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Screw motivation, what you need is discipline

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Re: Screw motivation, what you need is discipline

#101

Post by jeffreyrogers »

Heuristic: The people who talk most about motivation have it the least.

I'm quite accomplished by an reasonable standard in at least a few fields (academics, athletics, hopefully programming skill), and I haven't concerned myself with motivation since my early years of high school. Thinking in terms of motivation seems to me to be a solution to an ill-posed problem. Rather than asking, "how can I get motivated?" you should be wondering, how can I find something to work for so that I don't need motivation. Once I started focusing my attention on things I was good at and that were intrinsically rewarding, I found that I didn't need to force myself to do things that I "should" do. Instead I was doing things I wanted to do, and that also were beneficial to my long term goals.

This wasn't all positive however, in athletics it created some conflict with my teammates, since their outlook was so outcome focused (we have to win, we have to get our times down to such and such a number, etc.), while mine was much more process focused (let's figure out how we can practice effectively, let's acknowledge that this was a bad practice and try to see how we can improve it in the future, etc.).

Re: Screw motivation, what you need is discipline

#103

Post by nostrademons »

HCIdivision17 wrote: post #79
nostrademons wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno - I think that it makes some good overall points, but paints too black & white a picture that, if you follow it literally, will eventually lead to a breakdown where you can't accomplish anything. I think a better perspective is to think of yourself as having a "discipline budget". (This is actually born out by a lot of fMRI studies, which show that when you will yourself to do something unpleasant or difficul…

Do you have any references to the fMRI studies? I've never gone to the source for that sort of thing, and would appreciate a lead in getting started (not really sure where to even start looking). The idea that we can biochemically run out of what powers willpower is a neat one. I feel like that implies there's something we can do to just replenish it, but making assumptions like that about complex things like brain c…

The nytimes article shvetusya posted is one of them, and also:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-brain-uses-glucose-to-fu...

http://psr.sagepub.com/content/11/4/303.abstract

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3624962/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3195474/

Re: Screw motivation, what you need is discipline

#104

Post by Squarel »

Htsthbjig wrote: post #60
jacquesm wrote: post #2

This is probably the best post to hit HN all month. It's a thing that I notice over and over again, the ability to execute and persevere is strongly correlated with individuals that show (self)discipline. The ability to get out of bed (even when you don't want to) to work real hard (even when faced with a hundred or more distractions, or on something that you may not even like) and the ability to keep a long term goa…

"The ability to get out of bed (even when you don't want to) to work real hard." If you have problems getting out of bed, I recommend that you work on it first. If you have problems getting out of bed it is because you don't sleep enough, or if you are fat or old you can interrupt your sleep at night(sleep apnea). Both motivation and discipline is needed for success, but the basics are your food, exercise and rest. I…

"If you have problems getting out of bed it is because you don't sleep enough, or if you are fat or old you can interrupt your sleep at night(sleep apnea)."

Or because you are depressed, or any number of other reasons.

Writing it off as something as simple as being fat, old, or not sleeping enough is oversimplifying something.

"As an exercise, try not to sleep for two days, and try to think in something, it is really hard." This is how I got through my university exams, not staying awake studying for 2 nights before, that would imply I revised, but I cannot sleep for the few nights before an exam, I usually head to lie in bed with hot chocolate around 3am and watch TV until 7, then get up and load up on cappucino.

"Do the same two without eating. Write down what you perceive in detail." Again, there are people who, for whatever reason, hyperactivity, lack of appetite, or some faddy diet, do not eat for a couple of days, and manage to function perfectly fine.

"Try to stay in bed one entire day if you believe exercise is not important." Load up 120GB of David Attenborough documentaries, and you wont get out of bed for a week.

Re: Screw motivation, what you need is discipline

#105

Post by bcbrown »

amjaeger wrote: post #98

This author has obviously never had to deal with ADHD... If you replace work with going to the gym, discipline says "go to the gym" but regardless of discipline you cannot lift the 300 lb weight." Likewise, discipline can get me to sit at my desk, but it alone cannot make me do the work. It is not physically possible. There really does need to be something else. Motivation, incentive etc.

> discipline says "go to the gym" but regardless of discipline you cannot lift the 300 lb weight.

That's not true. The only reason I was able to lift 300 lbs is by going to the gym three times a week for a year. Discipline/willpower is what got me to the gym consistently, without missing days.

Re: Screw motivation, what you need is discipline

#106

Post by chipsy »

nnain wrote: post #65
reitzensteinm wrote: post #51

This seems to me to be a bit like saying "screw hammers, what you need are screwdrivers." There's a brilliant talk by John Cleese that floats around HN every 6 months or so on how to be creative; if you haven't seen it yet, and you're interested in such a topic, please please please watch it: http://vimeo.com/89936101 If you agree with Cleese's premise, I think it follows that what you need is motivation for the open…

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…

A really big error I've made around "discipline" w/r to software, is thinking that it means locking in all of your time so that you can crunch. It's the first two to four hours of effort, and the first 50% of your days in the month, that are important - when trying to chase after one thing all day every day, diminishing returns set in really quickly and you come out behind in terms of your whole life - unhappy and no better off on the project.

Another hour or two on top can help when the job means you have to communicate with others. But even at a "normal" eight hours, you tend to end up with slack time, which is poisonous to how you treat the job. Discipline means starting consistently and stopping equally consistently. Starting without stopping isn't disciplined, it's desperate.

Re: Screw motivation, what you need is discipline

#107

Post by dschiptsov »

Motivation != bullshitting yourself.

Motivations is a feeling of a dissonance, of a lack of quality. It is a feel of abused "artistic sense".

Read some classic about Motorcycle Maintenance.)

btw, "artistic sense" works the same way as "hard-wired empathy" does - via evolved "machinery" in a brain.

Re: Screw motivation, what you need is discipline

#108

Post by daliwali »

I find that I can force myself to do a task that I extremely dislike, that is discipline. But an important prerequisite is motivation.

Case in point: I could force myself to improve upon a real-time bidding algorithm, resulting in more winning bids and targeted advertisements to appear on a largely captive and passive audience. Perhaps aspects of the bidding system could be improved to use less CPU cycles, memory, saving cost on the infrastructure to run it. I could get into the finer details of the time-complexity of every operation.

But why should I be expending my effort, a part of my lifetime, on helping to sell something people don't need? To the benefit of big corporate brands while they pay me a pittance of their enormous profits? A major problem with this "screw motivation" philosophy is that it encourages more mindless work in favor of the status quo. The quintessential codemonkey churning out code as if that is its purpose to follow orders from above. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Eichmanns

Another misconception the author has is that someone has to be in the right emotional state to be motivated to do something, to which I reply emphatically FUCK NO. Things don't just get done out of an emotional urge to do things. I am not always feeling enthusiastic about my side projects but I am highly motivated to do them even if it involves dry reading of technical specs. With lots of discipline and little motivation I could plod through the boring parts and forget about what I was trying to do (and this is what I feel most schools optimize for).

Re: Screw motivation, what you need is discipline

#109

Post by ismail »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #51

This seems to me to be a bit like saying "screw hammers, what you need are screwdrivers." There's a brilliant talk by John Cleese that floats around HN every 6 months or so on how to be creative; if you haven't seen it yet, and you're interested in such a topic, please please please watch it: http://vimeo.com/89936101 If you agree with Cleese's premise, I think it follows that what you need is motivation for the open…

"If you agree with Cleese's premise, I think it follows that what you need is motivation for the open mode (the blue sky, blank sheet of paper period), and discipline for the closed mode where you put your head down and get the work done."

I have been doing Learning how to learn at Coursera[1]. There is actually term for this 'blue sky' thinking mode, it is called the diffuse mode.

In the course they call it the diffuse mode, you can also be in the focused mode.

In the focused mode you tend to see all the details, though its difficult to get insights in this mode. Your thinking and problem solving is constrained by your natural thinking patterns and heuristics. This mode is really good when solving problems you have seen before.

In the diffuse mode, you gain new insights/discoveries by linking up different bits and pieces.

Having said that:

"If you agree with Cleese's premise, I think it follows that what you need is motivation for the open mode"

I do not understand this logic, can you clarify?

My reading of the article after having done the course is:

You can be disciplined and still do this blue sky/diffuse mode thinking, i do not think they are mutually exclusive.

[1] https://www.coursera.org/course/learning

* Edit: Added more details on thinking mode, and link to course

Re: Screw motivation, what you need is discipline

#110

Post by beagle3 »

super-serial wrote: post #90
aidenn0 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know of any adults who have successfully cultivated discipline? Based on those I've known since elementary school and still know today, perhaps 80% of the discipline I see in people can be explained by how much discipline they had at 10 years of age.

I'm a different person due to the supplements and food I eat. I'm obsessed about always improving my nutrition and supplement stack. It's paying off in terms of how much work I'm capable of doing. "Give your body the right food and it will do the right thing" is something I believe in. That combined with the routine of going to a 9-5, then afterwards going to a coworking space for my startup, I'm really getting a lot…

Care to share what that means for you, food wise?
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