...it is valuable to have an example of somebody who reliably executes on his the philosophy of “Decide to do it, then do it.” If you find that you didn’t do it, then you didn’t truly decide to do it. In any case, your own choice or lack thereof is the only factor. “Discipline is freedom.” If you adopt this habit as your reality, it become true.
It’s possible I’m getting to confused with the language here but I’ve struggled to apply this advice in my own life. I’ll decide that I’m not going to snack at work anymore and then find myself snacking anyway once the time comes. It seems to reflect a naivete in regards to how willpower and habits work.
It sounds good and I’ve listened to 4 episodes now and Jocko doesn’t seem to elaborate on how exactly this process is supposed to work. What is the difference between deciding and truly deciding? What is the habit of ‘discipline is freedom’ and how does one adopt it as their reality?
I come away from the podcast inspired for a few hours but with no lasting change.
“Discipline is freedom” summarizes the attitude that if you have trained yourself to wake up early, stay on task, exercise regularly, etc., etc., then you now have the freedom to do a variety of things that you would not otherwise be able to do. By having the discipline to exercise, you now have the ability to freely use a more fit body, by waking up early, you have extra hours at your disposal, and so on.
To address your first question, I think Jocko would probably say: “If you form an intention to do something, and you don’t do it, then you are mentally weak. The first thing to do is then to decide not to be mentally weak.”
In abstruse lesswrongspeak, this would like something like: “It is most important to form a self-governing narrative of the form ‘a mentally strong person would execute on their intentions regardless of transient impulses or mental resistance, and I commit with utmost resolution to being a mentally strong person’. Then you must continuously monitor your daily activities for adherence to this commitment and to this narrative-mentality.”
Ironically, the Less Wrong deconstructionist approach of breaking the self up into multiple agents and carefully finding a minimum-enthalpy path through wantspace is itself antithetical to forming such a “simplistic” self-governing narrative, even if possessing and maintaining such a narrative were more effective.
This is after all mirrored in psychological literature in the models of willpower as a finite or an infinite resource. Although the simple “I decide I won’t have akrasia, so I won’t” is doomed to fail, the meta-focus is interesting and likely to be productive:
What would it take to be a disciplined person?
Which transformation in my environment can I enact so that I become more disciplined?
How can I construct a positive feedback loop of acting on my decisions?
Make the decision and strongly commit to being a mentally strong person
Continuously monitor your actions to ensure they are the actions of a mentally strong person
Maintain this (for weeks/months/years?) until a new self-identity is formed.
If I’ve misrepresented something point it out, but this looks to me like a recipe for failure. It’s missing fundamental parts of the human experience. People most often fail at their goals because of conflicting short and long term desires, forgetfulness and existing habits. Jocko doesn’t adequately take that into account. Making a decision is useful—you start preparing for the new challenge, (e.g. If I’m going to wake up at 5AM I better get breakfast ready the night before...) and there’ll be some self consistency effect with the newly formed intention. There’s two obvious problems,
a) It’s massively mentally energy intensive. It’s hard to choose the kale over the donut or work over reddit. Temptations don’t disappear after you’ve decided not to pursue them. You have to decide over and over again throughout the day not to chase them. Decision fatigue is a thing.
b) Humans forget. Anyone that has done any meditation will be familiar with the experience of not being able to sustain attention on an object for more than a few moments despite the most earnest effort. Even if we didn’t have all the other things we need to think about every day to occupy our minds, maintaining consistent attention is an impossible goal.
Jocko’s framing that discipline is a decision represents an incremental improvement over Nike’s ‘Just do It’.
I definitely don’t think Jocko’s material on “how to get things done” is his strongest suit, and I don’t think he intends it to be really.
I would say that temptations do disappear if you successfully implement a mindset of “it’s really not an option”, but again, the implementation of that mindset in the first place is tricky.
Honestly I think one of the benefits of being in the military, at least for a certain type of person, is that the military provides a supporting framework and incentive structure for building good habits. You work out every day because it’s part of your job, basically. You put yourself through all kinds of physical deprivation because you have to, it’s required, you’re not making yourself do it, you’re being ordered to do it. For the same reason, professional athletes don’t have to badger themselves to go to the gym—going to the gym is aligned with their other goals. For people like me, going to the gym is a distraction from my other goals.
I think too this is the main weak point. The distinction between ‘discipline’ and ‘true discipline’ is just semantics for ‘willpower when it works and when it doesn’t’.
1) Take a detailed look at the pros and cons of what you want to change. This is sometimes sufficient by itself—more than once I have realized I simply get nothing out what I’m doing, and the desire goes away by itself.
2) Find a substitution for those pros.
Alternatively, think about an example of when you decided to do something and then actually did it, and try to port the methods over. Personal example: I recently had a low-grade freakout over deciding to do a particular paperwork process that is famously slow and awful, and brings up many deeply negative feelings for me. Then I was cleaning my dutch oven, and reflected on getting a warranty replacement actually took about three months and several phone calls, which is frustrating but perfectly manageable. This gives me confidence that monitoring a slow administrative process is achievable, and I am more likely to complete it now.
It’s possible I’m getting to confused with the language here but I’ve struggled to apply this advice in my own life. I’ll decide that I’m not going to snack at work anymore and then find myself snacking anyway once the time comes. It seems to reflect a naivete in regards to how willpower and habits work.
It sounds good and I’ve listened to 4 episodes now and Jocko doesn’t seem to elaborate on how exactly this process is supposed to work. What is the difference between deciding and truly deciding? What is the habit of ‘discipline is freedom’ and how does one adopt it as their reality?
I come away from the podcast inspired for a few hours but with no lasting change.
“Discipline is freedom” summarizes the attitude that if you have trained yourself to wake up early, stay on task, exercise regularly, etc., etc., then you now have the freedom to do a variety of things that you would not otherwise be able to do. By having the discipline to exercise, you now have the ability to freely use a more fit body, by waking up early, you have extra hours at your disposal, and so on.
To address your first question, I think Jocko would probably say: “If you form an intention to do something, and you don’t do it, then you are mentally weak. The first thing to do is then to decide not to be mentally weak.”
In abstruse lesswrongspeak, this would like something like: “It is most important to form a self-governing narrative of the form ‘a mentally strong person would execute on their intentions regardless of transient impulses or mental resistance, and I commit with utmost resolution to being a mentally strong person’. Then you must continuously monitor your daily activities for adherence to this commitment and to this narrative-mentality.”
Ironically, the Less Wrong deconstructionist approach of breaking the self up into multiple agents and carefully finding a minimum-enthalpy path through wantspace is itself antithetical to forming such a “simplistic” self-governing narrative, even if possessing and maintaining such a narrative were more effective.
This is after all mirrored in psychological literature in the models of willpower as a finite or an infinite resource.
Although the simple “I decide I won’t have akrasia, so I won’t” is doomed to fail, the meta-focus is interesting and likely to be productive:
What would it take to be a disciplined person?
Which transformation in my environment can I enact so that I become more disciplined?
How can I construct a positive feedback loop of acting on my decisions?
And so on...
So,
Make the decision and strongly commit to being a mentally strong person
Continuously monitor your actions to ensure they are the actions of a mentally strong person
Maintain this (for weeks/months/years?) until a new self-identity is formed.
If I’ve misrepresented something point it out, but this looks to me like a recipe for failure. It’s missing fundamental parts of the human experience. People most often fail at their goals because of conflicting short and long term desires, forgetfulness and existing habits. Jocko doesn’t adequately take that into account. Making a decision is useful—you start preparing for the new challenge, (e.g. If I’m going to wake up at 5AM I better get breakfast ready the night before...) and there’ll be some self consistency effect with the newly formed intention. There’s two obvious problems,
a) It’s massively mentally energy intensive. It’s hard to choose the kale over the donut or work over reddit. Temptations don’t disappear after you’ve decided not to pursue them. You have to decide over and over again throughout the day not to chase them. Decision fatigue is a thing.
b) Humans forget. Anyone that has done any meditation will be familiar with the experience of not being able to sustain attention on an object for more than a few moments despite the most earnest effort. Even if we didn’t have all the other things we need to think about every day to occupy our minds, maintaining consistent attention is an impossible goal.
Jocko’s framing that discipline is a decision represents an incremental improvement over Nike’s ‘Just do It’.
I definitely don’t think Jocko’s material on “how to get things done” is his strongest suit, and I don’t think he intends it to be really.
I would say that temptations do disappear if you successfully implement a mindset of “it’s really not an option”, but again, the implementation of that mindset in the first place is tricky.
Honestly I think one of the benefits of being in the military, at least for a certain type of person, is that the military provides a supporting framework and incentive structure for building good habits. You work out every day because it’s part of your job, basically. You put yourself through all kinds of physical deprivation because you have to, it’s required, you’re not making yourself do it, you’re being ordered to do it. For the same reason, professional athletes don’t have to badger themselves to go to the gym—going to the gym is aligned with their other goals. For people like me, going to the gym is a distraction from my other goals.
I think too this is the main weak point.
The distinction between ‘discipline’ and ‘true discipline’ is just semantics for ‘willpower when it works and when it doesn’t’.
Here is a method I use to good effect:
1) Take a detailed look at the pros and cons of what you want to change. This is sometimes sufficient by itself—more than once I have realized I simply get nothing out what I’m doing, and the desire goes away by itself.
2) Find a substitution for those pros.
Alternatively, think about an example of when you decided to do something and then actually did it, and try to port the methods over. Personal example: I recently had a low-grade freakout over deciding to do a particular paperwork process that is famously slow and awful, and brings up many deeply negative feelings for me. Then I was cleaning my dutch oven, and reflected on getting a warranty replacement actually took about three months and several phone calls, which is frustrating but perfectly manageable. This gives me confidence that monitoring a slow administrative process is achievable, and I am more likely to complete it now.