Comment by kamaal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kamaal | Hacker News Reader

I always see the best way to develop will power towards doing something is to try and take the smallest step possible in doing it. I've had tremendous success with it. Can't stay awake till 3 AM in the morning to code? Try doing it till 22:00, then try pushing until 22:15, then till 22:30. In short your objective should be not giving up for the next 15 minutes, and when that is over; the next 15, and when that is over; 15 minutes after than... till you get to where you were aiming.

Chances are you will break, but with time and patience you can only get better.

I had this challenge once with a friend. He told me being a nerd I had the worst fitness ever; after a good debate why workout doesn't matter he told me I wouldn't last 5 minutes on a thread mill- The very next day I ran(more like walking very fast) for 45 minutes. Of course I was nearly collapsing after that. By my point was never to run 45 minutes. It was to run the next 3 minutes without giving up, slow down when its overwhelming and keep going at a steady speed and aim to not give up for the next immediate 3 minutes.

I've tried everything else. Drinking sugar cane juice, eating a snack, sipping tea. Nothing has worked apart for that 'Don't give up in the next x minutes' strategy. I'm lead to believe this is common in sports too, Test cricket for that matter is believed that, can be excelled by players who can play from a session to session. Just focus on playing this session well.

Pushing yourself to stay awake is probably not something you should be doing if you want to function at max mental and physical capacity.

Yeah -- if willpower is a muscle, then you've got to keep running to exhaustion. People used to call that 'character building.'

You've got to keep doing things until exhaustion(which it self is a moving target, and you won't reach exhaustion easily or quickly if you practice it enough number of times).

Will power is basically getting yourself to do something which you can't because of reasons outside your interest, passion etc. Stuff like working under pressure, duress, extreme tiredness and in faces of adversity.

If you are lazy, dispassionate or just bored about something. Will power won't help your there.

> If you are lazy, dispassionate or just bored about something. Will power won't help your there.

Maybe I am being overly nit-picky here but I feel the last paragraph completely contradicts the rest of your comment.

At first you claim that will power can overcome a lack of passion but then you say that will power can't help you if you are dispassionate/bored.

Let me clarify.

There is a massive difference between 'Pain' and 'Disinterest'.

Lets say you are super passionate about making the next big programming language. The task is huge, its monstrous. But you go about it eventually, meanwhile you stretching beyond means. You stay up awake whole nights, you are working weekends, you've stopped seeing your friends. All that 18 hr/day work is causing you immense tiredness, there is reasonable amount of failure you are seeing every day. All that failure and way things are going is humbling you down. Now despite there is pain here, you are still carrying on. Because you go on and on, despite situation and find ways to just keep doing it; Until you eventually win. This is what is will power.

There is a second scenario. You come to office 9 AM every day sharp. There is build failure you need to look into, which is some trivial ftp call timing out. You have nothing serious or challenging. All your innovations and extra efforts are treated by your immediate superiors as threat-to-their-positions and crushed ASAP. In fact all you do is fix builds, fix trivial bugs and add an occasional feature. Your time goes in hearing dis interesting stories of what totally irrelevant issues your colleagues are upon during stand ups, your afternoons are full of filling up boring time sheets and agile management software. You are doing this only because you want a health insurance, some assurance no one will fire you ASAP and some comfort pillow. You are just seasoned to do this routine, because of some fear of failure.

While the first situation has tremendous pain associated with it, you are putting up effort in situations where others can't.

The second one is clearly the craving for safety, fear of failure and total non willingness to change unless forced to. This is some what opposite of Will power, because if you had it- you would be doing something else.

In the second case, then, will power would be helpful?

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