I don't really think there's any shortcuts one can do to adopt self-discipline. I think it is born out of serious changes in ones life if it wasn't already taught and adopted at a younger age.
I've spent quite a bit of time struggling to implement serious changes, because that's how I thought about them: serious changes. When framed this way, it sounds difficult. If you happen to be depressed, it sounds impossible.
The good news is that there are approaches that can help bring about serious change without requiring an outflow of willpower - willpower you don't have because you don't have the self-discipline.
Starting with small core habit changes makes all of this more possible. At some point, I was able to convince myself that if I'm willing to spend <n> hours on distraction each day, I can commit to 10 minutes of mindfulness each morning.
That 10 minute commitment became a snowball of positive change. The end result was a lot of change, yes, but it does not require a herculean effort or some impossible transformation. It's more like laying bricks. Each brick is manageable. The resulting wall is much greater than the sum of the individual bricks.
I wouldn't call this a shortcut, but it was certainly a lot easier than trying to just "fix" everyone through sheer force of will.
Which particular flavor / approach to mindfulness training did you apply that led to this outcome?
I’ve since been using the Waking Up app also created by Harris. The introductory course is a flavor of Vipassana or “seeing things as they are”, and that’s where I started.
Harris has an extensive background and relationships with many meditation teachers and experts across various disciplines, and he tries to distill the best bits from each into the core meditation course.
In addition to the core practices, the app has a deep library of content from other expert teachers ranging from theory/philosophy to guided practice, and I’ve found it fascinating to try meditations from various schools of thought. Some of the extra content goes down some (secular) Buddhism rabbit holes if that’s of any interest.
(Not affiliated with Harris, but I’m a pretty happy user).
The point is that small changes are often achievable in situations where large changes are not. It's a classic case of breaking a large problem into small enough chunks to make it possible to tackle.
This is a drastically different undertaking and is far more likely to succeed than any kind of "big bang" approach.
The process of therapy, whether that's CBT, ACT, etc. are all about making incremental changes that eventually all combine to rewire how you think and/or act. The entire therapy journey consists of these kinds of small changes along with active processing of past events to free up mental capacity. I'm highlighting therapy here because the related disciplines have been studied extensively.
The same concepts apply in other contexts (and are common in fields like software). Outside of traditional methods of therapy, practices like mindfulness meditation have been studied quite a bit, and there is a growing body of research on its benefits [0]. In particular, it seems to lower friction for hard things by helping you see more clearly the reality of why you're struggling with doing things, and why not doing them is often worse in the long run.
> I would challenge that from the getgo.
To clarify, what are you challenging, specifically? The idea that small changes are easier to execute than large ones?
This has been the subject of deep exploration across many walks of life, and on the personal improvement front is at the center of books like Atomic Habits, which itself is based on a foundation of research. The reason small changes work is that we absorb them into our daily routines until they no longer require active thinking to accomplish.
Part of what happens is that you also start confronting the bad reasoning you've been using to justify not acting. Embarrassingly, I had to re-establish basic habits like brushing my teeth. Clarity through mindfulness led to the realization that avoiding the tiny annoyance of doing this each day would be far less painful than the eventual dental issues I would otherwise suffer. I always knew that, but pausing to actually think clearly is what turned that knowing into a deep realization.
- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_meditation (linking to Wikipedia as a shortcut to the extensive references in the article if you're curious).
How would you explain getting into the state of “already doing so as part of a larger motivation” in that case? The fact that people manage to get into that state undermines the premise of your challenge. If what you say is true, no one would rise to the level of “already doing”, which is an act that started at some point.
> In every case where I see someone change there's so many factors that went into it that just obviously would lead you to understand how it's intuitive that they would have done so.
This is called life. The causes and conditions of change are tautologically the reason that people change, yes. But is this a surprise?
If there is nothing to change or no reason to change, why would someone try?
By definition, if someone finds themselves in a position that would benefit from change, that falls under your “other things of the sort”.
The factors that lead to change are innumerable and different for each person. Some of the causes include exposure to new information. For me, I stumbled on some useful books like “Learned Optimism”, which details the history of the discovery of learned helplessness. It opened my eyes to some things about myself that I didn’t understand, and was one of many things that led to a change of mind.
Causes and conditions that lead to change include reading comment threads like this one. Exposing yourself to information that challenges your assumptions is another potent change agent.
So discipline is not an on or off switch for a person, it's more granular and nuanced than that.