, but it’s a trend in the whole Western world. That’s why some experts are screaming at the dangerosity of having anti-white-male policies in pretty much all areas (work, NGOs, etc), it’s because, I don’t know whether this is the root cause, but at least it increases and compounds the problem.

And finally, that’s why a psy is also able to evaluate what your remaining resources are, and use those to make yourself start a project where you will receive more love and hope (or exchange more love), but that is entirely different from the « be more motivated so you have more energy » advice.

>> it’s because you are in the correct chemistry, brainwise.

Well, we all are born different, physically and mentally. Your argument sounds to me a bit like that one doesn't have a choice. Basically, I am born lazy, so I cannot change myself, it's my destiny to stick with low goals.

>> I assure you this is not how the brain works. Basically he has hope for the future, so he can sell hope to his brain.

Can you please elaborate more on that? I do not think we have a right clear picture now how our brain works, motivation, willpower, discipline, whatever. I can agree that if you decided that you are limited by nature, and also if you think you cannot find your goals and sell to your brain - you will stay where you are. In the end, we are what we think we are.

I think people who have more energy (ala endurance athletes) look more disciplined.

Also what kind of energy you need to be a President, Chess Grandmaster or a Tennis Grand Slam winner is different. They all are called displined though.

People with disabilities and mental health issues who do well are usually those with high energy levels or are in environments that produce energy more than drain energy(distractions/triggers etc play a role here).

You can also see it in areas of poverty. People who do well are usually called more driven, ambitious etc which basically again goes back to energy levels.

Stephen King definitely has more energy than GRRM. But Martin has proved you can be as distracted as you want and still suceed if you have an imagination and are social.

The marshmallow test is weird anyway. The other day we happened to have a bag of marshmallows so I asked my daughter if she’d like one marshmallow now or two after doing a chore. Surprise surprise, she gleefully did the chore and got two marshmallows. What does that mean? That she’s a hard worker? That she understands the value of waiting to have a bigger reward in the future? I don’t know.

Test it on 30-40 kids instead and then get back to us.

You sample size is too small :-)

That's not actually the marshmallow test.

The marshmallow test is to see if she can wait 15 minutes alone in a room with a marshmallow without eating it in return for 2 marshmallows.

Nothing to do with hard work (in fact, it's about having no distractions at all), its purely about self discipline (setting aside whether it's valid psychology or not..)

But then they discovered it is in fact not purely about self-discipline, but rather the degree of trust the child has in the marshmallow promiser. In an uncertain life, it makes sense to take whatever marshmallow is actually here now.

Right. I understand. I was making an admittedly hasty and not very clear commentary about how weirdly artificial the marshmallow test is. If I want to put off gratification in the real world, I busy myself with working on something else.

I’d personally take the one marshmallow, then go do something else, and hope my daughter would too. My time is too valuable to be sitting around waiting for marshmallows.

>much like procrastination. It's a mess of things all clumped together like a rats nest of wires.

This is such an important point. I struggle with procrastination and learning the underlying causes are what helped me make huge progress. I cannot recommend "The Now Habit" enough to anyone who struggles with procrastination and guilt that surrounds it. It really was life changing for me. One of, if not the, most important books I've read.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/95708.The_Now_Habit

Thank you so much for the recommendation. I had checked this audio book out this summer, but procrastinated ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ on listening to it. Just checked it out again.

>the "marshmallow test" which has been found to be BS.

Has it? Is the same true of all the other studies of willpower and ego depletion? The studies of judges with low blood sugar, undergrads being tempted with cookies before doing math problems, all of it? I thought it was pretty settled science. What's the critique of that area of research?

The marshmallow test is among the many which has been caught up in the replication crisis. Link below, maybe not the greatest source, but I'm getting distracted from work. ;)

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/marshmall...

I learned a couple years ago that there is a much broader spectrum of sensory processing abnormalities besides autism and aspergers that shows up as a kind of hypervigilance. Some think it may be as high as 10% of humans and explained by evolutionary fitness (when a minority of a tribe has the genes, the tribe fares better than when all or none have it).

One of the consequences of this is that people get worn down during the day, and their behavior and judgement becomes dysregulated. They start making bad decisions, especially where interpersonal issues are concerned. On reflection, they are not happy with their behavior. A lot of people who label themselves as introverts experience this to some degree.

If 10% of people have an experience that is not neurotypical, then you will be surrounded with anecdotes. Also 10% is more than enough to mess with the statistics for a double blind study, especially if they get over or under-represented in the participants.

One of the theories of cocaine as a "thinking man's drug" is that it addresses the symptoms of ADHD, which is another group that can be over-represented in some circles IF they can develop adequate coping mechanisms, including but not limited to self-medication. Same could probably be said about depression (cynicism is good in places like QA, security consulting, disaster planning and investigation).

I agree 100%. This is going to sound weird, but bear with me.

I grew up as a skateboarder and am still super into the scene. What separates the pros from the wannabes isn't just talent. It's dealing with adversity, discomfort, and inconvenience. These pros are skating in places that are not comfortable to skate. The ground is very rough and/or has inconveniently placed cracks. There's a puddle in the way. The ground is dirty with tiny pebbles. They also fall A LOT. By the time they make this crazy trick, they're bleeding from a couple of places and half their board has gotten wet with yucky water. The kind of things that mean "end of the session" for 90% of skaters. The skaters that can deal with these inconveniences/discomfort are the ones that "make it."

Sometimes young skaters to go to famous spots and they are blown away by how rough the ground is, or how close traffic is zipping by at 40 MPH.

THAT's what separates the men from the boys. Grit.

My first taste of grit was on a skateboard too. I would daydream about landing cool new tricks far outside my skill level. I was young, I didn't really know how to acquire new skills, I just repeatedly made the decision to try again every time got it wrong. Eventually I looked back and realized I had surpassed those old daydreams.

I consider myself really lucky to stumble across this at such a young age, the discovery that discipline pays off. I used it when I learned to play music and taught myself programming. The only tasks that excite me in my current phase of life are long term grit-required projects, like language learning, distance running, etc.

I really enjoyed Rodney Mullen's autobiography. He talked about how when he was a kid he would get home from school and skateboard for six hours. Every single day. Trying new things, inventing tricks that nobody else could do. And then he'd go to competitions and completely dominate because he was doing things nobody had ever seen before. That's the dedication it takes to be a pro.

Phil Liggett, The Voice of the Tour de France for decades and decades, is fond of complementing cyclists by saying they "know how to suffer." It is, as near as I can tell, his highest complement to say that you really know how to suffer.

I second David Goggins’ book “Can’t Hurt Me”, inspirational read.

I found the parts where he describes his inner fights very valuable. It raised my awareness of those fights in my brain under discomfort / suffering. I am trying to both reflect on and fight those thoughts.

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