If you want to get anything done, there are two basic ways to get yourself to do it.
The first, more popular and devastatingly wrong option is to try to motivate yourself.
The second, somewhat unpopular and entirely correct choice is to cultivate discipline.
This is one of these situations where adopting a different perspective immediately results in superior outcomes. Few uses of the term “paradigm shift” are actually legitimate, but this one is. It’s a lightbulb moment.
What’s the difference?
Motivation, broadly speaking, operates on the erroneous assumption that a particular mental or emotional state is necessary to complete a task.
That’s completely the wrong way around.
Discipline, by contrast, separates outwards functioning from moods and feelings and thereby ironically circumvents the problem by consistently improving them.
The implications are huge.
Successful completion of tasks brings about the inner states that chronic procrastinators think they need to initiate tasks in the first place.
Put in simpler form, you don’t wait until you’re in olympic form to start training. You train to get into olympic form.
If action is conditional on feelings, waiting for the right mood becomes a particularly insidious form of procrastination. I know that too well, and wish somebody pointed it out for me twenty, fifteen or ten years ago before I learned the difference the hard way.
If you wait until you feel like doing stuff, you’re fucked. That’s precisely how the dreaded procrastinatory loops come about.
At its core, chasing motivation is insistence on the infantile fantasy that we should only be doing things we feel like doing. The problem is then framed thus: “How do I get myself to feel like doing what I have rationally decided to do?”. Bad.
The proper question is “How do I make my feelings inconsequential and do the things I consciously want to do without being a little bitch about it?”.
The point is to cut the link between feelings and actions, and do it anyway. You get to feel good and buzzed and energetic and eager afterwards.
Motivation has this the wrong way around. I am utterly 100% convinced that this faulty frame is the main driver of the “sitting about in underwear playing Xbox, and with yourself” epidemic currently sweeping developed countries.
There are psychological problems with relying on motivation as well.
Because real life in the real world occasionally requires people do things that nobody in their right mind can be massively enthusiastic about, “motivation” runs into the insurmountable obstacle of trying to elicit enthusiasm for things that objectively do not merit it. The only solution besides slackery, then, is to put people out of their right minds. That’s a horrible, and fortunately fallacious, dilemma.
Trying to drum up enthusiasm for fundamentally dull and soul crushing activities is literally a form of deliberate psychological self-harm, a voluntary insanity: “I AM SO PASSIONATE ABOUT THESE SPREADSHEETS, I CAN’T WAIT TO FILL OUT THE EQUATION FOR FUTURE VALUE OF ANNUITY, I LOVE MY JOB SOOO MUCH!”
I do not consider self-inflicted episodes of hypomania the optimal driver of human activity. A thymic compensation via depressive episodes is inevitable, since the human brain will not tolerate abuse indefinitely. There are stops and safety valves. There are hormonal hangovers.
The worst thing that can happen is succeeding at the wrong thing – temporarily. A far superior scenario is retaining sanity, which unfortunately tends to be misinterpreted as moral failure: “I still don’t love my pointless paper-shuffling job, I must be doing something wrong.” “I still prefer cake to brocolli and can’t lose weight, maybe I’m just weak”. “I should buy another book about motivation”. Bullshit. The critical error is even approaching those issues in terms of motivation or lack thereof. The answer is discipline, not motivation.
There is another, practical problem with motivation. It has a tiny shelf life, and needs constant refreshing.
Motivation is like manually winding up a crank to deliver a burst of force. At best, it stores and converts energy to a particular purpose. There are situations where it is the correct attitude, one-offs where getting psyched and spring-loading a metric fuckton of mental energy upfront is the best course of action. Olympic races and prison breaks come to mind. But it is a horrible basis for regular day-to-day functioning, and anything like consistent long-term results.
By contrast, discipline is like an engine that, once kickstarted, actually supplies energy to the system.
Productivity has no requisite mental states. For consistent, long-term results, discipline trumps motivation, runs circles around it, bangs its mom and eats its lunch.
In summary, motivation is trying to feel like doing stuff. Discipline is doing it even if you don’t feel like it.
You get to feel good afterwards.
Discipline, in short, is a system, whereas motivation is analogous to goals. There is a symmetry. Discipline is more or less self-perpetuating and constant, whereas motivation is a bursty kind of thing.
How do you cultivate discipline? By building habits – starting as small as you can manage, even microscopic, and gathering momentum, reinvesting it in progressively bigger changes to your routine, and building a positive feedback loop.
Motivation is a counterproductive attitude to productivity. What counts is discipline.
Update: there’s part 2.
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View Comments
This is a ridiculous article. The author creates an unbelievably weak and inaccurate strawman argument for what motivation actually is and how people use it. If you're going to criticize someone's approach to working (which is unnecessary in the first place), do it right.
I don't think I know anyone who relies on motivation for every single solitary time they want to get anything done. What a horribly inaccurate strawman fallacy. Motivation sometimes helps people. No one relies on it.
By the way, I'm not denying the value of discipline. I'm just saying the author created a stupid and ridiculous strawman argument that no one ever claimed to be true before he created it. Discipline is great, but the author used a stupid method to get his point across.
"Motivation is like manually winding up a crank to deliver a burst of force. At best, it stores and converts energy to a particular purpose. There are situations where it is the correct attitude, one-offs where getting psyched and spring-loading a metric fuckton of mental energy upfront is the best course of action. Olympic races and prison breaks come to mind. But it is a horrible basis for regular day-to-day functioning, and anything like consistent long-term results."
And who relies on that for day-to-day functioning?
"There are psychological problems with relying on motivation as well."
Oh, ok. Well, good thing no one relies on it.
The only reason I am posting this comment is that I hate poor reasoning and I hate poor logic. According to some of these comments, this article has actually helped people. But that doesn't change the fact that you used a disgustingly pathetic logical fallacy to get your point across. Your point is good, but you used a disgraceful method to get it across.
love the article, love the swearing! I'm feeling SO MOTIVATED TO BE DISCIPLINED RIGHT NOW.
Great fucking article. Shared with friends.
I've always known to just "get doing and stop thinking" is the only way to gain productive momentum, but I swear the lazy bastard side of me always wants to claim feeling "unmotivated". That guy sucks.
This article is doesn't suffer from lack of strong feelings. ("Man-up!") The article poses a couple of interesting questions. Unfortunately the premise is flawed and the tone is too negative without substantiating claims with valid evidence and good data.
It's not necessary to write a good piece on discipline without attempting to use the concept of motivation as a poor substitute for the real world need to work on drudgery that every job and aspiration requires.
Motivation(oversimplified and only includes a broad reference to external and intrinsic as one) and Discipline are not diametrically opposed and are far more complex than the devils advocate/boot camp approach used in an attempt to make a cogent case when the entire premise is based on an inaccurate statement.
I might draw attention to the "slacker" generations or that not all Motivation is temporary.
Rather I suggest the reader and author to dig for a deeper understanding of powerful terms and take note when an article of nonfiction relying too much on negativity.
Nuff said
Two edged sword: On the downside using this kind of discipline at a job you need but don't necessarily like very much helps you make the big shots at the top alot of money. On the plus side, using this kind of discipline at a job you need but don't necessarily like very much can help you shut out the bullshit, get it done and go home.
Added to bookmarks.
Boom! Nailed it!
I view discipline and motivation as two sides of the same coin. Motivation is what your sub-conscious mind wants you to do, discipline is what your conscious mind needs to do to get the sub-conscious mind to get in line with what you actually want.
You know who's motivated like there is no tomorrow? Drug addicts. Motivation isn't working for them, now, is it? Everything bad about your life is caused by misplaced motivation. The solution is discipline.
If you apply discipline long enough, your sub-conscious will adjust to go in the same direction... then you're unstoppable.
Thanks for the excellent post..
Wow, that was great. Finally I came across something useful and to the point. Thanks for the words of wisdom ;)