Discipline or motivation: what gets things done?

A lot of people, including yours truly, often have problems of motivation in life. You often feel you are in a rut, that things are not going in the right direction, and that you should do something, maybe anything, about it. This is, in general, easier said than done.

“More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.” Woody Allen

People will give all sorts of meaningless advice in such situations. In fact, if you think about it, the majority of advice one receives in life is feel-good bullshit. Not all obviously, there is such a thing as good advice. Just that it is a fraction of all that is given. It is important for you to be happy! Like no shit.

Most motivational advice does not work. To people giving it, it seems obvious, because it is how they operate. Just change jobs, just asks the girl out etcetera. But for many people who operate differently, it simply does not apply. One of the issues is that people are wired differently, and for most it is impossible to truly understand how others think. And most don’t understand why others just don’t think like them and act like them and take their advice. It seems so obvious, after all.

GEORGE: I think you absolutely have to say something to this guy. Confront him.
ELAINE: Really?
GEORGE: Yes.
ELAINE: You would do that?
GEORGE: If I was a different person.

A lot of people are not who they are because of what they do, rather they do what they do because of who they are. So you cannot just copy their actions and if you did you would not get the same results.

Most people in a bad place know very well that they need to change something. That only they can do it. That the more time passes, the harder it will be. And rationally they understand. But alas in some situations humans do not operate on reason, and all the reason in the world can fail to overcome certain emotional states. People often have ideas about what to change, maybe even how, but thinking and doing are different things. You waste precious time, maybe the most scarce of resources, and you realize it. But you simply cannot find it in yourself to do something. This, off course, depresses you more. It is a vicious circle, a hard one to break.

So a well-meaning friend or family member just reciting pieces of advice will not help much in most situations. Motivational speeches are tried, but they also hardly ever work. Motivation, in the end, needs to somehow come from the inside. So the reader might thing: Ok, I get it. You don’t think motivation works. What the hell does? If only I knew… I’d be a different person.

So if I don’t really know, then what is the point of it all? Well, there might not be one. This is not to say that one should give up or lose hope. Just not to bet it all on motivation.

What can be done? A slight variation, maybe. Another way some try to go about it is by forgetting motivation as the main element of the equation and focusing on discipline. To take a very simple example, I will use going to the gym. Some people try to motivate themselves and often fail. The discipline approach is: create a workout program of let’s say 3 days a week, write it down. Put an alarm on a watch/phone at 7 pm – or whatever hour works - 3 days a week. Whenever the alarm rings, get up and go to the gym and do the program that was written down for the day. No matter if you don’t feel like it.

A clear, structured schedule may be easier to be disciplined about than thinking exercises on the spot, and easier than deciding to go to the gym at a random time when you feel like it. Fixed time, fixed program. The real question is: does discipline work without motivation? Do you need motivation to reinforce discipline, would be another way of putting it? This may also depend on the person. But people do a lot of things they are not motivated to do – a shitty job being the best example – according to a fixed schedule. So why not gym.

In this situation – gym, study for a new skill, do whatever – it may still require some motivation, but maybe a little less and of a different sort. Base the goals on discipline, and just a bit of motivation which is to be used not for the task at hand, but to reinforce the discipline. It may go easier that way. Or maybe not, what the hell do I know?

Do not take this as advice, because advice, as we have established, is meaningless. This is just some musing on the subject. Now excuse me while I go back to feeling bad and doing nothing about it.