Passion vs. Self-Discipline
May 24th, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
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How important is passion as a success factor?
Some people believe it’s the single most important factor, painting passion as the fuel that drives success.
I disagree.
Passion is simply an emotional state, and a temporary and unstable one at that. The reason passion gets so much credit is that it helps motivate action. And action is what generates results.
Look at it this way:
P = Passion
A = Action
R = Results
Given:
P causes A
A causes R
Conclusions:
P causes R
No problem there. That’s logically correct.
R requires P
Nope. You can’t infer this to be true from the givens.
But what if you also know this:
S causes A
S is not P
Now you can say that the statement “R requires P” is definitely false.
S = Self-Discipline
Are you dizzy yet? Here’s what I’m saying in English:
- Results come from actions (no action, no results)
- Passion can lead to action and therefore generate results
- Self-discipline can also lead to action and therefore generate results
- So passion is NOT required for results
Passion is nonessential for success.
Which is better though: passion or self-discipline? I’ll argue that self-discipline is the better fuel.
Like any emotional state, passion waxes and wanes. Sometimes you’re highly motivated. Sometimes you aren’t. Passion has its peaks and valleys, so if you base your actions on your level of passion, your results will depend on your emotions. Feeling passionate? Great actions, great results. Feeling dispassionate? Weak actions, mediocre results.
Using passion as your only fuel will no more assure you of success than being in love will ensure a successful long-term relationship.
Self-discipline is far more important than passion, especially in business. In fact, if you develop the quality of self-discipline to a high degree, it will put passion to shame.
Self-discipline allows you take action and therefore get results no matter what your emotional state. Where passion is erratic, self-discipline provides steadiness and stability. And because your emotions aren’t in the way, your decisions are more likely to succeed because they’ll be made from a state of disciplined intellect rather than from emotional peaks and valleys.
Which would you bet on if your life depended on it?
If you wereto undergo open heart surgery, would you want a disciplined, dispassionate surgeon or an undisciplined, passionate one?
If you were being tried for murder, would you want a disciplined, dispassionate defense team or a an undisciplined, passionate one?
If you were flying in the Space Shuttle, would you want the ground controllers to be disciplined and dispassionate or undisciplined and passionate?
Passion is great, but it’s icing. It needs self-discipline to back it up.
Self-discipline is quieter though. Passion gets more attention these days becuase it makes more noise.
May 24th, 2005 at 4:05 am
Hi Steve,
Great debate up there, but I beg to differ on the all or nothing defense for self-discipline. It somewhat paints the picture that the consistently highly successful person displays little passion for what he/she does.
Question. Why would a person discipline himself for?
A person would only discipline himself because he wants something. A goal.
How does that goal come about? A want. A desire. A passion perhaps? I’m sure everyone of us have a wish-list … as well as a must-have list. I can’t imagine disciplining myself to get everything I want on the wish list. However, I am very willing to discipline myself for something which has moved from my wish list to must-have list. There’s just no other way about it… and it’s just the natural thing to happen.
I see passion and self-discipline as a mutually dependent state to get to a result. One can’t do without the other … and where passion is present … you won’t even know why people describe you as self-disciplined.
Self-discipline is simply a means and not the end itself. One does not pursue self-discipline simply for the sake of being self-discipline unless one is passionate about being the most effective and efficient person one can be (the goal i.e. the passion).
Passion is not the icing; it’s the launching pad.
May 24th, 2005 at 4:21 am
Human emotions are an intellectual shortcut. They are important because we don’t have the mental capacity to process everything to the fullest extent. A person with the condition of alexathemia (basically no emotions) cannot function. They have no way to separate the important from the unimportant, so they’ll spend hours on trivialities.
But emotions are a function of the brain, not the purpose of it. Strong emotions like passion help us identify what might be *very* important to us. But like all mental shortcuts, passion is often inaccurate. Passion is just one piece of data among many — it’s part of your intellectual processing output, like the math coprocessor on a CPU. But to say it’s what to live for is to say that we live for our emotions. Sure, some people do. But as Socrates pointed out about 2500 years ago, that’s not the best way to live.
May 24th, 2005 at 6:36 am
I think the point Steve brought up was that passion cannot sustain your flight. Many people start ambitious projects on passion, but in order to complete them they must burn on self-discipline.
And sometimes you have to do something your not passionate about at all to get something you do want. If you did everything when you felt like it you wouldn’t get anything finished. Sometimes you have to use self-discipline to take control in moments when you lack passion.
I also think self-discipline is an ability that can be applied to various tasks once it is trained. So what is the point of establishing self-discipline? So that you can use it for when you need it to get things done.
May 24th, 2005 at 12:16 pm
I think you are right about self-discipline substituting passion to become successful, but you need passion to become real great.
Every man (and woman) who changed the world, had a passion for his mission. Be it Mother Theresia or Che Guevara, Bill Gates or Jesus, Alexander or Martin Luther. I think great passion can create the necessary self-discipline.
Science is an exception though.
May 24th, 2005 at 1:42 pm
I think what Steve was trying to say (my interpretation at least) is that there are some people in this world that believe you just need passion to be great at something. Passion will create the spark, but it can’t sustain the fire.
All of those people you mentioned, they disciplined themselves to move on even when their own passion was shaken.
I’ve belonged to forums for video game developers. One thing you definitely notice is that some people, despite having talent, never finish a project. This is because as soon as the fountain of passion runs dry, they leave the project entirely. And that is such a waste, in the time they took to fail 10 projects they could have finished several.
Passion will make you want to run the marathon, but only self-discipline can get you to the finish line.
May 24th, 2005 at 3:37 pm
You reminded me of this quote:
“Some discipline solves some problems, total discipline solves all problems”
-Scott Peck,”Road Less Travelled”
So true!
JD
May 24th, 2005 at 3:59 pm
This is a debate I used to have with my writing friends. Some say that the truest writing must come from the heat of passion. Others say that you can only capture that truth looking back, after you’ve cooled down.
I’d agree with the latter, which is also supported by your theory here.
May 24th, 2005 at 4:39 pm
Hi there,
Its a great debate you have on, there. After I had read Steve’s post I was like, “No way! Unless you have passion you’re gonna get no where. Whatever success I’ve had has been attained when I’ve felt passionate about what I had undertaken.”. But reading this debate, I recalled all those projects/studies I had left mid-way once my passion had died out. How much more success I would have experienced, had I practised self-discipline! But for a person who banks on passion for motivation, self-discipline is can be very difficult to attain. And each time you fail in an effort for discipline, you get more and more disillusioned.
May 24th, 2005 at 4:50 pm
If you wereto undergo open heart surgery, would you want a
disciplined, dispassionate surgeon or an undisciplined, passionate one?
If you were being tried for murder, would you want a disciplined,
dispassionate defense team or a an undisciplined, passionate one?
If you were flying in the Space Shuttle, would you want the ground controllers to be disciplined and dispassionate or undisciplined and passionate?
These analogies bother me a bit because I think they presume that discipline automatically means rightly-directly discipline and that passion is always misdirected passion.
What is the surgeon dispassionate about? Surgery? Does he hate his job and can’t wait to get home every day? And what is the surgeon disciplined about? Patient Throughput? (Getting as many patients through the health care system as possible.) Cost-cutting? (Doing his job as cheaply as humanly possible.)
Personally, I’d rather have a trial attorney represent me who believes deep down that I am innocent and is so passionate about the law that he will do whatever it takes to fight for my case. As opposed to a disciplined attorney who just looks at me as a statistical probability, or a paycheck, or just some job requirement he has to deal with that particular day.
I think both passion and self-discipline can be useful tools to achieve your goals and they aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. If I had to choose one over the other though, I think if you are dealing with people, passion is usually better. But if you are dealing with things or intangibles (like time), discipline is the way to go.
May 24th, 2005 at 7:06 pm
Steve, this is a passionate subject for me. I have found that almost all successful people share 4 traits. Passion, Vision, Discipline and Conscience. The spark that ignites the other three is passion! Discipline alone is an assembly line.
1. Without passion you have Yugos. With passion you have Ferraris
2. Discipline is a sugar cube, square, exact and unremarkable. Passion is a Mrs. Fields cookie, oblong, colorful and oh so tasty!
3. With discipline only.. you have “good enough”, The trouble is “good enough never is!” Good enough eventually puts you out of business.
While discipline is a needed component of the success quadrant, it is the least interesting. It’s the Joe Friday of the bunch… just the facts ma’m.
As per you example of the surgeon above, I would much rather have a passionate, caring doctor with a shaky hand than a slice and dice, assembly line, uncaring HMO surgeon.
Have you ever heard a speech from a disciplined speaker without passion? Monotone… Boring… In every speech contest I have ever been a part of, the passionate speaker wins!
So much for my passioned, but undisciplined rant. Great blog fodder though!
John
May 24th, 2005 at 10:53 pm
I think that the matter is not that simple… I do not think that passion and self-discipline are mutually exclusive at all… If you rely on self-discipline without passion, you will find yourself going through the motions, on your way to a goal that you may no longer care about.
On the other hand, you need the slef-discipline to ‘push through’ those times when on your way to your passion you find that you need to do some things that you might not be very passionate about (I am still struggling with this step, myself)
May 25th, 2005 at 8:25 am
I agree with Jethro. You need both passion and discipline, and you cannot rule out passion.
The best programmers, I have found, have passion for their craft. They make much better communicators, too, because some of them are more in touch with what makes people like their software. If you are going to properly involve people in your plans, a smattering of passion makes all the difference. We simply do not live in a world where rational thought is the only factor. Every one of us responds to emotion. Might as well have emotion on your side!
May 25th, 2005 at 1:57 pm
I agree with the posts that passion and self-discipline are both very important. We are still humans, not computers with CPU’s. As always, extremes are not good, e.g. 100% passion and no self-discipline is not good, 100% self-discipline and 0% passion is not good as well. Passion has it’s downsides, but it can also be a great booster. I would never work on my life-goals without some passion involved and I think even Steve wouldn’t. Of course, even those goals have nasty dark rooms in them, there are times where we feel frustrated - that’s where the self-discipline gets involved to push through. Maybe definition of what passion is and from where it comes is not easy to tell as well, for someone it might be just emotional state of brain, for someone something that comes very deeply from his spirit. But limiting human to working on some goals he is not passionate about with absolute self-discipline - we have computers for that
May 28th, 2005 at 8:47 am
How about being self-disciplined about keeping our eyes on the passion?
That’ll complete the cycle.
May 29th, 2005 at 6:10 pm
Hi Steve,
Thinking that my life would become a whole lot easier once I found my passion, I was a bit disappointed to read this post. But I suppose it’s better to know this now rather than finding my passion, maybe not taking action like I thought I would, and then feeling really disappointed.
I hope your book goes into more depth on self-discipline. Your thoughts on why some people have a lot of self-discipline versus those that don’t (character traits, values?), as well as actions to take for improving self-discipline (a 30-day to Success project). I’ve only found the following information so far: http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/MAC%20Self-Discipline.htm
May 31st, 2005 at 2:39 am
Passion is what it means to be human. It is our very essence. But I’ll agree that one needs self-discipline to complete things through. Another interesting thing that I’ve been trying is to rekindle waning passion. I often find myself starting something very excitedly, only to have the motivation fizzle out at times. So what I do then is sit down and identify what feedback I need to help be get back into the groove. Sometimes all it takes is to remember how the moment felt like when you started the project. At other times, I sit back think of the future rewards that await me on completion. Works for me!
May 31st, 2005 at 4:26 am
I tend to disagee.
Passion is the fuel, self-discipline is not the fuel at all.
Actually, it’s a matter of terminology.
Whatever you call self-discipline, if it also produces actions,
it should have traces of passion, no matter how.
> Passion will create the spark, but it can’t sustain the fire.
Self-discipline will not either. Only passion will create the spark
and sustain the fire.
> All of those people you mentioned, they disciplined themselves to move
> on even when their own passion was shaken.
Actually, their passion was not shaken. They’ve been passionate
for their entire lives.
> One thing you definitely notice is that some people, despite having
> talent, never finish a project.
They don’t have enough passion.
—
> If you wereto undergo open heart surgery, would you want a
> disciplined, dispassionate surgeon or an undisciplined, passionate one?
> If you were being tried for murder, would you want a disciplined,
> dispassionate defense team or a an undisciplined, passionate one?
> If you were flying in the Space Shuttle, would you want the ground
> controllers to be disciplined and dispassionate or undisciplined and
> passionate?
Actually, I always choose creative people to work with, people who are
really interested, passionate people, not disciplined machines.
I would choose passionate doctor who is really interested in what
he’s doing to make a complex test of my blood or an immune test
(a complex test for immunity). Because it requires a lot of learing
and thinking when producing, and a lot of passion to be actually
interested.
I like visiting my passionate dentist who speaks long lectures to me
about my mouth. It seems she treats my mouth as her own, she’s really
passionate about it. And it leads to better results. I like it.
People can only produce good results when they’re really interested
in what they’re doing, i. e. when they’re passionate about what
they’re doing.
I don’t trust disciplined human machines.
—
> Personally, I’d rather have a trial attorney represent me who believes
> deep down that I am innocent and is so passionate about the law that
> he will do whatever it takes to fight for my case. As opposed to a
> disciplined attorney who just looks at me as a statistical
> probability, or a paycheck, or just some job requirement he has to
> deal with that particular day.
Yes, that’s exactly what I wanted to say. Thanks for yet another analogy.
—
Still, it’s a matter of terminology. Whatever you call self-discipline,
may actually be ‘organized passion’ or kinda alike.
—
Actually all the greatest thoughts on this web-site were about
passion. There’ve been a lot of talks here about purpose, living on
purpose, importance of what is deep down inside of you, and so alike.
Isn’t it the same to live on purpose and to live on passion?
Purpose = disclosed, known, perceived passion.
May 31st, 2005 at 11:34 am
I think this whole debate about passion vs. self-discipline is quite interesting.
The question is, what is the source of the passion ? We treat passion as the genesis of everything, as some fickle flame that appears out of nowhere and then flares out mysteriously. Where does it come from, and why do certain subjects make us passionate ?
In my experience, passion is not a static, inanimate thing. There are things I was passionate about that I am less passionate about now, and vice versa. Passion to me is a resonance that occurs when one particular subject or activity resonates with our particular set of values - which would seem to fit in quite directly with the notion of congruence elaborated on by Steve on some earlier posts. Perform an activity that is especially congruent with your current philosophy and system of values, and passion will ensue.
Under that definition, attaiing a goal for which there is no passion will likely cause negative feedback as there will be little sense of being true to one’s values upon completion. In fact, repeatdly using self-discipline to “force oneself” to go through goals for which one is not passionate would not only deplete the emotional fuel, but erode the self-disciplining ability that is so precious.
I also suspect that people have extremely varying notions of what passion may be. I could certainly say that I’m passionate about mathematics nowadays, but it has nothing to do with the gut-wrenching, soul-burning, head-dizzying passion that I felt for music when I was in my late teens. The former is an optimistic, quiet feeling, while the latter is an intense, yet somewhat destructive form of passion.
June 1st, 2005 at 11:44 pm
> The question is, what is the source of the passion? We treat passion as
> the genesis of everything, as some fickle flame that appears out of
> nowhere and then flares out mysteriously. Where does it come
> from, and why do certain subjects make us passionate ?
Passion comes from unconsciousness.
It’s sublimated (redirected, substituted) sexual energy.
June 3rd, 2005 at 8:03 am
I just discovered your feed. I really liked the logic explanation of Self-Discipline. I tried using logic at the DHS one day. It was not accepted. I hope you don’t mind, but I posted this on my blog as an easy reference. Credits are to you of course.
June 13th, 2005 at 11:57 am
I think passion is something that drives on to do something, and it is a an ingrediant that brings out the best results, but at the same time self-discpline to keep to your goals, and achieve them, and if there is no passion, in subjects of life, then you are doing form-less acts with any sense of productivity, like you said, a rat on the wheel, running, (self-discplined), and but his heart is still not happy, there is no upheaving force that really makes his feel he is doing something right and getting fruits without his passion. And i also think that passion has to be categorized in the right subject, but this people will still, in agreement need both passion and discpline.
June 13th, 2005 at 12:03 pm
Related to my last post, i was looking in the dictionary for the defenition of passion, and i think i found a proverb that kinda matches what i meant…
PASSION
3. Boundless enthusiasm: “His skills as a player don’t quite match his passion for the game.”
July 12th, 2005 at 1:17 am
Before joining IT, i worked as a mechanic in a garage. Please excuse me if my analogy talks about it.
After reading this blog, i have learnt that:
If Life is a car then driving would be Passion. One’s self decipline would steer him on the road ahead safely.
No passion = No drive
No decipline = Dont drive (= not safe)
Friends Drive safely!
Regards,
PS