Discipline

Ah, discipline. Surely this is the answer to all our troubles, right? Motivation was a fickle mistress, but discipline can be trained and consistently applied!

Well, yes, it’s better. It’s something. But by the end of this chapter, you’ll see it’s still not the best answer.

What is discipline?

A common definition is something like

To train (someone) to obey rules or a code of behaviour, usually using punishment to correct disobedience.

Discipline has harsh connotations. You force yourself to do something you don’t like. Through rewarding yourself if you do it, or punishing if you don’t.

The issues

Hopefully you see the issues here.

• You are still fighting your human nature.
• You are making a bad situation (lack of motivation, don’t want to do something) even worse (by punishment or even more rules)

Yes, discipline can work. For some people it works great! They can invent great rules, actually follow them, and aren’t that affected by the stress that comes with it.

For most, it fails, due to the issues above.

They buy that chocolate … and just eat it immediately, without doing the two hours of work, because they are just so hungry.

They don’t lose any pounds, yet buy a video game anyway, making up excuses in their head as they go along.

Some see this as weakness. Maybe even stupidity. And yes, lack of discipline is a sense of weakness.

But as I grow older, I’ve realized this isn’t really your fault, nor something that should be held against you. People are lazy by nature. People want immediate gratification by nature. It’s a bonus if you can fight this—on discipline alone—but not a weakness if you can’t.

A real-life example

I used to think discipline was the answer, when I was younger. For years, I forced myself to work hard and get things done.

Any time I felt unmotivated, or tired, or distracted … I forced myself to do the work anyway. Because discipline was good. And it was how you get things done.

The actual result?

• Lots of burn-out and exhaustion
• The things I finished, all had obvious flaws or huge mistakes

Because I pushed doubts away, I kept working on projects that were doomed to fail from the start. But I didn’t see it. Or it didn’t stop me. Because I had discipline, yeah!

Another real-life example

At the same time, I did physical exercises every day. Even if I felt terrible, even if I didn’t have energy, even if my mind was absent … I forced myself to do those exercises.

Yes, I exercised a lot in my youth. Never skipped a day, always at least 30+ minutes.

No, it had probably a net negative effect on my life. Because I was absent, because I didn’t reconsider or take a step back, I exercised the wrong way.

I used the wrong muscles. I didn’t target my whole body, only the same parts of it, every day. I compensated my lack of energy with, again, bad posture and doing the wrong thing.

After years of this, I had trained my body to use all the wrong muscles for many activities. Something I’m still unlearning to this day.

Of course, my body protested heavily, all the time. But discipline ignores that! Force yourself to do something! Don’t let doubt creep in!

Again, (blind) discipline actually leading to terrible consequences.

Conclusion

So no, discipline is not the answer. It’s a method of blind dedication without checking in with your health, your needs, the overall state of your project.

If I could do it all again, I’d certainly tell myself to completely ignore motivation and discipline.

What are we left with? Something stronger: habits.