I've been working on this since I posted this morning. I stumbled across Steve's discipline series - which I've read before but until this morning, discovered that I hadn't PROPERLY read it!
I hope you don't mind me posting here - since it's very self-centered as it's all about me - but in a way it's just a form of self-teaching by the very act of posting. If you find this thread boring, there are thousands of other ones on here
Having written down all the projects this morning, I didn't feel at all motivated to get started on any of them today. I do have a cold today and feel a bit groggy so that doesn't help, but i'll still soldier on. Monday to Wednesday went very well and I'll come back to that when I go through the Willpower section. But yesterday and today I really haven't achieved anything.
I decided that perhaps my mental frame of mind is the thing that stops me from just getting work done; so I looked for some inspiration on the site and started reading the self-discipline articles...
My self discipline is my ability to get me to take action regardless; I imagined being able to sit down with a list in front of me and churn through the tasks in a positive and quick manner. That is what self discipline is visually to me - looking at a list of tasks, knowing that's what i have to get done, and then doing it. Rarely do I do work in such an organised way of course. Therefore I realised my major problem is actually my self-discipline. I looked back at my life and realised there were only a few moments were I was taught self-discipline, and these were probably less than 1% of my current living life. My parents would solider on regardless, so industry was their prime factor. At school I was disciplined enough to work many hours int the evening getting my homework done. At college, this was less so, and then at university it was even worse. So, having looked back at my life I've realised that although I had a good start in life, I gradually took extremely lazy mindsets from others and my environment, and I'm now living through them now- which are making things difficult for me sometimes. If I was a force of nature, the amount I could acheive would be awesome - and I think it's the same for everyone.
Which led me to believe that self-discipline is far more important that what Steve intimates it to be - 'it's only one tool in your toolbox.' I believe that fundamentally self-discipline is a psychological state of how much belief you have within yourself to get it done, and then enough of a mind-body connection to actually get the physical actions to start and consistently continue.
But in the real world, what Steve has said has really resonated with me. It's about consciously choosing to improve my self discipline, and consistently reminding myself of this fact. From this, it's a weekly thing; I want to eventually achieve five days a week of 12 hour days, that is five sets of 12 reps.
Accepting where I am right now was also an eye opener, I've very rarely even completed five working days in a row where I can say I'm truly satisfied with my effort. So I realised that five sets of five reps (concentrated enthusiastic hours of work) is a realistic challenge for me. It sounds ridiculously simple to achieve, but I'm sure that in practice it's going to be a lot harder; else why haven't I been doing it on a regular basis already?
The willpower analogy was also very important since I realised that I've been using willpower in the incorrect way - to tackle my tasks head on day in and day out - which is possibly why I've never been able to achieve consistently high levels of work week in and week out. It's almost stop-start, stop-start. I'm a tiny bit confused as to how I can apply this concept of willpower in the real world - as in, what environmental or social changes can I make that will enable me to achieve my further goals. The steps:
1) Choose my objective
2) Create a plan
3) Execute the plan
I guess the immediate objective for me is to get entirely organised with every task written down in one single place, and I also want to listen to 'Getting Things Done' at least three times to really ram it home again. But I'm still feeling pretty tired - so maybe my willpower for this week has gone - does willpower really work that way? As in, it's actually like a battery that needs recharging through rest? Any thoughts?
The hard work and industry pillars seemed very similar and appeal to me most. I've always been interested in going the extra mile on extremely difficult tasks that my peers would not necessarily be doing - it makes sense that hard work completed will eventually produce a greater result than something that was easy to do. The industrious side of me is something I've lacked and almost forgotten about. At the start of 2008, I set myself hourly targets for each week and this worked well for the first three months, but then I sort of stopped doing it! Maybe at that point I should have taken a holiday to recharge- isn't it true that most successful people take the most vacations?
I think I'm getting somewhere with this topic at the moment; so I'm going to continue posting to it to see where it gets me, and if it's of use to anyone else... for now my brain needs time to rest!