Screw motivation, what you need is discipline

I'd suggest to stop thinking of yourself as someone without self-discipline. It's very hard to behave in a way if you believe it's against your nature.

For example, I've always considered myself to be a smoker. I tried quitting dozens of times, but I always gave in because I knew I was a smoker deep inside. But at some point, I realized that there's nothing about me that makes me a smoker. And then it was easy to quit smoking.

It's possible to change yourself. Nothing really prevents you from becoming a disciplined person. The first step is realizing you don't have to be a procrastinator (or whatever you consider yourself to be).

For an apposite view: http://www.stevenpressfield.com/the-war-of-art/

The premise is The muse is at your writing desk. If you want to write a book, show up. Sit down. Write. Ideas will only come if you are working. Any thoughts ideas, rationalisations or fears that keep you from writing are the enemy. He collectively calls them "resistance".

You will inevitably have days and weeks without a useful page. Show up still.

I think following your motivation is great. If you are sitting around waiting for it, you need discipline. This is what this blog is about.

I recently stepped out of a job at a startup where the founders only talked about discipline and hard work and were completely oblivious to the teams motivation. After months of working unsustainable hours, we were making something that no one in the team felt was a market winning product. I appreciate the value of hard work but to shut down the signals which tell you that something ain't working is entirely wrong. I wish people take more time to step back and listen to their thoughts than mindlessly chasing the wrong goals and hiding behind the excuse that they were at least disciplined.

Thank you for sharing your understanding - personally I found this much more useful than the parent article.

It is certainly true that discipline is required for accomplishing a task, but to focus on that alone, trying to make your "feelings inconsequential", is frankly unwise.

Before you can succeed at achieving something you must know:

* What you are trying to achieve

* Why you are trying to achieve it

This is the source of the motivation.

Incidentally, asking "why" is a good way to find out the "what" one level below the current task - something that in my experience is a very useful tool to understand yourself and what you want in life.

Once you have "what" and "why" you can determine "how" (i.e. plot a route) and then it is time for discipline (i.e. just walk the route). But it is much easier to be disciplined if you have the real motivation that comes from a clear understanding of "what" and "why".

It may also be the case that you realise that the reason you have to force yourself to do something is that you shouldn't be doing it. If you hate your job and the spreadsheets that come with it then why are you doing it? The answer could be simple: "money" but in that case there is always the possibility to do something else to achieve that - it is incredibly liberating!

Blindly focusing on discipline is a sure way to one day wake up and realise that what you have been doing is of no importance and that is a hard realisation to come to. If you are lucky, then it is still not too late to do something about it, but the best thing is to never get to that situation in the first place.

Anyway, just my 2 pence - it's worked out pretty well for me so far... ;-)

> The author argues that discipline is what gets you started and motivation is what keeps you going.

I don't see that argument anywhere in the article -- it seems mostly to be that motivation and discipline serve the same purpose, but discipline is more reliable and better.

But then, I don't see the original article as being worth the electrons used to transmit it, its a rant that neither seems to have any grounding nor seems to have any correspondence with my experience.

I'd say the idea that motivation being very important in getting something started and both motivation and discipline playing important roles in keeping going is true.