Lately, I've been working on training self-discipline. I've been doing this through the use of 30-day challenges. I'm on day 26 of a 30-day challenge to write a blog post every day. I'm on day 8 of a 30-day challenge to work out every day. I've been trying to get up at 8:00 am every day, but today I slept in. I'm also doing an experimental fast from music while I'm at my computer, since I was finding I was listening to too much music before. All these trials are useful and good in their own right, but they're also part of a grander, bigger picture.
The big picture is self-discipline. For me, self-discipline means: the ability to take the right actions, once I know what they are. For example, for my PhD studies I know there are certain things I ought to do, but I neglect them pretty often. If I just dive in and decide to spend X hours a day studying mathematical logic right now, it won't work very well because that's beyond what my self-discipline is capable of.
Something I'd like to do is go out solo and just try to meet people and make friends in the nightlife scene, every day for 30 days. It's easy enough on weekends, but every day for 30 days means doing it on weekdays, in inclement weather, on schooldays, on days when I don't feel like going out... The truth is, I'm not even all that fond of the club atmosphere, but it's really unique for providing so many opportunities to meet people so easily, so there's nothing to do but go. Especially if I'm gonna make serious progress on the Nimbus Quest. Going out 30 days a week takes self-discipline, more than I have right now, but it's a goal for once my self-discipline is stronger.
FREEDOM AND SELF-DISCIPLINE
One thing that's very important to me is freedom. Right now I consider myself fairly free. As a PhD student, I have less than 10 hours a week of mandatory schedule (and that's when school's in session), the rest of my time I schedule myself. I have enough money saved up and invested that if I lost my job today, I could last a year or more just on that. The thing about freedom is, the more you have, the more important self-discipline becomes.
Too much freedom with no self-discipline leads to a place of complacency and mediocrity. Not that there's anything particularly wrong with that. It's cool to just slack off if that's what you wanna do with your life, more power to you. With me though, there's definitely a lot more I want from life. I want all the best out of life, and that means taking action.
If I had less freedom, I'd need less self-discipline: other people would dictate my action for me, and since I'd have less say in the matter, there'd be no need for me to invoke self-discipline to get things done. Unfortunately, the things I'd get done in that situation would usually be things to make other people rich and fulfilled and do little for me. It wouldn't even be like I was generously creating value for those other people, like I try to do with this blog- if I weren't there, they'd just hire someone else.
There's still opportunity for self-discipline even with reduced freedom. I was taking college classes full time while doing 60+ hours a week of work in the Air Force, and that took lots of self-discipline. But there's always more opportunity for self-discipline when there's more freedom. For example, if I hadn't been working all those hours in the military, it would've taken much less self-discipline to do the classes. But I could do more in that case: add in 60 hours of other stuff, like working out, running a business, writing a book, etc., and then it'd take all the old self-discipline to do the classes, plus all the new self-discipline for the other things.
FREE-TIME FOR A SELF-DISCIPLINED PERSON
One of the magical things about self-discipline is that when you have it, you can work wonders and still have lots of free time. Forty hours a week is considered a full-time job, and yet, if you sleep eight hours a day, a week actually has a massive 112 waking hours in it! That's almost three full-time jobs worth of time, but where does all that time go?! A lot of time is spent just kind of aimlessly, not productively but not leisurely either. Just boredly. Watching TV when there's nothing good even on.
Being self-disciplined and doing all these crazy 30-day challenges doesn't mean I have no free time. It just means I have to manage my time more wisely. In fact if I'm really honest with myself about what's free time and what's not free time, I get more leisure out of the day, just because, when I am on free time, I can take it as easy as I want, knowing everything else is taken care of.
Basically, an hour of deliberately free time is more relaxing and care-free than two hours of "unscheduled" time where I'd be sitting around wondering whether I should do something. And with 112 waking hours in a week (actually more since I usually need less than eight hours of sleep) that's a lot of time for chilling out even if I pack a ton of activity in.
It would be a mistake to try to be productive and invoking self-discipline every waking hour. That'd be like lifting weights every waking hour, no time to rest means in very little time you'd be exhausted. Part of learning how to be more self-disciplined, is learning how to get more leisure and relaxation out of free time.
REWARDS OF GREATER SELF-DISCIPLINE
It's hard to overestimate the rewards of greater self-discipline. Maximizing self-discipline basically lets one reach one's full potential. Think of how many things you'd like to do, and you are definitely capable of doing if you just, did them. Anyone can write a book. Anyone can start their own business (making it a success might be another story...) Anyone can exercise, become fit, meet friends, take up a musical instrument, run a blog, get to know the city where they live, learn how to dance... the only thing required for any of these tasks, is simply doing the action.
But doing the action takes self-discipline. People don't even realize that self-discipline has varying levels of strengths, so if theirs is weak, rather than train it, they'll just beat themselves up for being "born lazy" or something.
Let's do our best to build up our self-discipline so we can add tons of value to the world while still having lots of free time to just have fun. Let's take our self-discipline muscles and pump 'em up until they're strong as steel.
Here are a few articles I've written during my 30-day challenge to write an article a day:
Why The Gym Is Good Even If You Do Manual Labor
No Regrets - Regret Is A Useless Emotion
Getting Motivated To Go Lift Weights
Fighting Music Addiction: An Experiment
The big picture is self-discipline. For me, self-discipline means: the ability to take the right actions, once I know what they are. For example, for my PhD studies I know there are certain things I ought to do, but I neglect them pretty often. If I just dive in and decide to spend X hours a day studying mathematical logic right now, it won't work very well because that's beyond what my self-discipline is capable of.
Something I'd like to do is go out solo and just try to meet people and make friends in the nightlife scene, every day for 30 days. It's easy enough on weekends, but every day for 30 days means doing it on weekdays, in inclement weather, on schooldays, on days when I don't feel like going out... The truth is, I'm not even all that fond of the club atmosphere, but it's really unique for providing so many opportunities to meet people so easily, so there's nothing to do but go. Especially if I'm gonna make serious progress on the Nimbus Quest. Going out 30 days a week takes self-discipline, more than I have right now, but it's a goal for once my self-discipline is stronger.
FREEDOM AND SELF-DISCIPLINE
One thing that's very important to me is freedom. Right now I consider myself fairly free. As a PhD student, I have less than 10 hours a week of mandatory schedule (and that's when school's in session), the rest of my time I schedule myself. I have enough money saved up and invested that if I lost my job today, I could last a year or more just on that. The thing about freedom is, the more you have, the more important self-discipline becomes.
Too much freedom with no self-discipline leads to a place of complacency and mediocrity. Not that there's anything particularly wrong with that. It's cool to just slack off if that's what you wanna do with your life, more power to you. With me though, there's definitely a lot more I want from life. I want all the best out of life, and that means taking action.
If I had less freedom, I'd need less self-discipline: other people would dictate my action for me, and since I'd have less say in the matter, there'd be no need for me to invoke self-discipline to get things done. Unfortunately, the things I'd get done in that situation would usually be things to make other people rich and fulfilled and do little for me. It wouldn't even be like I was generously creating value for those other people, like I try to do with this blog- if I weren't there, they'd just hire someone else.
There's still opportunity for self-discipline even with reduced freedom. I was taking college classes full time while doing 60+ hours a week of work in the Air Force, and that took lots of self-discipline. But there's always more opportunity for self-discipline when there's more freedom. For example, if I hadn't been working all those hours in the military, it would've taken much less self-discipline to do the classes. But I could do more in that case: add in 60 hours of other stuff, like working out, running a business, writing a book, etc., and then it'd take all the old self-discipline to do the classes, plus all the new self-discipline for the other things.
FREE-TIME FOR A SELF-DISCIPLINED PERSON
One of the magical things about self-discipline is that when you have it, you can work wonders and still have lots of free time. Forty hours a week is considered a full-time job, and yet, if you sleep eight hours a day, a week actually has a massive 112 waking hours in it! That's almost three full-time jobs worth of time, but where does all that time go?! A lot of time is spent just kind of aimlessly, not productively but not leisurely either. Just boredly. Watching TV when there's nothing good even on.
Being self-disciplined and doing all these crazy 30-day challenges doesn't mean I have no free time. It just means I have to manage my time more wisely. In fact if I'm really honest with myself about what's free time and what's not free time, I get more leisure out of the day, just because, when I am on free time, I can take it as easy as I want, knowing everything else is taken care of.
Basically, an hour of deliberately free time is more relaxing and care-free than two hours of "unscheduled" time where I'd be sitting around wondering whether I should do something. And with 112 waking hours in a week (actually more since I usually need less than eight hours of sleep) that's a lot of time for chilling out even if I pack a ton of activity in.
It would be a mistake to try to be productive and invoking self-discipline every waking hour. That'd be like lifting weights every waking hour, no time to rest means in very little time you'd be exhausted. Part of learning how to be more self-disciplined, is learning how to get more leisure and relaxation out of free time.
REWARDS OF GREATER SELF-DISCIPLINE
It's hard to overestimate the rewards of greater self-discipline. Maximizing self-discipline basically lets one reach one's full potential. Think of how many things you'd like to do, and you are definitely capable of doing if you just, did them. Anyone can write a book. Anyone can start their own business (making it a success might be another story...) Anyone can exercise, become fit, meet friends, take up a musical instrument, run a blog, get to know the city where they live, learn how to dance... the only thing required for any of these tasks, is simply doing the action.
But doing the action takes self-discipline. People don't even realize that self-discipline has varying levels of strengths, so if theirs is weak, rather than train it, they'll just beat themselves up for being "born lazy" or something.
Let's do our best to build up our self-discipline so we can add tons of value to the world while still having lots of free time to just have fun. Let's take our self-discipline muscles and pump 'em up until they're strong as steel.
Here are a few articles I've written during my 30-day challenge to write an article a day:
Why The Gym Is Good Even If You Do Manual Labor
No Regrets - Regret Is A Useless Emotion
Getting Motivated To Go Lift Weights
Fighting Music Addiction: An Experiment
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1 comments:
I guess self-discipline can refer either to the habits, or to the ability to set and follow through with those habits. I'm using it in the latter sense. For instance studying Japanese every day isn't self-discipline, but it took self-discipline to establish that habit.
For me personally, I just thought of some things that would make my life better, and I'm trying them out as habits one by one. I made a pretty big list, and have yet to make a lot of them into habits. In some sense it's kind of arbitrary, since I'm using the easier habits as stepping stones to train for harder ones, like going out every day.
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