The Anatomy of Determination

This is a very interesting essay because for the first time pg explicitly states that even if you find something you love to do, it doesn't completely do away with the need for determination. You have to make up for the diff between your love and your users' needs.

You have to try and minimise the need for determination by finding something you love to do.

But to find what you love in the first place, you need determination, mainly in the form of discipline else there's the danger of wasting away from lack of willingness or being too willful for one's own good.

There's some recursion going on here. Need to think this through to get my head around it.

I have a feeling that "discipline", that is, getting yourself to do things by sheer force of will, only works in short bursts. For long periods, you need create a system for yourself that takes your own weakness into account. For example, for a long time I tended to exercise in intermittent bursts. I would do it for a few weeks, then catch a cold or something and fail to pick it up again afterword. The solution to this problem was to create a schedule for myself. I wake up, eat breakfast, check the internet, work for two hours, exercise, eat lunch, etc.

Another important thing is strong principles. That is, you have to have clear, logical reasons for making the sacrifices necessary to achieve your goals. Every time you're tempted to do something other than pursue your goal you're going to have to argue with yourself. If you aren't completely convinced that what you're doing is truly worthwhile, temptation is eventually going to win.

About point 3, I think you have cause and effect backwards, most likely your 5 best friends are either friends from college or work, or maybe neighbors.

So it's not like having wealthier friends will make you earn more money, but rather earning more money will probably lead you to have wealthier friends.

I am fasting at the moment from around 4am to 8pm. I was very apprehensive before I started this year as the days were longer this time round - I thought I would really struggle. However I have to say food has been the least of my worries.

It is all in the mind not in the stomach. Once you know you can't do something you don't consider it as an option. I didn't have to mentally or physically prepare I just got on with it. In the two weeks of fasting I have lost weight, I end up gorging in the evenings and find that I can pretty much eat what I want and not worry about it. For the non-religious it would be a good way to lose weight and discipline yourself (just don't call it a diet).

I do know though that if I break one of my fasts because I got hungry it will be very easy for me to break the next.

In highschool there was this guy who used to study a lot. Everybody said he was studying too much, and that he needed to study that much because he wasn't that smart. Finally he graduated with one of the best averages in our class. Then he got into the best engineering school in Chile, and I remember thinking that maybe he wouldn't be able to make it, or that he wouldn't have such good grades. Well, I was wrong. He graduated from engineering with a great average.

Now I don't know where this guy is working or what he's doing, but I have no doubt he will achieve whatever he sets himself to accomplish. For me, he is an incredible example of how will and discipline got him to achieve the things he wanted.

2 other stories about this guy:

1. Until he was around 12 he was fat. Then one day, after summer vacation he came back to school thin. He stayed like that at least until he finished engineering.

2. Junior year in highschool he had the best average in the advanced math class. There was a math competition and he was not chosen to go. When he asked the teacher about this, the teacher said: "for this competition we need talent, not effort"