This is a blog article zbyhnev that meshes well with RP core truths.
If you want to get anything done, there are two basic ways to get yourself to do it.
The first, more popular and devastatingly wrong option is to try to motivate yourself.
The second, somewhat unpopular and entirely correct choice is to cultivate discipline.
This is one of these situations where adopting a different perspective immediately results in superior outcomes. Few uses of the term “paradigm shift” are actually legitimate, but this one is. It’s a lightbulb moment.
What’s the difference?
Motivation, broadly speaking, operates on the erroneous assumption that a particular mental or emotional state is necessary to complete a task.
That’s completely the wrong way around.
Discipline, by contrast, separates outwards functioning from moods and feelings and thereby ironically circumvents the problem by consistently improving them.
The implications are huge.
Successful completion of tasks brings about the inner states that chronic procrastinators think they need to initiate tasks in the first place.
Put in simpler form, you don’t wait until you’re in olympic form to start training. You train to get into olympic form.
If action is conditional on feelings, waiting for the right mood becomes a particularly insidious form of procrastination. I know that too well, and wish somebody pointed it out for me twenty, fifteen or ten years ago before I learned the difference the hard way.
If you wait until you feel like doing stuff, you’re fucked . That’s precisely how the dreaded procrastinatory loops come about.
Source of picture
At its core, chasing motivation is insistence on the infantile fantasy that we should only be doing things we feel like doing. The problem is then framed thus: “How do I get myself to feel like doing what I have rationally decided to do?”. Bad.
The proper question is “How do I make my feelings inconsequential and do the things I consciously want to do without being a little bitch about it?”.
The point is to cut the link between feelings and actions, and do it anyway. You get to feel good and buzzed and energetic and eager afterwards.
Motivation has is the wrong way around. I am utterly 100% convinced that this faulty frame is the main driver of the “sitting about in underwear playing Xbox, and with yourself” epidemic currently sweeping developed countries.
There are psychological problems with relying on motivation as well.
Because real life in the real world occasionally requires people do things that nobody in their right mind can be massively enthusiastic about, “motivation” runs into the insurmountable obstacle of trying to elicit enthusiasm for things that objectively do not merit it. The only solution besides slackery, then, is to put people out of their right minds. That’s a horrible, and fortunately fallacious, dilemma.
Trying to drum up enthusiasm for fundamentally dull and soul crushing activities is literally a form of deliberate psychological self-harm, a voluntary insanity: “I AM SO PASSIONATE ABOUT THESE SPREADSHEETS, I CAN’T WAIT TO FILL OUT THE EQUATION FOR FUTURE VALUE OF ANNUITY, I LOVE MY JOB SOOO MUCH!”
I do not consider self-inflicted episodes of hypomania the optimal driver of human activity. A thymic compensation via depressive episodes is inevitable, since the human brain will not tolerate abuse indefinitely. There are stops and safety valves. There are hormonal hangovers.
The worst thing that can happen is succeeding at the wrong thing – temporarily. A far superior scenario is retaining sanity, which unfortunately tends to be misinterpreted as moral failure: “I still don’t love my pointless paper-shuffling job, I must be doing something wrong.” “I still prefer cake to brocolli and can’t lose weight, maybe I’m just weak”. “I should buy another book about motivation”. Bullshit. The critical error is even approaching those issus in terms of motivation or lack thereof. The answer is discipline, not motivation.
There is another, practical problem with motivation. It has a tiny shelf life, and needs constant refreshing.
Motivation is like manually winding up a crank to deliver a burst of force. At best, it stores and converts energy to a particular purpose. There are situations where it is the correct attitude, one-offs where getting psyched and spring-loading a metric fuckton of mental energy upfront is the best course of action. Olympic races and prison breaks come to mind. But it is a horrible basis for regular day-to-day functioning, and anything like consistent long-term results.
By contrast, discipline is like an engine that, once kickstarted, actually supplies energy to the system.
Productivity has no requisite mental states. For consistent, long-term results, discipline trumps motivation, runs circles around it, bangs its mom and eats its lunch.
In summary, motivation is trying to feel like doing stuff. Discipline is doing it even if you don’t feel like it.
You get to feel good afterwards.
Discipline, in short, is a system, whereas motivation is analogous to goals. There is a symmetry. Discipline is more or less self-perpetuating and constant, whereas motivation is a bursty kind of thing.
How do you cultivate discipline? By building habits – starting as small as you can manage, even microscopic, and gathering momentum, reinvesting it in progressively bigger changes to your routine, and building a positive feedback loop.
Motivation is a counterproductive attitude to productivity. What counts is discipline.
From:
http://www.wisdomination.com/screw-motivation-what-you-need-is-discipline/
Part two:
http://www.wisdomination.com/practical-discipline/
My mentor taught me the definition of Discipline :
to act or operate as demanded, not as convenient
[permanently deleted]
making my agent orange act up!
The Problem w/ Military Discipline is that's framed toward Obedience, Authority, & Subservience. It's decent for building the Discipline 'Muscle' so to speak, but after Discharge it needs to re-calibrated as Individual Discipline.
And even so while still in... the leaders have individual discipline with the ability to throw on a mask of subservience. Those who blindly follow are usually not those who can attain high leadership positions.
This will only work if the military man considers the woman to be of higher rank. Which, according to trp, is not true
[permanently deleted]
[permanently deleted]
Except military tasks are often for obedience reinforcement. "Dig a shell scrape!", "now fill it in and dig another"..... Can't say I regret my time there, although there's an odd ambivalence to it.
[permanently deleted]
There was a former Navy Seal on Tim Ferriss's podcast who said "Discipline = Freedom".
If you have the discipline to lift, you'll have the freedom to do more activities, be confident with your body, be healthier, look better, protect yourself.
If you have the discipline to get up early, you will have more free time in your day to do what you want.
If you have discipline with your finances, you'll have the freedom to buy, save, invest, have cash for what you want etc.
Having discipline in your life, actually gives you freedom.
Motivation is good to start the fire but not to keep it going, that is where discipline MUST come in.
The Navy Seal's name is Jocko Willink, for those wanting to look him up. He started a podcast due to all the fanfare he got from appearing on Rogan's and Ferris's podcast. Was listening to it today.....
Badass BJJ-fighter aswell. Definitely a good role model for every man
AKA Paladin Danse from the Brotherhood of Steel! Can never be unseen.
Discipline is the string on a kite. With it you soar. Without it you're buffeted around by every stray breeze and deposited face first in the dirt.
This is the first time I've heard Orwellian style 'doublespeak' actually have a positive meaning behind it. I shall add this to my Expectation=Anger, for powerful life lessons.
I'd have put expectation as disappointment but still your point is very valid
I would like to add willpower. As you need to bend your will to you to make significant, lasting changes. Willpower is a finite resource. It doesn't last forever and everybody has his breaking point. Wich is why programming the right habits into your brain should be the goal, always. Habits can be done on autopilot and can be either beneficial or detrimental to you. A habit is the result of your brain noticing "hey I lifted today and the day before and the day before that, we survived another day. Good job,keep doing what you are doing" When you break a habit you'll immediatly feel anxious. A good example is taking a different route to work than usual. Suddenly there's a lot more unknown factors. Am I even gonna be on time? Wich way do I turn again? Your brain punishes you for this because this is not like yesterday. So when you are being a lazy slob again think twice what you are telling your brain. It survived the day so it will think "good job, do more of the same tomorrow" So this is where discipline comes into play. I like to describe discipline as using your willpower continiously to form and maintain habits that are beneficial to you.
Tell me what do you guys think? edit:formatting sucks because mobile
I totally agree. Motivation gets the job done by releasing more dopamine/serotonine, whereas discipline achieves it by essentially enduring lower dopa/sero levels.
Obviously the feelings component is much stronger and more pleasurable using motivation , but it gets harder to develop consistency if you always need motivation to start doing something. On the other hand discipline is initially very tough psychologically to maintain, but you can apply it to virtually any task without having to bump you up prior to doing it.
That's what I was thinking too. Is there scientific evidence for that? [Edit: of course: Dopamine is said to regulate the motivation to act; Serotonin is the substance that makes us feel good; If our pathways in the brain are wired like that of an addict; dopamine is released to specific behaviors (i.e. for behavioral addictions) or to specific substances (for drug addictions); By conclusion: this means that motivation is nothing more then a higher release of dopamine; This in case does mean that if you are coming from a behavioral or drug addiction you are more likely to motivate yourself but if you can't maintain it (and you won't maintain it because lifting, holding frame, etc. is hard and is the opposite of Dopamine release) you are likely to fail; because again your sensitivity levels are too high; hence learn discipline]
I once had a friend that was always hyper motivated during stressful days in college. Well initially, but after several hours that motivation declined fast. Well he was also an games/porn/marijuana addict (as we all know these behavioral addictions + THC release dopamine). My theory is that motivation gave him a dopamine kick (similar to thinking of drugs or being in a situation where you can act to release dopamine (latter for behavioral addictions); but after that dopamine kick was gone he could not maintain the level of excitement (seeing the project was not yet done and no sertonin was released) anymore hence all motivation was gone... (Well, needless to say he didn't finish college).
Once again: Behavior is controlled by substances in our brain. Dopamine is the main motivation substance that makes us act. But its often learned behavior (well there must be some hard coded dopamine release e.g. for food, sex, etc. because we wouldn't survived - but it's a matter of sensitivity levels) because how much dopamine is released is determined by our brain structure which is shaped by past behaviors. That's also why it is so hard to successfully finish new years resolutions - because it takes at least 90 days to change the brain plasticity and is not done in a day. As of today many more people have developed a brain of an addict due to high calorie foods, internet porn (major influence), drugs, internet on its own, especially low quality "news" (novelty is a high stimulus), gambling, video games, and such... (That's why we as a society have a problem: Society is drifting away to people that can control themselves and people that can't anymore - well latter is good for the industry (e.g. food industry, porn industry, etc... easy money because they have grown their addicts over time...)
But sensitivity levels can be controlled with self-motivation or better with discipline because motivation is about dopamine release and discipline is about maintaining low levels to be better prepared for hardness and endurance.
the biggest lesson I learned ever since I joined here is that successful people don't live off motivation and inspiration and all that other crap.
It's about creating some sort of disconnect between your physical and mental self. If you don't want to go to the gym, don't sit there and convince yourself. Respect your hands, feet, fingers, your ability to move, and just see it as a bunch of physical actions instead of convincing yourself mentally.
Obviously our mental state is important but it is bipolar as fuck. So just sit back and reflect for 2 hours once every week/2weeks and from then on use your physical self to get things done. If you're motivated at that current time, fucking awesome, if you're not, who cares anymore?
Someone gave me this advice like 4 months ago on an asktrp thread where someone was bitching about how much life sucked and it's all I needed to change my life.
TL;DR No one has changed their life from motivational quotes.
[permanently deleted]
Like looking for another motivational quote when the high of the last one wears off..
I agree. Sometimes at the gym I just tell myself to go through the motion. Still ends up a decent workout
I'm going to add to this by saying that Motivation and Inspiration ARE both important. You might think I'm disagreeing, but I'm just adding. Hear me out:
Both (Motivation and Inspiration) are very important to making sure you're going the right course. If you can't be motivated to go to work every morning at 6am, no matter how much you convince yourself, then maybe your style is finding a job with a flexible schedule, or something that starts in the afternoons. Heck, maybe your style is not to go to the same damn place for work at the same time, maybe it's a travel-writer kind of job or something. Maybe it's a driver. Maybe free-lance work. There's tons out there, if you open your job. So, yes, in my opinion and experience, it's very important to listen to what motivates and inspires you, and certainly head towards that...
That said, it takes some discipline to uncover and fully understand your motivations and inspirations. Just like when we all started working out. For me, my arms were shaking trying to bench-press lift a 45-lb olympic bar in high school. My shoulders seemed like they would never grow (until years later I discovered the Military Press). It took a while for my bicep to show something. But here's the thing: I got stronger. Slowly. So I just disciplined myself to go. Before you know it, my body started changing. I felt dramatically stronger. My mind felt stronger. Most importantly - my mind-body communication became top notch. For example: When I'm benching, at failure my body just wants to QUIT. Well, I laser-focus into blasting out at least one more rep (while keeping form), and that focus is what keeps me going. After that last rep, my body utterly respects my mind, and my mind respects my body. I feel good, I feel we accomplished something together. My confidence is high. It's infectious - that confidence spread to the rest of my life.
https://soundcloud.com/user-166599705-905939763/screw-motivation
Relevant. Someone asked for a audio of this to listen to from time to time and I made one. Planned to record the second part too but never did.
I like what you did there.. big lol..
EDIT: Down vote away.. but preaching about discipline and then saying "i was gunna but didnt"
I thought i was supposed to laugh..
Thanks mate, this is great.
No stuttering or stammering, no mistakes. How long did it take you to make this?
About 2 hours. 90% of that was finding and downloading audio programs, finding out they were garbage, looking for others, etc.
Thanks, you should continue doing this :)
I agree 100%! Many days I am not motivated to go to the gym. But since I am disciplined, I go anyway.
As Joe Rogan says, it's about killing that inner bitch inside you.
Actuary here, this hits close to home.
Discipline and motivation are like the masculine and feminine principle of progressive action. As appealing as it may be to "feel" our way to given aspirations the methodical drive that comes with discipline is the backbone of modern masculinity, albeit discouraged. Insightful stuff!
So as we all know your sleep routine is a vital part of discipline. So I'll give a tip that I've heard before on reddit and have practiced myself many times; If you find your sleep cycle is out of tune go to the bush (forest everywhere else but Australia) for 3-4 days and I guarantee your sleep cycle will be back to what it should be. I usually do this before I go back to uni after my holidays and it works a treat.
the discomfort of not getting shit done has to overwhelm the comfort of continuing on with status quo. discipline is uncomfortable short term but pays immensely long term
The only motivation quotes and clips I use these days are from Greg Plitt. Why? Because what he says really touched me, he speaks truth and what he says can be applied to any aspect of life. He's the only one that really had an influence in my life changing myself into the person I want to be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qWVvRhN6KM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE9KHkHJOmc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVpg1TyahL0
Motivation gets you through the door, but discipline gets you through the house.
Do not underestimate will power! It compliments discipline so well. Any habit that I've developed (that people around me hadn't) was done so by willpower.
When you consider something serious enough, sometimes as if it's life or death, you can dedicate every moment of every day towards that. Then you can build it into a habit or discipline.
That's why I love sports. Back when I wrestled, it was being fed up and disgusted with myself during 10th grade that motivated me to diet properly and not skip practices. I hated running 5 miles every single match day to lose 2-3 pounds. Then towards the end of the season, I'd be in such good shape (from running to make weight all the time) that I'd barely break a sweat and only lose about 0.7 pounds and end up missing weight. I hated going 2-3 days before a match without eating. I hated how I was the top seed in the regionals only to lose to guys I had already beaten earlier that year. Every day, for a year, I thought about the fact that I skipped practice the week of regionals. Never even came close to missing another practice in my life. Developed and extremely disciplined diet. I was never overweight by more than 2 pounds at any point during the season where as before I'd be up to 12 pounds over. Even my all-american teammates in college didn't have that level of discipline. It took the pain of losing something that mattered so much more to me then I realized for me to make the right decisions and turn them into habit.
Couldn't have read this at a better time. It's just confirmed to me what I've realised about a situation I need to improve. With discipline to do what I should do and not what I want to do, the situation will improve. In time this improvement frees me. Motivation won't help with this, discipline will.
Really needed this. Hit the nail on the head, thanks OP.
Motivation and discipline go hand in hand.
To be disciplined, you need to motivate to learn that. And to stay motivated, you need to be disciplined.
slightly off topic.
if anyone is looking for motivation and accountability buddy. If you'll lookout for me, i'll lookout for you. send me a message lets talk, and help each other stay on track for our goals.
I learned that I don't need any special motivation nor even special training of discipline because I know what I am doing and why I live.
Meaning, if you know life, you can live well and cause life to be pleasurable. If you try to live without knowing life, it causes the life to exhaust itself.
This comment has been overwritten by an open source script because this user got sick of reddit and shot himself dead.
If you would like to do the same, add the browser extension GreaseMonkey to Firefox and add this open source script.
Then simply click on your username on Reddit, go to the comments tab, and hit the new OVERWRITE button at the top.
im glad i read this post. Your comment sounds like me last semester. I procrastinated HARD as fuck and kept telling myself that exact phrase, "i will wait until im 'in the mood'." now i know. fuck that pussy shit, do it.
exactly what i needed as i continue to set goals for the new year. thank you!
I remember when this popped out in the getdisciplined subreddit and the top comment was "so you need to be motivated about getting disciplined, right? hahaha upvote me pls" which is the usual treatment the average redditor gives to anything that remotely resembles good advice but just have to be a gag somewhere.
Yes, you really NEED to WANT to change yourself. Yes, your emotional goal has to have a "broader picture" focus. "Wanting" something by definition implies emotional effect. The author doesn't tell you "become an emotionless robot and do things you have no idea why you want to do them in the long term". Wanting to become someone better than who you are now is still required.
Motivation is very important, but it is often misunderstood. To successfully accomplish any goal, you need both motivation and discipline.
The problem with most people is that they have a wrong understaning of motivation. They see motivation as a particular mental or emotional state necessary to complete a task, which is erroneous. Rather, true motivation is the incentive for embarking on any activity, it comes from a mental picture of the benefit you stand to gain by accomplishing that task.
The prospect of landing a good job was ''your motivation'' for going to college.
A chance of getting laid can be ''your motivation'' for running day game on that cute HB, even though you stand to be rejected, or for spending a few hours of your time to set up an online dating profile.
''70 virgin women in paradise'' may the motivation for young ISIS men committing suicide bombing.
The good feeling you get from looking ripped and the attention you get from girls, can be ''your motivation'' for hitting the gym hard.
However, none of these tasks can be accomplished without discipline.
TL;DR - It takes motivation to begin a task, but it takes discipline to follow through and accomplish it.
Loving this post. I've been telling everyone they motivation is fleeting and cannot be relied on. Discipline is key. You would be surprised the look on people's faces when you tell them you don't rely on motivation. Discipline gets you to the end road.
From 2010:
"Discipline is essentially the ability to put off what we want in the moment for what we want in the long run."
"Train your discipline like you train your body."
http://www.artofmanliness.com/2010/01/03/the-secret-to-becoming-a-better-man-in-2010/
I highly recommend a book related to this called "The Procrastination Equation"
This post is exactly what our community needs...and a guide on reading comprehension wouldn't hurt.
Don't think OP accounted for depression and the like. That shit can destroy discipline like it never existed.
This is probably the best, most constructively helpful post I've read on this sub. Thanks.
So very true. When I counsel my patients on weight loss after surgery (after knee or hip replacements for example) m, I always tell them not to rely on a continuing supply of motivation. Motivation is useful but it is fleeting. Discipline and preparing yourself for the challenge so you're ready to push through them, is the only way to succeed at completing hard tasks that take time.
[permanently deleted]
It's always discouraging how few people actually execute healthy advice. Concerning, really.
It is my understanding, that a focus on discipline is also bad, to a much lesser degree.
That finding something to obsess over, unhealthy as that sounds, provides all the motivation you'll ever need, and cultivates discipline as a by-product.
That if you haven't found something to obsess over yet... A focus on motivation is like buying scratch tickets. A focus on discipline is like going out and buying paper and sharpening all your pencils and setting up the perfect desk to write on, while you have writer's block. Way more useful, you'll thank yourself once you find your obsession, but the longer it goes on the more pathological it becomes.
Discipline is everything. Key to success, money, women. Everything. Much much more important than brain or looks, both of which are worthless without discipline.
Unfortunately, we live in a liberal-blue pill society that now emphasizes "creativity" in our children at the expense of discipline, and the current state of our society is showing this.
They kinda go hand in hand I think. Need motivation to start developing discipline. Don't see motivation as counterproductive, see it more as a catalyst for discipline. Once you have discipline, motivation is helpful but no longer necessary.
The irony of this post is that it's very motivating
Thank you so much for this post. I've been struggling with discipline problems for a long time, but mainly in the last months and it has affected me way too much. I will check out those links you posted.
Ideally you have a balance between both. Cultivating discipline or finding motivation is hard. Discipline is what builds your healthy habits up. But motivation is the spark that allows you to go well above and beyond. Combine both and you end up with something special. It's the winners mentality.
Who will end up winning, the guy that's disciplined to hit the gym 4 days a week but has no particular strong motivation to do so. Or the guy that's disciplined to hit the gym 4 days a week with a passion- always wanting to get better, always enjoying it.
Strike a balance and you will get much further than with either two.
This is something that became very clear to me back when I decided to start exercising. Everyday I got up and did it, no matter how shitty I felt, I felt good for doing what I knew I wanted to do for long term benefit. I eventually realized that whenever I got "depressed" it was because I wasn't doing the work I knew was necessary to get where I wanted and subconsciously it was eating me up.
On the flipside, I worked a sales job where they were big on constant motivation. Everyone would try and get you pumped up and cheer when you got a sale or things like that. This is typical of network marketing. The problem is, it leaves you feeling good short term and doing what they want, but leaves you feeling dirty and burnt out in the long term. It struck me as similar to the porn industry in that sense, minus the social ramifications. Most of the people at that company were part of the party lifestyle and abused drugs. Whenever I catch up with the people still there, I feel like I'm waiting to see them crash and burn. The problem is they want short term feels and so the constant motivation hooks them. They don't want hard work, so it becomes a drug to them.
Motivation and discipline are 2 separate, necessary things for success. You're creating a false dichotomy here.
Same goes for goals. Goals are nice and all but a goal without a plan is not a goal. It's a dream.
You need will power to do things you don't want to do. Discipline is just consistently applied will power. Day in and day out.
Discipline is delayed gratification.
I really struggle with that.
I hate going to the gym. I hate to be there and to lift weights. I hate everything about getting these results. But I love the results and I know it’s good for me.
Same thing the other way : there are things I LOVE doing that are harmful to me (video games for instance).
To this day I still play video games more than I go to the gym.
Semantics. Desire creates motivation which a lows you to access your willpower to create discipline.
This post helped me come up with a mantra I use daily:
"Discipline. Do it in silence. Do it for you."
As I've gotten older I realize just how shitty motivation is. Motivation is nothing, it's a patch on a much larger problem. Discipline is where it's at. When people complain about having a hard time getting motivated I want to punch them, fuck motivation, it's temporary. Discipline will get you through life.
The blue pill cannot stand any action taken against it.
Of course, everyone needs discipline. It's the main factor in long term success.
Yet what to do when you are undisciplined to the point you have little to no willpower to overcome things? I came up with the idea of getting pumped whenever I went to lift. I motivated myself forcefully to always hit the gym. Always. Whenever I felt like not to, I forced it, motivated myself and went out. And it worked out.
For a time. Now I'm slipping, unable to force myself to be motivated, to fake discipline (fake it unthil you make it, right?). But I know one for sure. I want it. I need it. If I am to make a meaning out of my time here, I must be disciplined. That is why i lift. Thank you for reminding me of this.
Damn, That is my first time comunicating it. It feels strange. Is that what catharsis is?
[permanently deleted]
Long, but helpful. Thank you for this, man. I will meditate starting today.
Discipline is simple. Procrastination is painful and soul destroying. Discipline was always imposed from above which made me push against it, but self discipline is freedom and simple.
I like this saying: "motivation is for the weak, discipline for the strong."