
Little Known Ways to Think about Discipline - visakanv
http://7goldfish.com/Little%20know%20ways%20to%20think%20about%20dicipline
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inetsee
Part of the quote from Wikipedia says discipline "is usually understood to be
synonymous with self control".

I usually think of self-discipline and self-control as being different sides
of the same coin.

I think of self-discipline as "doing the things you should"; like studying,
working hard, doing things to accomplish personal goals.

I think of self-control as "not doing things you shouldn't"; like overeating,
eating junk food, smoking, indulging in dangerous substances.

Both of them are important to having a productive life.

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lukifer
Hypothesis: Habits are the highest-yield form of discipline.

We humans seem to have a sort of behavioral inertia, whether it's showing up
at a job, maintaining an MMO addiction, or brushing our teeth. The ideal state
is to develop positive habits (writing for an hour every morning, cooking a
healthy meal every day after work, practicing the bass every Saturday
afternoon), that reflect one's deepest desires. Deviating from existing
habits, good or bad, is expensive in terms of willpower (brain glucose); but
once a new habit is established, maintaining it becomes the default, and
suddenly it requires very little energy.

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saiprashanth93
You have an interesting take on the issue. The question then becomes how do
you form and stick to habits?

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effdee
Someone should mention the Marshmallow Experiment [1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment)

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giblfiz
Interesting that you should bring that up. I'm the author, and I talk about
the Marshmallow experiment a great deal in the next article
[http://7goldfish.com/in_defence_of_cognitive_bais](http://7goldfish.com/in_defence_of_cognitive_bais)

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eli_gottlieb
It is certainly true that increasing bias/approximation error can lead to
decreased variance/estimation error, or even to an efficiently solvable
problem rather than an inefficiently solvable problem. But somehow I don't
think that's what's usually meant.

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eli_gottlieb
Feh. It's easy to talk about discipline when you've already decided on a
(nominally) terminal goal from which the utility of all subgoals can flow. But
what the people who speak of "motivation" say is: why should I act for
negative expected utility?

Discipline is easy for the motivated.

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visakanv
Sharing this to followup to the "screw motivation, you need discipline" post.
Here's a quick summary:

* The writer makes a distinction I wouldn't- that discipline is only discipline when it's applied to things you don't enjoy.

* "Discipline is about willpower over base desires". I agree. Could also be framed as short-term vs long-term thinking and planning.

* "Discipline is, in some sense, enslaving ourselves to an ideal or goal. A critical component of this definition is that the setting of the goals, the choosing of our ideals is not part of discipline. " Fairrr enough. Important point that discipline without good goal-setting isn't worth much.

* "If discipline is a reduction of freedom, an intentional choosing of suffering, then why on earth would anyone want to have it? The obvious answer is because it lets you achieve goals. That is to say, it increases the number of possible things you can do. Paradoxically, increasing the number of goals you can achieve is pretty much the definition of increasing optionality, or freedom." Yup.

* "Intentional optionality reduction need not be an act of self-discipline. One person may exercise discipline to not smoke the cigarette, another might throw away the cigarettes. A classical example is “Odysseus tied to the mast”." Classic commitment devices.

* "People who are ruled by their passions and appetites can be ruled just as efficiently by any political system willing to pander to those things, while those who control themselves can’t reliably be controlled by anyone else. Thus the Roman government regularly sent Rome’s philosophers into exile, failing Chinese dynasties praised Confucius to the skies while doing away with anybody who took his teachings too seriously, and modern America uses every trick in the media’s book to marginalize those who remind us that the life of a channel-surfing couch potato might not express the highest potentials of our humanity." thatsdeepman.jpg

* Timescales: "I generally separate discipline & willpower, primarily on the time-axis. Much of what I have read on the subject seems to agree with this approach, describing willpower as a short term thing, deployed over a duration of minutes, or for the hardiest of souls hours, while self-discipline extends over days, or possibly indefinitely. Many disciplines are intended to last indefinitely."

* Interesting thoughts on discipline and empathy: "Working in the “all-is-now” perspective, I come to a very different answer, which is, “They would choose to suffer for the benefit of someone else”. In the most frequently described cases, “someone else” is either their own past or future selves, but one can easily imagine acts of self-discipline that are for the benefit of others. One example might be a hungry mother giving food to her child. Another example might be Pheidippides running himself to exhaustion in order to recruit the aid of Sparta for the Battle of Marathon. In this way, discipline and generosity begin to look confusingly similar."

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VLM
In the physical crafts there is another aspect of "enslaving ourselves to an
ideal or goal" mostly revolving around safety.

How many decades ago was I taught to never power up a lathe without
immediately touching the chuck key in its holder (aka not in the chuck...) or
never touch a table saw blade (while changing it or screwing around with
adjusting it) without immediately prior touching the metal of its power cable
(aka not plugged in)

None of those are taught as in book learning but taught as in a discipline.
And look, all these years later, still got all my eyes and fingers!

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hosh
Both this article and the article about discipline and motivation posted
yesterday distinguishes discipline from motivation, and then say something
about how discipline is about controlling base-emotions, or ignoring them.
Both of these articles are wrong, or at least, only come to a superficial
understanding of motivation and discipline.

Exerting will power over your base emotions like that is a losing game over
the long run. While it is a skill worth learning how to do, it is only a small
tool within a larger spectrum of tools when dealing with aspects of your
consciousness, mind, and life.

First of all, it's not about controlling your base emotions. Emotions are
already there pervasively lurking everywhere, they come and go. They
constitute a large portion of your consciousness, and the attempt try to
"control" it is something socially conditioned in us, and the conventional way
of "controlling" emotions robs us of what emotions brings to the human
experience. In an effort to control emotions, you start judging them as good
or bad, and react to suppress ro amplify them when they arise. Over time, this
kind of self-directed judgmental attitude will ossify your mind, and you
become less and less adaptable to changing circumstances and the unexpected.

So the first insight is this: _it 's not about trying to control emotions,
it's about not allowing emotions to control you._ You don't allow the feeling
of elation and excitement (motivation) control when you actually work on
things, and you don't allow the feeling of anxiety (aversions) and ill-will
(nerd rage) control when you _don't_ work. When you've stripped away all the
reactions to impulses and external factors, all they "I am doing this because
X", what you are left with is the pure choice of whether you do something or
not.

This might sound like it is nitpicking, since it superficially takes you to
the same place as "controlling emotions". The key part is that, by
acknowledging your emotions while at the same time, not necessarily allowing
them to control you will eventually gain you greater space, and greater
freedom of action. Your world will get bigger. Whereas, attempting to control
emotions will eventually narrow the options you have (or think you have). Your
world will get smaller.

Lastly, by coming from the perspective that you are not controlled by
motivations or aversions, then having worked with it, eventually you'll come
to be able to use motivations and aversions. When you can discern the
difference between wants and needs, that is, something shiny or "cool", and
something that feels deeply fulfilling and rewarding, you would be capable of
inspiring others to follow your vision. You don't need to throw motivation
completely out, you simply don't allow yourself to be controlled by it.
Further, by being able to acknowledge your aversions, being in equanimity with
them, and still set out to accomplish your goals, you would be able to persist
even when time gets rough.

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webwanderings
I am inclined to believe that discipline has mostly to do with distractions in
life. The older generation of people were the most disciplined, and they had
less distractions.

Just a quick thought on reading only the headline.

