What I needed was sleep. In order to get that sleep, I had to have my gallbladder removed. Once that was done, I had to stop eating dairy. Now I can sleep again. I feel much much younger.
I cannot believe how long I was going on listlessly, unknowing that my laziness was a side effect of health issues.
It took me nearly 20 years to realize it was dragging me down, which is now known to be common in my maternal genes. I had a night after dinner with fever, queasy, lack of urination, and upset stomach. I was subsequently affected with stomach and bowel pain and inflammation when I ate for a couple days. About a month prior to this episode, I had a slight sharp pain on the right side under my rib cage(typical location for male gallbladder symptoms). At the time I figured this was due to a misalignment in my spine(quite typical for me at the time). I put together the current condition(associated with food intake) and the previous pain to conclude that I needed to have my gallbladder checked. I went with the least invasive, lowest false negative, and least expensive check first, an ultrasound. Thankfully(more on this later), it showed a polyp near the base of the gallbladder.
With my symptoms and ultrasound report, I was a candidate for removal. Two years after the described episode I had it removed. I opted out of pathology and let the surgeon open up the gallbladder and report to me. He found no polyp! It was full of stones. They varied in size from a grain of sand to 7mm. The ultrasound technician was correct in their assessment of the image, however, the image was misleading.
Every one of my siblings and my mother have suffered for years without any of the typically significant acute symptoms of cholecystitis. One of my brothers suffers occasionally like I did, but every single test for gallbladder issues comes back negative. Anecdotally, I ran into a person who had all tests show negative gallbladder issues, yet had it removed to see if it helped. It cured her bowel issues.
Prior to my knowing what the issues were(20 years), here are the symptoms I can 100% associate with my gallbladder problem. Walking up stairs caused increased heart rate and fatigue after smoking a cigarette. Occasional slight queasiness after eating meals(they must have been high in fat). Rare episodes of fever, nausea, bowel discomfort after a meal that I wrote off as food poisoning or altitude sickness in one instance. General malaise.
My mother and I both were very aware of some of our symptoms, but it was incredibly easy to associate them with other things we had come in contact with. Mold and fragrances are two that come to mind. When I was eating "healthy" I noticed significant improvements in my energy. At the time I didn't realize the "healthy" eating I was doing was low fat. That low fat was reducing inflammation in my gallbladder allowing me to get proper rest. Not eating dairy(maternal genes as well) is reducing inflammation in my gut, allowing me to get proper rest.
Can you elaborate on `My mother and I both were very aware of some of our symptoms, but it was incredibly easy to associate them with other things we had come in contact with. Mold and fragrances are two that come to mind.`?
My mother and I both have sensitive skin, she had her gallbladder removed. I've lived with overly sensitive skin for most of my life, but never thought it could be gallbladder related.
The week before my diagnosis and severe attack, I was eating a fatty diet. I was at the office and noticed my stomach feeling slightly queasy. I had just that week brought a box of fridge magnets into the room I work in. This was the first time I had a box of them around me. I could smell the off gassing. I assumed this was the problem, since that was the new thing around me. I removed them and seemingly had relief, until the attack. Placebo...
Ten years ago I would visit my parents house and eat fatty meals. I usually had a slight queasiness when I was there. I did not like going to their place. My subconscious mind had taken the queasy feeling and turned it into disdain. They had mold issues. I blew it off as a reaction to that. I know for certain some molds cause a reaction in me, but it is just puffy eyes in the morning after sleeping in a moldy/mildewy place.
I went to Denver and did some hiking in the mountains. After eating a meal in town, I was quite sick. It felt much like a cold/flu without the respiratory symptoms. I blew it off as altitude sickness. I am not a doctor...
My mother has similar stories. Her first bought she associated with a cat that was in our basement. The cat was gone and her problems persisted. She then began to associate her symptoms with mold. The mold was removed and her problems persisted. She then began to blame it on gut bacteria imbalance triggered by her breast cancer and or treatment of. In the end, she had her gallbladder removed in the E.R. after a stone was lodged in her bile duct. She sleeps great and has more energy than she has had in decades.
These atypical symptoms are not easy for a person to diagnose intuitively. Erroneous associations were easy because our diets are not consistent and the symptoms were not immediate or as severe as something like a broken bone.
As far as sensitive skin is concerned. Laundry detergent and soaps come to mind as irritants. I get spots and itches from dairy.
Yikes, some of this is hitting too close to home. If you can think of any other info to share please write it out. I'm curious about other symptoms, if there's any alternatives to gallbladder removal that you've considered, whether other members of your family have had similar procedures. Why did it take 2 years to have it removed. What was the recovery like. Etc.
The most important question is how you associate the symptoms with gallbladder. Is it based on your experience before and after?
> if there's any alternatives to gallbladder removal that you've considered
There really is no alternative. The gallbladder is not necessary and when any issues arrive, it is generally removed. I did a lot of reading on that. I could not find any medicinal or herbal alternatives to break up stones.
> I'm curious about other symptoms
It is possible my sense of smell was affected. The days after the removal, I noticed I was smelling things that I had never noticed before. This is still happening a year later. The anesthetics used may have caused this though. One symptom that may have been gallbladder was what I thought was hypoglycemia. I had not been diagnosed, but between meals I frequently would get some slight weakness/anxiety and somewhat trembly. I would go into detail about my sleep pattern, but it was so sporadic toward the end and spinal issues contributed to it as well. Throughout the years though I had trouble getting to bed at a decent time. This was not as significant when I was eating "healthy". I did not notice it correlating to my eating at the time.
> whether other members of your family have had similar procedures
My mother found the source of her similar and more pronounced issues about a year after I had mine diagnosed. She had many similar issues for about the same amount of time. She ended up in the emergency room with a gallstone in her bile duct that had to be removed via endoscope once they got the inflammation down. Many people die from bile stones every year. My two brothers are toughing it out.
> Why did it take 2 years to have it removed
I was eating a very very low fat diet at first and managing fairly well. I was also trying to save money for surgery. As time went on, I could barely function and was going to get it removed no matter what the cost.
> What was the recovery like
The surgery was uneventful. I popped right out of sedation. I attribute this to my body's reaction to the scopolamine patch administered right before surgery. It is used to prevent vomiting. One of the potential side effects is tachycardia. I was wide awake and full of energy from 1pm(after surgery) to 11pm. My family was dumbfounded. When I tried to sleep, I couldn't. I began to realize this was abnormal and removed the patch to see if that would help. Thirty minutes later I was asleep. I was able to sit stand and lay the first night, being careful when changing position not to cause a hernia. The second and third day, if I recall correctly, were the most painful. This was only while laying flat on my back though. In a more upright position I managed to sleep fine. I understand a little now what it must be like to receive a penetrating wound.
The surgery was on a Thursday. I was back at the office the following Tuesday. The small incisions(4) occasionally gave me pain and I was afraid I might cause a hernia for about 3-4 weeks. I still feel a slight tingle/itch at two of the sites. I also still feel very mild pain from my non existent gallbladder when I am really hungry or when I have eaten too much oil/fat.
> The most important question is how you associate the symptoms with gallbladder
I knew the typical symptoms of cholecystitis from reading long before I associated it with my own symptoms. My father had typical symptoms and had his removed when he was about 26. He ate fast food and fatty food almost exclusively! My symptoms were atypical. Only in hindsight am I able to pinpoint some of them. I had one typical symptom, but it was not there during my acute attacks, which I described in my earlier comment here. I had so many symptoms that were gradual as I grew older or not severe enough for me to think it was abnormal. I had no idea how bad I was. (I may have misinterpreted your point in this response.)
> Is it based on your experience before and after?
Almost exclusively. My "food poisoning" episodes were, retrospectively, clearly my gallbladder. It was very easy to associate these to the gallbladder once ...
yeah. 75÷ of my lazyness, lack of motivation and no discipline comes from fast harbonhydrates, caffeine and no excercise. and they work in downward spiralling you.
If you have 0 motivation, it could mean you're just getting bored or saturated or stressed out or simply overwhelmed. In any case, do NOTHING for a day or two, don't feel guilt (that's KEY), tell yourself you're taking a break, play games, go ride your bike, walk in a forest, go to a restaurant, whatever suits you. Make yourself feel good. Take a break. Then the next day start by doing something very very simple. If you're working on a very hard problem then run a simple experiment to validate a case, corner case or not. If you feel like you don't feel like it, then just do some silly 5min task, it may be enough to get you restarted and just feel better. Feel good, enjoy life, then get back to work. Changing Job may do the trick too. Or take some vacation, the idea is to just break the cycle.
I found that consuming caffeine is fine if I stretch it out. Downing an espresso all at once will make me crash like everyone else, as the body overcompensates. Sipping it throughout the day will keep the levels steady.
I have a cup of half milk and half coffee, and the coffee is half cafe, drip. So I can enjoy four mugs of hot creamy goodness over a few hours and getting the same caffeine as that one single espresso.
It is just so difficult to get them done right. It's almost impossible. How many people are getting quality sleep? I'm afraid that's a very expensive commodity and even rich people might not do that right.
Just a note that my completion rate and tolerance to grit increase dramatically when I had a good sleep, which is very very rare nowadays.
I agree with you. Getting started (and getting other people to start) requires motivation, wherever that might come from. But seeing things through takes discipline - and the two are not the same.
I, too, would rather have benevolent parents that protect me and make sure my needs are all covered for the rest of my life. But that's just not how the world works.
Often when a manager or professor says that it translates to “I can’t be bothered helping with your career advancement, just do this minimum project and get out of my face”
Indeed. All my life I had the causality backwards. Personally for me, it's the discipline that leads to motivation.
Motivation on its own is almost useless. As a saying goes (don't remember the author), you need to be boring and predictable in day to day life so that you can be wild and unpredictable in work.
Discipline is tricky. A LOT of the signalling in modern life is just to tempt you into distractions. You're probably reading this on a rectangle that distracts you all the time.
I think everyone likes to talk about motivation, because we all want the calm mania like flow state that effortlessly provides willpower over obstacles that would otherwise frustrate a disciplined person.
When I was younger I used to worry about having the right goals to work towards. Now I consider it more important to be moving towards something. You eat an elephant in small bites.
IMO this makes the most important point at the very end. “Being disciplined” itself is a consequence of motivation, or is effectively that. Building habits however, requires very little discipline or motivation so long as you build them strategically - I.e. start so small it’d be ridiculous not to do it regardless of how motivated or disciplined you are.
And by “start small” I mean “floss one tooth per night for 3 months to build a flossing habit” small. Let your good habits progressively and slowly consume more time, similar to what bad habits do.
For all intents and purposes you should just assume both discipline and motivation are completely mythical and you should construct a system of high-leverage habits to obviate the need for them. You don’t rise to the level of your talents/motivation/discipline, you fall to the level of your habits.
Yep. I will say though, its always possible, barring any sort of medical reasons, to get disciplined.
I've had months where I go to the gym and then something happens and its easy to not go. There's nothing on this earth stopping me from picking that back up, other than myself... which reminds me, I need to start going again. Crazy thing is you _know_ you'll feel better but getting up and going can be a drag sometimes.
>Crazy thing is you _know_ you'll feel better but getting up and going can be a drag sometimes.
Yeah, that’s because most of your agency is hooked up to the monkey brain. You’re not really fighting anything, your apparent incentives just don’t drive you to go.
Atomic Habits is good. I personally found much more success with BJ Fogg’s “Tiny Habits” regime. He has a book by that title (which I’ve not actually read) and lots of resources online.
Not sure I’ve seen a breakdown, been studying the format to try to replicate in my own writing. Currently applying to a technical book, we’ll see :)
The format follows what I’ve seen called as the English Essay style (as opposed to European style) – you start with a personal story, yours or a character’s. You use that story as a narrative device to make your point. The character works as a sort of template of the reader. For books, using multiple stories – up to 2 per chapter - works best. Weaving the character stories in and out throughout the book creates a sense of continuity and makes it easier for people to follow.
Whenever you want to make a point, you show the point or at least the situation with a character story. Real stories work best. You also lay out the point explicitly. The reader should never be made to guess. Setting it up as a punchline works, but use this sparingly because, again, readers don’t like to guess.
The whole book should have one, at most two, key points you want to make. It should be reducible to a pithy tweet. The rest of the book is there to make the point sink in for the reader.
The difference between making a point and conveying a point is crucial here.
I have yet to write a bestseller so I am likely missing some ingredients. This format applied to blogs/emails has worked great. People love it.
If you’re aware of other notable examples, would be interested in links to them.
As for my guess, it’s at a best seller format, it’s 100s of tiny chapters, which makes the readers feel like they’re rapidly discovering new information.
Appears writing style you’re referring to might be called “Quest-based technical narrative” — where the author mixes in a topical plot to provide context and maintain read interest.
While I am unable to recall the name of the book, recall a book on chaining hacking exploits that walks through a a fictional story while weaving in technical details.
It’s been a while since I read Atomic Habits but I came away with the view he was missing (or just not sufficiently emphasizing) something.
IIRC Atomic was still making things too “big,” i.e. the habit should be so small it fetches accusations of insanity by bystanders and your celebration, accordingly, can be ridiculously small too (just physically smiling induces a tiny reward, which is all that’s necessary for a sufficiently small preceding habit).
Also he allows the option of “time and place” to trigger habits which IMO is very bad advice. 100% of new habits should be placed directly behind an already-established habit, and specifically one that’s already resilient to variations in time-and-place. Takes a while to think of these habits (because they’re truly automatic) but you already have at least a dozen and identifying them is half the trick.
I agree. In the past, I’ve tried to just be disciplined, stop procrastinating, and push through no matter what, and it lead to horrible burnout where I spent weeks/months being fairly ineffective. If you’re not sleeping at all at night and can’t think straight during the day, even for a couple minutes, you’re simply not going to be effective. You’re also liable to make really bad decisions that will drag on you even after you’ve recovered.
Having a routine though, even a very flexible routine, has been very effective. Things become automatic. Settling into an effective routing often involves not worrying too much about discipline, though. It's easier for people to get to the gym everyday if the goal is "get to the gym, and do something" than it is if the goal is "get to the gym and do a rigorous 2 hour workout." Small steps and environmental changes, as well as not stressing over what's optimal, have been the most effective approaches in my experience.
As someone who also has ADHD, making the gym locker room a step on my daily trip home from work and the place I shower was what finally got me working out regularly. Still, some days I show up, shower, and leave, but most days (3-4 days a week) I'll be able to convince myself to go do a workout, since I'm there anyway.
You can think of the habits as the goal, "motivation to build and maintain good habits", which ends up looking like motivation and discipline for more external things. The inner driver though is to maintain good habits.
I don't like recent political spins and ramblings of Jordan Peterson (basically very pro-Putin and pro-Trump last time I checked, and stopped cold turkey with him after that), but as a psychologist he made tons of excellent and practical remarks before that.
One of them which sticks with me is about fighting addictions and habits - every time you win this internal fight (go do something unwanted, don't light up that cigarette or drink alcohol) you get a bit stronger and addiction gets slightly weaker. Same for habits and defeating procrastination.
The hardest part is the first step, when opposite side (in your own persona) is strongest and it feels its too high a mountain to overcome. With addictions you never chip it away to 0 - that's the unfortunate cold hard truth, but you can chip it away into something you can manage continuously. Good habits are often self-fueling after crossing some threshold, ie exercise and eating healthy.
He was so good when he stuck to psychology. It really sucks, all of these public intellectual types think once they become popular it gives them an easy opportunity to make money by speaking about domains they clearly have no expertise in. As soon as Peterson started talking about religion, philosophy, and various politics, it all went downhill very fast.
I do make an exception with all of that when all the pub science guys shit on religion though. Can't seem to get enough of that even though I'm out of my angsty atheist teenager phase by 20 years
It's just a character trait of pop psychology/motivators/influencers. It's not like 'successfully not doing x makes it easier to permanently stop doing x' is a profound or new idea.
These folks need to feel popular and build a brand and its really hard to just stick with one thing, as it limits your audience, so you grow in to other venues.
Telling people what they want to hear in a nice package that makes them feel smart is a business as old as time. Oprah built a whole empire off of it. The internet has just widened the reach.
This isn't a turn for Jordan Peterson. It's who he's always been, and a lot of people tried to warn you about it 5+ years ago. The only new thing is that he's not trying to dress it up in fake objectivity anymore.
Have you spent any time wondering how those people knew this was coming years ago, but you didn't see it?
Nope. For the same reason I know many people who voted for Trump, and then didn't after four years of him.
They just didn't care to spend more brainpower on the issue than they already had. Most people have better things to do than be the most well-informed voter or investigate the history of the people they see on YouTube.
do you mind sharing which medication? I'm on adderall and while it can help me stay on a specific task, and has changed my life drastically, It does nothing for me as far as forming habits.
The meds won't help you "show up" after the euphoria phase of the first week. But while you are now able to stay on task and complete it, you still have to pull yourself from the couch to the task that needs doing.
I have been medicated for a year now, and the common advice of "just do 5 minutes and nothing more" to get myself started now actually works. I still hate doing chores (I am procrastinating rn because my flat needs some cleaning), but if I start, you better believe they will get done and I might do a little more just because now I have dopamine to tell me "this is good stuff you're doing, carry on", whereas before I was fighting every second the urge to just leave the thing halfway and go do something else. Life was hard.
I'm on lisdexamfetamine FWIW.
EDIT: the dopaminergic system is exactly how you form habits. When taking amphetamines, you have more dopamine, thus habits are much easier to create. Both the good and the bad ones. You just have to fight against the lifelong learned helplessness that effort is not worth it. That takes a long while to rewire. Ok, time to close HN and clean my flat.
> The meds won't help you "show up" after the euphoria phase of the first week.
As some comments above mentioned everyone is affected differently. I have been on adderall for well over a decade, and constantly for the past 5-6 years in which I formed habits and routines that never stuck when I would go off and on due to hating the 'blunting' effect I felt it had on my creativity and personality.
So a couple months ago when I couldn't find them in stock anywhere I figured no big deal, I could keep doing what I was doing and maybe I was using the meds as a crutch anyhow. I was hoping I would get my old 'fun' personally back to go along with my new older-wiser-mature-self that had good work habits and routines. It's been such a complete disaster I had to ask my doctor to lower my dose because that was the only strength one pharmacy had left out of over 20 stores I called, and had them search other branches. Now I have to choose which days to take them because I have to take twice as many to get the workable dose. It sucks.
I don't think I'm suffering from emotional and creative blunting, but I take a relatively low dose (20mg + 20mg 6h later), so that it works only when I am good shape and eating well. In fact the better my diet, the stronger it feels.
You have much more experience than me, but I believe with stimulants too low a dose is much better than too high a dose. During titration I tried the dosage immediately after and I was a machine, both in productive output and in emotional bluntness. I could've reached my full potential but honestly, it's not worth it.
Now I feel with good diet, good sleep and a little exercise I'm operating at 70% of my capacity, while the rest of my life I was running at 20%. This is good enough for me. When I'm off the meds I can see only negatives: hungry, horny, restless, bored, anxious. Perhaps a little more lighthearted, to be honest.
I agree eating right and exercise makes a huge difference and is working well enough right now by taking meds every other day and making sure that on those days I follow a good eating and exercise routine because it will help carry over the habit to the next day--not always, but most days.
My problem taking a smaller dose is that it puts me to sleep. I sometimes split my original dose to use as a sleep aid because I get great sleep on it. Falling asleep on adderall was not fun to tell my doc or the pharmacist when I first started on adderall. I was recommended for more screening. It still makes me tired for 10-15mins as the first dose kicks in.
Lighthearted is a good word to describe the differences I feel as well. Though I am quite hyperactive, maybe they are related--bouncy and lighthearted off and matching the calm of the Vulcans on them.
I've definitely experienced the small dose sleep aid thing. Noticed it from the caffeine I was self-medicating with before being diagnosed. I've assumed that what's happening is that it's suppressing the distractions that are keeping me up.
Some pharmacies will always tell you they're out of stock to see if you're willing to wait to order them, because they're afraid of facilitating abuse. Rite aid is notorious for that.
> but if I start, you better believe they will get done
I have a note titled "ADHD med cleaning spree" where nearly immediately after taking meds I start to realize how messy my surroundings are and just start cleaning because quite magically, cleaning is now just cleaning.
Good luck figuring out the real cause in our modern medical system. I agree though, I think a more holistic approach would benefit most.
Psychiatry and psychology, in my experience, are both just a game of pin the tail on the condition -- simple, vague heuristics are used to diagnose conditions based on patient interviews.
I have ADHD, and during the diagnostic process, I never had a sleep study, any bloodwork drawn, scans, etc.. Could it have been something else? Not like I will ever know.
What's the old say that doctors commonly tote? "When you hear hoof beats, don't look for zebras when there are horses in the room."
It's so damaging because sometimes one needs to be looking for "zebras."
Ah, but then you need to remember to make the checklist, and you need to remember to check it. If I get past the first step, I invariably fall afoul of the second.
I have a folder right next to my bed. The only thing I need to remember is to grab the damn thing when I get up. I'll say it's a 90% success rate :)
But more importantly, you'll need to work on your assessment of "invariably". If you think all efforts are predestined to fail, they will. Get help if you can't do it alone.
Individual experiences of ADHD remain varied - it sounds like you have some significant executive dysfunction (I do as well), and it responded well to your medication. I'm really happy for you!
I get so tired of popular wisdom that assumes that all people experience life in essentially the same way, and that the 'recipe for success' should be universal. "Discipline" is a nonsense word to the folks with executive dysfunction, you might as well tell us that the key to personal success is learning how to fly. Everyone else is doing it, so it must be easy - you just need to try harder!
Exactly! I didn't start getting anywhere with anything until I realized that I should ignore what other people told me about getting stuff done. For whatever reason, I don't respond to normal motivators. There are a few giant labels that get slapped onto people to try to make sense of how different peoples' brains work but for a lot of people just fall somewhere in between. I'm not ADHD, but I'm...something. And I think that situation is a lot more common than is commonly acknowledged.
That has been written about quite a bit. Can't remember any of the terms placed on it, but I've seen many Hacker News entries about maximizing that phenomenon.
The phrase coming to mind is productive procrastination.
This isn't easy, but sometimes it works for me. One of the tricks is making sure it really is productive. For example, I work from home so picking up around the house or doing dishes can actually be very productive/helpful for me, but I've definitely found myself bogged down in mindless tasks that didn't really move the needle.
As some with ADHD as well, the medication has helped me concentrate, but doesn't do enough for my executive dysfunction on a larger scale -- I still have a lot difficult focusing, inertia required to start a task, planning, organizing, following through with things, etc..
The medication does wonders for my physical symptoms of hyperactivity, which is justification enough to take them in my opinion.
However, something I have started to learn about stimulant medications are what I consider its true dangers. It's not necessarily dangerous for one's health, at least at therapeutic dosages, but rather it's extremely easy to become overly reliant on these medications, and if/when you stop taking them, lose access to them, etc. then life tends to sucker punch you back into reality -- a life where you can no longer maintain everything you were able to do, but yet the expectations are still as if you are firing on all cylinders.
I feel like I am living out the plot of Flowers for Algernon, and honestly, it's somewhat bothersome to me.
I resonate with this a LOT. Been on and off stimulants over the last decade. Just recently gave up 30mg daily XR cold turkey after dealing with too many yo-yo accessibility issues and hating the way my life was being essentially dictated by my access to medication. It's been 2 months now and I am finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but a substantial amount of my cognitive energy every day is dedicated to just managing my attention and the work that I am doing. It sucks.
Are you talking about issues accessing medication? If so, I completely agree. The system is rather difficult and unforgiving to navigate -- that alone makes deters many from even attempting to get treatment, and I do not blame them one bit.
I take IR instead of XR, and I am about to be in a similar boat as you.
How bad is the process of going cold-turkey? How long does the Hell that I am in for last? I have serious concerns for keeping my current job without access to medication, but part of me wants to know if I am just being overly anxious and hyperbolic, or if I am actually am screwed.
I think it varies wildly from person to person. When I've quit stimulants in the past it was really just a week or two before I was close to what felt like my baseline. The hardest part for me was the daytime sleepiness.
These "you need discipline, not motivation" remarks are as superficial as the cheap motivational ones.
They fail to adress documented disorders, like ADHD. And also the fact that a huge chunk of the population had its dopaminergic system completely hijacked by artificial stimulants, ranging from food, drugs, social media, etc.
They're so superficial that their answer would be: "you can circumvent your dopaminergic mess with discipline."
...start so small it’d be ridiculous not to do it regardless of how motivated or disciplined you are.
And by “start small” I mean “floss one tooth per night for 3 months to build a flossing habit” small...
The idea of doing something every day in a row for 3 months causes me pain and revulsion. If I think about it a bit longer, I I know I would get mad at myself for missing a day, and would get really mad at myself for forgetting for 2 years, and I'm already jumping the gun at trying to avoid setting myself up for failure. I floss my teeth when they feel dirty, anything else seems unsustainable. But maybe that's why I don't have motivation or discipline.
I wish I could build good habits, and getting mad serves no purpose, but it happens. Seeing other people have morning rituals, and mowing their lawn on a schedule, and whatnot seems like a magic trick. I only commented because starting small doesn't make it seem any easier to me, though I do understand that it might help someone else.
Motivation is a weird thing. Or maybe it's several things shoved into one word.
A very common mistake is to procrastinate doing something until you feel motivated. Our minds often doesn't work that way.
But if you start the task without any motivation, or expectation it will get done, you'll often find yourself motivated and making progress within minutes.
In reality, once you put some effort in, that can make you motivated.
I wish I could learn this faster. I can't even count the number of things that I've procrastinated and burned hours or days of brain focus on avoiding that ended up taking 10 or 15 minutes to just accomplish once I finally started.
Me too. What's helped me a lot is to just relentlessly make "what counts as starting" smaller and smaller until it's doable. Where "file taxes" is very very hard, "look through email and remember name of my accountant" (and many other TINY tasks...) is much more doable!
these tasks are similar to the 'intellgent dumbing down' talked about in Getting Things Done, no wonder they work!
Having said that...I'm not diagnosed as ADHD but I definitely feel I exhibit executive dysfunction symptoms, and one of my siblings was diagnosed, so I'm feeling confident I'm ADHD adjacent at least...and just trying to implement Getting Things Done helped me immensely. Not only does it help with having a less stressful day (no longer do I have "what am I missing? what am I forgetting? Ahhh, angst!" feelings), it also helps me to just stay on task and/or when I switch tasks, know that I have the confidence to come back to wherever I was.
I've noticed a lot of times what appears to be procrastination is actually uncertainty as to how to proceed. The mind recoils from it's own inadequacy and just labels the whole thing "bad". An advantage of breaking it down as you say is that it pushes the uncertainty a step further away. You may not know what's required to do your taxes, but you know what's required to search your email. Many times, the way to perform the next step is produced by performing the current one (e.g. your accountant tells you what documents are needed) so the overall task is not nearly as painful as you anticipated.
IMHO the problem is that there are so many interesting and semi-intrinsically motivating things that it's very hard to shut them out and "put some effort into" whatever you are "supposed to be doing".
He mentions building habits in part 2 of the article, using the boiling the frog analogy (imploring the reader to use it for good instead).
My question, though, is how does a good habit expand into a great habit, without motivation? For your tooth example, once you start flossing you might as well floss all your teeth. The upfront cost of getting started with the floss is the worst part of it, but once you're there it's easy. This isn't true for all habits though. For many it's easy to just bail out fast. If I started doing 5 push-ups a day will I eventually do 100 and then 1000? Or would I settle somewhere on a mediocre range because it's easy to stop? Is there some sort of recursion or positive feedback loop that kicks in that rescues me from mediocrity if all I have is discipline and not motivation?
If you start with 5 push-ups a day, you'll hit your limits fast just increasing push-ups by one a day, so spread out your improvements by increasing in several exercises, adding more if necessary. Not to do all of them at once every day, but ones to switch between daily. I started something like this years ago, and I'm still keeping up on it. If life happens and I have to take a break from it, I restart it later and reduce my goals so that it doesn't seem so bad trying to jump back into a routine I was maximizing earlier.
The key was to make it a habit I do every day, like brushing my teeth. If I've had a bad day and miss doing my "workout routine" (such that it is, I'm no Arnold), it feels weird to miss one and I look forward to doing it the next day. So in that way once you've made it to a certain point it's self-fulfilling.
> And by “start small” I mean “floss one tooth per night for 3 months to build a flossing habit” small. Let your good habits progressively and slowly consume more time, similar to what bad habits do.
The difficulty here is primarily in initiating the task consistently imo. Once you are already at the point of flossing one tooth there likely isn’t much mental resistance to flossing the others. I think it’s better to do things that lower the resistance to starting the task in the first place as opposed to just making the task smaller.
That's exactly the point: activation energy is the hardest to summon, and once you have it's "easy" to finish the rest of the habit (e.g. floss all your other teeth).
If "floss one tooth" is still too much, go smaller: "take my floss out of the drawer and put it on the counter."
For me I don't believe there's a way to make the activation small enough of a thing that I would be able to consistently do it. If my task were to consistently lift a finger every Monday I don't think I'd be able to do it.
Doesn't those go hand in hand? You dread starting because you don't want or have the energy to spend 20+ min on it. So you reduce the task to taking 5 seconds and eliminate the reason for it being hard. Say, put on one shoe, if you want to develop the habit of walking.
Right, but breaking down tasks after "activating" the task probably isn't very useful. Doing the one tooth thing doesn't really help since once you are already there, the gap between doing that and the rest of the teeth is basically nonexistent. You might as well start off flossing all your teeth if you are able to get to the flossing part.
Breaking down activation energy is also hard. Taking floss out and putting it on the counter feels like it might not be reinforcing enough.
Something more useful might revolve around storing the floss in a more readily available position or using something like floss picks and/or other things that might reduce friction. But ultimately, I think everything eventually boils down to raw discipline.
Well this is kind of "smuggled in." If you are flossing one tooth, you need to have floss readily available. The point is that you are eating the (yes, usually significant) startup cost and that's it. Keep doing that until it's not even a cost for you, then you can start eating into the variable cost of a more complete habit.
As far as knowing to initiate the habit, place it directly behind an already established habit. Flossing is easy since you probably brush your teeth regularly.
I think what I'm trying to say though is that there's no benefit to starting with one tooth if you have already paid that "startup cost". Since at that point the cognitive load of flossing one tooth vs flossing all your teeth is basically nonexistent.
One tooth is strictly less time, less commitment, less cognitive overhead than all your teeth.
Simple as that.
Of course this is just the regime that helped me build 4 or 5 brand new daily habits in under two years, all of which I had tried and failed several times before. YMMV.
> You don’t rise to the level of your talents/motivation/discipline, you fall to the level of your habits.
"The enemy's gate is /down/!" (downward) [1]
That is, orientate yourself such that where you want to go is as easy/automatic as falling.
[1] Ender's Game, and the Ender's Shadow sequence. Though, I wish the catchphrase had used "downward" rather than "down", as the latter is confusingly similar to "has fallen / is breached".
Trick: Put yourself into a situation that you have some pressure to do what you want to do but not necessarily always fun.
That's why I always want to learn on work instead of opening all those projects without finishing any. Sadly most companies don't agree with me :) They always want to hire experienced players. Can't blame them though.
That's an extreme watering down of a complex topic. Essentially the study you link is saying that PIC (Positive, Immediate, Certain) outcomes are stronger than PDU (Positive, Delayed, Uncertain) outcomes.
Well, of course. Taking the inverse - a NIC (Negative, Immediate, Certain) outcome of putting your hand on a hot stove will quickly teach you to not put your hand on the stove. Compare this to cheating a bit on your taxes where the consequence is NDU (Negative, Delayed, Uncertain).
Beyond that, I disagree with your premise that something must be immediately fun for it to get done. There is a lot of literature on this - I recommend highly, "Solving the Procrastination Puzzle".
> That's an extreme watering down of a complex topic.
Fair point.
A person can force themselves... until they break.
So in that sense it needn't be fun as long as you can finish the task before the breaking point.
But there's a threshold beyond which the person cannot sustain the behavior.
Because it's a form of consistent lying to oneself.
A person's brain, on a moment-to-moment basis is trying to pick the 'optimal' choice. The 'optimal' is: most pleasure, least pain.
If the most pleasure, least pain option is beneficial to you in the long-run, the "game" that we play of trying to convince ourselves to do something else disappears.
Which diet will win in the long run:
1. One that tastes better than all available options (including any takeout, or delivery, ice cream, or restaurant you know of)
2. One that tastes worse
My critique is with this flawed concept of "discipline" which to my mind translates to "forcing yourself" aka "lying to yourself for as long as possible"
I understand what you are saying and acknowledge there is a lot of truth in it. I think though that your binary selection is too limiting that I'll describe with an example.
In 2013 I had my routine annual physical and discovered that my triglycerides were about 250. Not crazy high but it made me concerned enough to do something about it. I stopped eating obvious refined sugar completely. I say that very specifically - for example, if there was refined sugar in bread I didn't care about it. But I stopped my once-per-day soda habit, stopped eating dessert, candy, etc.
One year later my triglycerides were 113. Ten years later, I have not had a single soda. So I think at least one option you may have not considered is what I refer to as the "change your mindset" option. Consider an oversimplified list of options before us on the topic of dietary choices:
1. I will indulge my sweet tooth
2. I will deprive myself of sweets
3. I will change my mindset about sweets to "I don't eat that stuff."
#1 is unhealthy. #2 (and I think this is your point) is not sustainable. #3 is healthy and positively changed my life. I'm not on a diet. I don't need to exercise that willpower muscle for the next two weeks and then it's scarf city. I just don't eat that stuff.
And do you know what happened? I had two weeks of terrible cravings for soda and candy. It felt like a mild form of withdrawal. Then I just stopped caring about it. And fruit tasted sweeter. Everything tasted better - it was almost like a taste bud reset.
I've experienced similar things with non-diet things as well.
> MARIA, A WORKING MOTHER of three young children, reaches the end of her day with lots left to do. […] She plans carefully, but kids’ illness, changes at the day care, and both her and her husband’s travel for work always seem to necessitate change in her plans and delays on some tasks.
> These examples in Maria’s life should not be seen as procrastination
Then 3 pages later
> Everyone procrastinates. I believe this, and research has documented this in a number of different ways. In fact, I think that people who say that they have never procrastinated might also say that they have never told a lie or been rude to someone.
hhmm…So, where does poor Maria fall into this ? And should the real lesson be, that the ultimate solution to procrastination is to become a working parent of 3 children ?
I still skimmed most of the book, and it feels like it’s pointed at people that either aren’t actually convinced they should be doing some tasks, and/or can actually get by not doing them for a very long time without much actual consequences (there’s a passage about participants waiting for a week to do a report. If they have such leeway, I’m not sure why it matters they do it earlier than later…)
I see this as being in agreement with what the OP is saying. This study more or less says that people intrinsically have motivation, not discipline. Hence, as the OP says, a need to cultivate discipline.
Also, saying “science calls BS” is incredibly reductionist. Science can say whatever it wants, but that doesn’t change that myself and many others engage in activities regularly that they do not enjoy to achieve ends that they value.
> Also, saying “science calls BS” is incredibly reductionist. Science can say whatever it wants, but that doesn’t change that myself and many others engage in activities regularly that they do not enjoy to achieve ends that they value.
That's fair. "Science might raise an eyebrow at this but it could still be wrong" may have been closer to the truth.
Probably difficult to actually study this as there are cultural aspects. Most people haven't a particularly well-cultivated sense of discipline because they've grown up in a culture where this is seen as negative.
You're seen as boring or even wasting your life if you don't indulge your impulses frequently enough. Missing out on having fun is seen as a very bad thing.
For myself, it is when I enjoy the tedious aspects of some work, I know I could do it as a job. There are always tedious aspects, and when it appeals to some inner compulsiveness (for me, I guess other people like bossing others around, and are suited to that sort of job) then I know I will be able to do well with the totality.
Treating motivation and discipline as alternatives is a mistake. In fact you need both. Think about "getting stuff done" as a high-jump (or pole-vaulting) bar. Motivation increases your height and discipline lowers the bar. Some people need to jump higher even when the bar's already low. Some people are already jumping as high as they can and need the bar to be lower. Some people are in both states at different times, and recognizing which one you're in is an important life skill.
It's funny though because you only need a short amount of discipline. Because after you use discipline for a while, it just gets way easier as it becomes a habit. Reminds me of this great Bojack Horseman clip - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2_Mn-qRKjA
Years and years ago I started training seriously for a triathlon. Then a half ironman. Then a marathon, and after 2-3 years of having a few races a year on the calendar, I just started exercising every day. At the start, a lot of the days took discipline/motivation to get out the door. After a while, it was just a few days of discipline a week. Then a few days a month, then a few days a year. Now it's automatic, and something I actually look forward to rather than dread (obviously in a hard training cycle there are some sessions I dread, but it's almost like my brain turns off and my body subconsciously gets my stuff and gets me out the door).
For endurance sports I find it helps to put yourself on some kind of structured training plan leading up to each event. There are lots of free or cheap training plans available and any of them will work well enough for a casual age group athlete. This removes the daily decision making process and allows you to focus on execution.
This reminds me of the book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” (admittedly by the since somewhat disgraced for other reasons, Amy Chua) where the central argument is that by pushing children to continue doing something even (especially) when it gets hard, they will find confidence and fulfillment. Children need to “borrow” their parents’ discipline in the beginning until the flywheel starts moving in them and they develop their own discipline.
The author is not wrong. I would just like to add that motivation is akin to free discipline. A highly motivated person is hard to get them to stop. Highly motivated need discipline to stop. lol. So, if you can somehow hack yourself to become motivated, the discipline issue is solved, at least temporarily, until the motivation dies down. in which case you are back to discipline or another dose of motivation.
It seems there are two different uses of the word motivation. One is more fleeting - oh wow, I really feel like waking early and jamming out the rest of this code in my head - and one is more long lasting, my god I don’t know if I can read this story once again, but I am really committed to helping this small human grow up and become a kind and intelligent member of society, so reading it is something I am ready and willing to do, again and again.
The longer term motivation, having a big picture in which your work, fun and dull, is understood to be important and useful, makes both discipline and ephemeral motivation a lot easier to come by.
This operates at many scales - I may try very hard to please a difficult boss, both for the pleasure of approval and as a sort of technical self-challenge exercise (not as a substitute for finding a better boss, but to make the wait more pleasant). Overall, I find my life most fulfilling when it is dedicated to the well being of things larger than just my self, family, society, profession, species, the general goodness of existence.
Other people have long term goals of success or power, and from that desire can spring an impressive amount of discipline and motivation.
If you have to hammer yourself down to get thru your tasks, you might want to think about how a change would be possible.
To me those are good skills, but at the end of the day the important thing is to work in a way in which after going through a project (or after getting some rest in between projects), you have as much or more energy that before starting the project.
Discipline can be fine for 3 or 6 months to finish a very tough deadline, but if you go through 5 years of discipline where every day you are more tired that the previous day the quality of the work will suffer a lot.
Discipline is merely the embrace of long term goals for which the expected reward is delayed, and at the expense of short term desires. Motivation still comes first. You can't discipline yourself if you aren't motivated to do so. You can't do anything if you aren't motivated to do so.
This is why activities that constantly motivate you are easier to do. Eg video games or sports (physical activity). They give you rewards while you're doing them, so you keep doing them. Starting them is hard, but it's easy to keep them going.
Exactly my thought. The author doesn't understand what motivation is.
From the article:
> By contrast, discipline is like an engine that, once kickstarted, actually supplies energy to the system.
That's literally how motivation works. Discipline is just a cultural framing of it of things like motivation and rigor.
The thing is that yes, cultivating habits or even just _small_ goals and wins can snowball into you getting more and more disciplined. I know this from first hand experience having suffered depression and severe motivation issues. The only way out is to start with small goals and celebrating your tiny seemingly pathetic achievements.
If I'm allowed to play armchair psychologist, I think this article might just be that. A celebration of having built habits and getting more motivated. Call it discipline because that sounds stronger. If that's true: Great! I congratulate OP. It's hard and it _should_ be celebrated.
I agree with this. Motivation is the why you might want to do something, and discipline is part of the how you get that something done.
Clinical depression, a not uncommon issue, is characterized by having no motivation to do anything, and discipline won't help much in that situation.
Also, one's state of mind can be managed by discipline if one is motivated to do so - for example, I have a ~20-min routine to get into the proper frame of mind for writing or coding, which basically is a bit of cleaning up the workspace, a bit of breathing exercises, a bit of physical exercise, quick shower/brush teeth/etc if needed, then I can work for a few hours in a focused positive state of mind. Discipline means initiating that whole process on a regular schedule.
This sounds like the same people who claim that willpower is not affected by stress. I think that is the elephant in the room. So many people are very stressed by their lives and this leaves little room for "optional" things they know they should be / want to be doing.
I feel as if self-discipline is one of the most important of my attributes.
It's worked out well for me.
This is especially true, if I want to ship software, as opposed to just writing it.
Shipping requires a hell of a lot of "not-fun" stuff. Discipline ensures that it gets done.
Also, things like localization, accessibility, and anomaly management are things that often get left on the shelf. They are usually a complete bitch to retrofit, but not such a big deal, to add, at first.
"Winners do what they have to do. Losers do what they want to do."
I stopped reading at "I AM SO PASSIONATE ABOUT THESE SPREADSHEETS" because as an engineer by training, I find spending hours debating and crafting Office documents with equally very senior people who can go to almost extreme lengths to avoid saying "I don't know" (how to deal with an issue, or sometimes, even, how to change font formatting) to be soul-crushing and utterly abhor the fact that they seem to take up most of your time as your career progresses.
I do agree about making chores routine work, though. After a while your brain starts being able to do things in parallel and you breeze through the annoyances while pondering actually interesting things--the only caveat is that in a chaotic organization it becomes really hard to establish a routine, and thus all the habit forming effort you put into work may be widely off the mark.
So if you are having trouble with motivation _and_ discipline, the problem may not actually lie with you (alone).
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 252 ms ] threadI cannot believe how long I was going on listlessly, unknowing that my laziness was a side effect of health issues.
With my symptoms and ultrasound report, I was a candidate for removal. Two years after the described episode I had it removed. I opted out of pathology and let the surgeon open up the gallbladder and report to me. He found no polyp! It was full of stones. They varied in size from a grain of sand to 7mm. The ultrasound technician was correct in their assessment of the image, however, the image was misleading.
Every one of my siblings and my mother have suffered for years without any of the typically significant acute symptoms of cholecystitis. One of my brothers suffers occasionally like I did, but every single test for gallbladder issues comes back negative. Anecdotally, I ran into a person who had all tests show negative gallbladder issues, yet had it removed to see if it helped. It cured her bowel issues.
Prior to my knowing what the issues were(20 years), here are the symptoms I can 100% associate with my gallbladder problem. Walking up stairs caused increased heart rate and fatigue after smoking a cigarette. Occasional slight queasiness after eating meals(they must have been high in fat). Rare episodes of fever, nausea, bowel discomfort after a meal that I wrote off as food poisoning or altitude sickness in one instance. General malaise.
My mother and I both were very aware of some of our symptoms, but it was incredibly easy to associate them with other things we had come in contact with. Mold and fragrances are two that come to mind. When I was eating "healthy" I noticed significant improvements in my energy. At the time I didn't realize the "healthy" eating I was doing was low fat. That low fat was reducing inflammation in my gallbladder allowing me to get proper rest. Not eating dairy(maternal genes as well) is reducing inflammation in my gut, allowing me to get proper rest.
Good luck and godspeed!
My mother and I both have sensitive skin, she had her gallbladder removed. I've lived with overly sensitive skin for most of my life, but never thought it could be gallbladder related.
The week before my diagnosis and severe attack, I was eating a fatty diet. I was at the office and noticed my stomach feeling slightly queasy. I had just that week brought a box of fridge magnets into the room I work in. This was the first time I had a box of them around me. I could smell the off gassing. I assumed this was the problem, since that was the new thing around me. I removed them and seemingly had relief, until the attack. Placebo...
Ten years ago I would visit my parents house and eat fatty meals. I usually had a slight queasiness when I was there. I did not like going to their place. My subconscious mind had taken the queasy feeling and turned it into disdain. They had mold issues. I blew it off as a reaction to that. I know for certain some molds cause a reaction in me, but it is just puffy eyes in the morning after sleeping in a moldy/mildewy place.
I went to Denver and did some hiking in the mountains. After eating a meal in town, I was quite sick. It felt much like a cold/flu without the respiratory symptoms. I blew it off as altitude sickness. I am not a doctor...
My mother has similar stories. Her first bought she associated with a cat that was in our basement. The cat was gone and her problems persisted. She then began to associate her symptoms with mold. The mold was removed and her problems persisted. She then began to blame it on gut bacteria imbalance triggered by her breast cancer and or treatment of. In the end, she had her gallbladder removed in the E.R. after a stone was lodged in her bile duct. She sleeps great and has more energy than she has had in decades.
These atypical symptoms are not easy for a person to diagnose intuitively. Erroneous associations were easy because our diets are not consistent and the symptoms were not immediate or as severe as something like a broken bone.
As far as sensitive skin is concerned. Laundry detergent and soaps come to mind as irritants. I get spots and itches from dairy.
The most important question is how you associate the symptoms with gallbladder. Is it based on your experience before and after?
There really is no alternative. The gallbladder is not necessary and when any issues arrive, it is generally removed. I did a lot of reading on that. I could not find any medicinal or herbal alternatives to break up stones.
> I'm curious about other symptoms
It is possible my sense of smell was affected. The days after the removal, I noticed I was smelling things that I had never noticed before. This is still happening a year later. The anesthetics used may have caused this though. One symptom that may have been gallbladder was what I thought was hypoglycemia. I had not been diagnosed, but between meals I frequently would get some slight weakness/anxiety and somewhat trembly. I would go into detail about my sleep pattern, but it was so sporadic toward the end and spinal issues contributed to it as well. Throughout the years though I had trouble getting to bed at a decent time. This was not as significant when I was eating "healthy". I did not notice it correlating to my eating at the time.
> whether other members of your family have had similar procedures
My mother found the source of her similar and more pronounced issues about a year after I had mine diagnosed. She had many similar issues for about the same amount of time. She ended up in the emergency room with a gallstone in her bile duct that had to be removed via endoscope once they got the inflammation down. Many people die from bile stones every year. My two brothers are toughing it out.
> Why did it take 2 years to have it removed
I was eating a very very low fat diet at first and managing fairly well. I was also trying to save money for surgery. As time went on, I could barely function and was going to get it removed no matter what the cost.
> What was the recovery like
The surgery was uneventful. I popped right out of sedation. I attribute this to my body's reaction to the scopolamine patch administered right before surgery. It is used to prevent vomiting. One of the potential side effects is tachycardia. I was wide awake and full of energy from 1pm(after surgery) to 11pm. My family was dumbfounded. When I tried to sleep, I couldn't. I began to realize this was abnormal and removed the patch to see if that would help. Thirty minutes later I was asleep. I was able to sit stand and lay the first night, being careful when changing position not to cause a hernia. The second and third day, if I recall correctly, were the most painful. This was only while laying flat on my back though. In a more upright position I managed to sleep fine. I understand a little now what it must be like to receive a penetrating wound.
The surgery was on a Thursday. I was back at the office the following Tuesday. The small incisions(4) occasionally gave me pain and I was afraid I might cause a hernia for about 3-4 weeks. I still feel a slight tingle/itch at two of the sites. I also still feel very mild pain from my non existent gallbladder when I am really hungry or when I have eaten too much oil/fat.
> The most important question is how you associate the symptoms with gallbladder
I knew the typical symptoms of cholecystitis from reading long before I associated it with my own symptoms. My father had typical symptoms and had his removed when he was about 26. He ate fast food and fatty food almost exclusively! My symptoms were atypical. Only in hindsight am I able to pinpoint some of them. I had one typical symptom, but it was not there during my acute attacks, which I described in my earlier comment here. I had so many symptoms that were gradual as I grew older or not severe enough for me to think it was abnormal. I had no idea how bad I was. (I may have misinterpreted your point in this response.)
> Is it based on your experience before and after?
Almost exclusively. My "food poisoning" episodes were, retrospectively, clearly my gallbladder. It was very easy to associate these to the gallbladder once ...
Some days I feel "normal" but some days I have 0 motivation at all. Not sure if that's a normal pattern or not but its frustrating to deal with.
Might be worth talking to a Dr about but not sure what they would even do or say.
I did a lot of this over the past week. Week before was pretty bad. There is definitely truth to this :)
YMMV, of course.
Nail the building blocks.
Nutrition.
Sleep.
It will all fall into place, instead of having to beat yourself into submission to be “disciplined”.
Just a note that my completion rate and tolerance to grit increase dramatically when I had a good sleep, which is very very rare nowadays.
Motivation on its own is almost useless. As a saying goes (don't remember the author), you need to be boring and predictable in day to day life so that you can be wild and unpredictable in work.
I think everyone likes to talk about motivation, because we all want the calm mania like flow state that effortlessly provides willpower over obstacles that would otherwise frustrate a disciplined person.
When I was younger I used to worry about having the right goals to work towards. Now I consider it more important to be moving towards something. You eat an elephant in small bites.
And by “start small” I mean “floss one tooth per night for 3 months to build a flossing habit” small. Let your good habits progressively and slowly consume more time, similar to what bad habits do.
For all intents and purposes you should just assume both discipline and motivation are completely mythical and you should construct a system of high-leverage habits to obviate the need for them. You don’t rise to the level of your talents/motivation/discipline, you fall to the level of your habits.
I've had months where I go to the gym and then something happens and its easy to not go. There's nothing on this earth stopping me from picking that back up, other than myself... which reminds me, I need to start going again. Crazy thing is you _know_ you'll feel better but getting up and going can be a drag sometimes.
Yeah, that’s because most of your agency is hooked up to the monkey brain. You’re not really fighting anything, your apparent incentives just don’t drive you to go.
- https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/dp/0...
Here’s a link to the Tiny Habits book:
- https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07LC9KDP5/
And related Tiny Habits website:
- https://tinyhabits.com/
I'm trying to decide whether to purchase "Tiny Habits" and the blurb on the seller's page is nice, but somewhat generic.
- https://www.google.com/search?q=%22tiny+Habits%22+vs+%22atom...
Which produces comparisons like this:
- https://www.tobysinclair.com/post/tiny-habits-vs-atomic-habi...
TLDR: Atomic Habits focus more on systems design. Tiny Habits is focused more on designs a habit.
Free ebook linked to on page above above provides more information:
https://67d4e809-d682-43a5-b820-b52f25a5db57.usrfiles.com/ug...
The format follows what I’ve seen called as the English Essay style (as opposed to European style) – you start with a personal story, yours or a character’s. You use that story as a narrative device to make your point. The character works as a sort of template of the reader. For books, using multiple stories – up to 2 per chapter - works best. Weaving the character stories in and out throughout the book creates a sense of continuity and makes it easier for people to follow.
Whenever you want to make a point, you show the point or at least the situation with a character story. Real stories work best. You also lay out the point explicitly. The reader should never be made to guess. Setting it up as a punchline works, but use this sparingly because, again, readers don’t like to guess.
The whole book should have one, at most two, key points you want to make. It should be reducible to a pithy tweet. The rest of the book is there to make the point sink in for the reader.
The difference between making a point and conveying a point is crucial here.
I have yet to write a bestseller so I am likely missing some ingredients. This format applied to blogs/emails has worked great. People love it.
https://www.stevefenton.co.uk/blog/2022/09/the-difference-be...
If you’re aware of other notable examples, would be interested in links to them.
As for my guess, it’s at a best seller format, it’s 100s of tiny chapters, which makes the readers feel like they’re rapidly discovering new information.
While I am unable to recall the name of the book, recall a book on chaining hacking exploits that walks through a a fictional story while weaving in technical details.
Another example would be this book:
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Why%27s_(poignant)_Guide_to_Ruby
IIRC Atomic was still making things too “big,” i.e. the habit should be so small it fetches accusations of insanity by bystanders and your celebration, accordingly, can be ridiculously small too (just physically smiling induces a tiny reward, which is all that’s necessary for a sufficiently small preceding habit).
Also he allows the option of “time and place” to trigger habits which IMO is very bad advice. 100% of new habits should be placed directly behind an already-established habit, and specifically one that’s already resilient to variations in time-and-place. Takes a while to think of these habits (because they’re truly automatic) but you already have at least a dozen and identifying them is half the trick.
A habit tracker helps (I drop plastic jewels in a coffee mug with a satisfying clunk).
You can sign-up up to a free 30-day e-mail newsletter course from the author if not ready to buy the book.
Having a routine though, even a very flexible routine, has been very effective. Things become automatic. Settling into an effective routing often involves not worrying too much about discipline, though. It's easier for people to get to the gym everyday if the goal is "get to the gym, and do something" than it is if the goal is "get to the gym and do a rigorous 2 hour workout." Small steps and environmental changes, as well as not stressing over what's optimal, have been the most effective approaches in my experience.
One of them which sticks with me is about fighting addictions and habits - every time you win this internal fight (go do something unwanted, don't light up that cigarette or drink alcohol) you get a bit stronger and addiction gets slightly weaker. Same for habits and defeating procrastination.
The hardest part is the first step, when opposite side (in your own persona) is strongest and it feels its too high a mountain to overcome. With addictions you never chip it away to 0 - that's the unfortunate cold hard truth, but you can chip it away into something you can manage continuously. Good habits are often self-fueling after crossing some threshold, ie exercise and eating healthy.
I do make an exception with all of that when all the pub science guys shit on religion though. Can't seem to get enough of that even though I'm out of my angsty atheist teenager phase by 20 years
These folks need to feel popular and build a brand and its really hard to just stick with one thing, as it limits your audience, so you grow in to other venues.
Telling people what they want to hear in a nice package that makes them feel smart is a business as old as time. Oprah built a whole empire off of it. The internet has just widened the reach.
Have you spent any time wondering how those people knew this was coming years ago, but you didn't see it?
They just didn't care to spend more brainpower on the issue than they already had. Most people have better things to do than be the most well-informed voter or investigate the history of the people they see on YouTube.
After taking my ADHD medication, building and maintaining these habits ranges from easy to effortless.
Without it or after it runs out... IF I remember... it ranges from seemingly impossible to very hard.
I have been medicated for a year now, and the common advice of "just do 5 minutes and nothing more" to get myself started now actually works. I still hate doing chores (I am procrastinating rn because my flat needs some cleaning), but if I start, you better believe they will get done and I might do a little more just because now I have dopamine to tell me "this is good stuff you're doing, carry on", whereas before I was fighting every second the urge to just leave the thing halfway and go do something else. Life was hard.
I'm on lisdexamfetamine FWIW.
EDIT: the dopaminergic system is exactly how you form habits. When taking amphetamines, you have more dopamine, thus habits are much easier to create. Both the good and the bad ones. You just have to fight against the lifelong learned helplessness that effort is not worth it. That takes a long while to rewire. Ok, time to close HN and clean my flat.
As some comments above mentioned everyone is affected differently. I have been on adderall for well over a decade, and constantly for the past 5-6 years in which I formed habits and routines that never stuck when I would go off and on due to hating the 'blunting' effect I felt it had on my creativity and personality.
So a couple months ago when I couldn't find them in stock anywhere I figured no big deal, I could keep doing what I was doing and maybe I was using the meds as a crutch anyhow. I was hoping I would get my old 'fun' personally back to go along with my new older-wiser-mature-self that had good work habits and routines. It's been such a complete disaster I had to ask my doctor to lower my dose because that was the only strength one pharmacy had left out of over 20 stores I called, and had them search other branches. Now I have to choose which days to take them because I have to take twice as many to get the workable dose. It sucks.
You have much more experience than me, but I believe with stimulants too low a dose is much better than too high a dose. During titration I tried the dosage immediately after and I was a machine, both in productive output and in emotional bluntness. I could've reached my full potential but honestly, it's not worth it.
Now I feel with good diet, good sleep and a little exercise I'm operating at 70% of my capacity, while the rest of my life I was running at 20%. This is good enough for me. When I'm off the meds I can see only negatives: hungry, horny, restless, bored, anxious. Perhaps a little more lighthearted, to be honest.
My problem taking a smaller dose is that it puts me to sleep. I sometimes split my original dose to use as a sleep aid because I get great sleep on it. Falling asleep on adderall was not fun to tell my doc or the pharmacist when I first started on adderall. I was recommended for more screening. It still makes me tired for 10-15mins as the first dose kicks in.
Lighthearted is a good word to describe the differences I feel as well. Though I am quite hyperactive, maybe they are related--bouncy and lighthearted off and matching the calm of the Vulcans on them.
I have a note titled "ADHD med cleaning spree" where nearly immediately after taking meds I start to realize how messy my surroundings are and just start cleaning because quite magically, cleaning is now just cleaning.
Try pinning your habit forming to 10m after taking meds or whenever you feel it activate.
I vet what you mean though... sometimes it's like a firehouse of focus you can't direct.
On the them I am motivated but cannot prioritize tasks to save my life
Feeling like you’ve got control when it doesn’t actually produce a different or better outcome is a seductive delusion, no?
Executive dysfunction is a symptom of more than just ADHD
Psychiatry and psychology, in my experience, are both just a game of pin the tail on the condition -- simple, vague heuristics are used to diagnose conditions based on patient interviews.
I have ADHD, and during the diagnostic process, I never had a sleep study, any bloodwork drawn, scans, etc.. Could it have been something else? Not like I will ever know.
What's the old say that doctors commonly tote? "When you hear hoof beats, don't look for zebras when there are horses in the room."
It's so damaging because sometimes one needs to be looking for "zebras."
But more importantly, you'll need to work on your assessment of "invariably". If you think all efforts are predestined to fail, they will. Get help if you can't do it alone.
I get so tired of popular wisdom that assumes that all people experience life in essentially the same way, and that the 'recipe for success' should be universal. "Discipline" is a nonsense word to the folks with executive dysfunction, you might as well tell us that the key to personal success is learning how to fly. Everyone else is doing it, so it must be easy - you just need to try harder!
I have always thought that there are some "normal motivators" that are not commonly known.
for example, there are tasks I get done when procrastinating a higher-importance task.
(like getting cleaning done while procrastinating a term paper)
This isn't easy, but sometimes it works for me. One of the tricks is making sure it really is productive. For example, I work from home so picking up around the house or doing dishes can actually be very productive/helpful for me, but I've definitely found myself bogged down in mindless tasks that didn't really move the needle.
The medication does wonders for my physical symptoms of hyperactivity, which is justification enough to take them in my opinion.
However, something I have started to learn about stimulant medications are what I consider its true dangers. It's not necessarily dangerous for one's health, at least at therapeutic dosages, but rather it's extremely easy to become overly reliant on these medications, and if/when you stop taking them, lose access to them, etc. then life tends to sucker punch you back into reality -- a life where you can no longer maintain everything you were able to do, but yet the expectations are still as if you are firing on all cylinders.
I feel like I am living out the plot of Flowers for Algernon, and honestly, it's somewhat bothersome to me.
Are you talking about issues accessing medication? If so, I completely agree. The system is rather difficult and unforgiving to navigate -- that alone makes deters many from even attempting to get treatment, and I do not blame them one bit.
I take IR instead of XR, and I am about to be in a similar boat as you.
How bad is the process of going cold-turkey? How long does the Hell that I am in for last? I have serious concerns for keeping my current job without access to medication, but part of me wants to know if I am just being overly anxious and hyperbolic, or if I am actually am screwed.
I think it varies wildly from person to person. When I've quit stimulants in the past it was really just a week or two before I was close to what felt like my baseline. The hardest part for me was the daytime sleepiness.
Then slight depression at confronting how much harder things were to do a few more days.
Back to normal in 7-10 days.
Like when there are shortages? lol
I agree, but it can help to make sure you focus on establishing habits while medicated.
I found that I can retain at least some of the habits after being off medication, though there is extra difficulty.
They fail to adress documented disorders, like ADHD. And also the fact that a huge chunk of the population had its dopaminergic system completely hijacked by artificial stimulants, ranging from food, drugs, social media, etc.
They're so superficial that their answer would be: "you can circumvent your dopaminergic mess with discipline."
And by “start small” I mean “floss one tooth per night for 3 months to build a flossing habit” small...
The idea of doing something every day in a row for 3 months causes me pain and revulsion. If I think about it a bit longer, I I know I would get mad at myself for missing a day, and would get really mad at myself for forgetting for 2 years, and I'm already jumping the gun at trying to avoid setting myself up for failure. I floss my teeth when they feel dirty, anything else seems unsustainable. But maybe that's why I don't have motivation or discipline.
What purpose do you think getting mad at yourself serves?
A very common mistake is to procrastinate doing something until you feel motivated. Our minds often doesn't work that way.
But if you start the task without any motivation, or expectation it will get done, you'll often find yourself motivated and making progress within minutes.
In reality, once you put some effort in, that can make you motivated.
Having said that...I'm not diagnosed as ADHD but I definitely feel I exhibit executive dysfunction symptoms, and one of my siblings was diagnosed, so I'm feeling confident I'm ADHD adjacent at least...and just trying to implement Getting Things Done helped me immensely. Not only does it help with having a less stressful day (no longer do I have "what am I missing? what am I forgetting? Ahhh, angst!" feelings), it also helps me to just stay on task and/or when I switch tasks, know that I have the confidence to come back to wherever I was.
My question, though, is how does a good habit expand into a great habit, without motivation? For your tooth example, once you start flossing you might as well floss all your teeth. The upfront cost of getting started with the floss is the worst part of it, but once you're there it's easy. This isn't true for all habits though. For many it's easy to just bail out fast. If I started doing 5 push-ups a day will I eventually do 100 and then 1000? Or would I settle somewhere on a mediocre range because it's easy to stop? Is there some sort of recursion or positive feedback loop that kicks in that rescues me from mediocrity if all I have is discipline and not motivation?
The key was to make it a habit I do every day, like brushing my teeth. If I've had a bad day and miss doing my "workout routine" (such that it is, I'm no Arnold), it feels weird to miss one and I look forward to doing it the next day. So in that way once you've made it to a certain point it's self-fulfilling.
You can swap the terms as well, there are exercises or tasks that you start enjoying with time, repetition and experience
The difficulty here is primarily in initiating the task consistently imo. Once you are already at the point of flossing one tooth there likely isn’t much mental resistance to flossing the others. I think it’s better to do things that lower the resistance to starting the task in the first place as opposed to just making the task smaller.
If "floss one tooth" is still too much, go smaller: "take my floss out of the drawer and put it on the counter."
As far as knowing to initiate the habit, place it directly behind an already established habit. Flossing is easy since you probably brush your teeth regularly.
Simple as that.
Of course this is just the regime that helped me build 4 or 5 brand new daily habits in under two years, all of which I had tried and failed several times before. YMMV.
"The enemy's gate is /down/!" (downward) [1]
That is, orientate yourself such that where you want to go is as easy/automatic as falling.
[1] Ender's Game, and the Ender's Shadow sequence. Though, I wish the catchphrase had used "downward" rather than "down", as the latter is confusingly similar to "has fallen / is breached".
[Edit: s/r'r Shadow/r's Shadow]
If the day-to-day isn't fun, it'll never get done.
That's why I always want to learn on work instead of opening all those projects without finishing any. Sadly most companies don't agree with me :) They always want to hire experienced players. Can't blame them though.
That's an extreme watering down of a complex topic. Essentially the study you link is saying that PIC (Positive, Immediate, Certain) outcomes are stronger than PDU (Positive, Delayed, Uncertain) outcomes.
Well, of course. Taking the inverse - a NIC (Negative, Immediate, Certain) outcome of putting your hand on a hot stove will quickly teach you to not put your hand on the stove. Compare this to cheating a bit on your taxes where the consequence is NDU (Negative, Delayed, Uncertain).
Beyond that, I disagree with your premise that something must be immediately fun for it to get done. There is a lot of literature on this - I recommend highly, "Solving the Procrastination Puzzle".
Fair point.
A person can force themselves... until they break.
So in that sense it needn't be fun as long as you can finish the task before the breaking point.
But there's a threshold beyond which the person cannot sustain the behavior.
Because it's a form of consistent lying to oneself.
A person's brain, on a moment-to-moment basis is trying to pick the 'optimal' choice. The 'optimal' is: most pleasure, least pain.
If the most pleasure, least pain option is beneficial to you in the long-run, the "game" that we play of trying to convince ourselves to do something else disappears.
Which diet will win in the long run:
1. One that tastes better than all available options (including any takeout, or delivery, ice cream, or restaurant you know of)
2. One that tastes worse
My critique is with this flawed concept of "discipline" which to my mind translates to "forcing yourself" aka "lying to yourself for as long as possible"
I understand what you are saying and acknowledge there is a lot of truth in it. I think though that your binary selection is too limiting that I'll describe with an example.
In 2013 I had my routine annual physical and discovered that my triglycerides were about 250. Not crazy high but it made me concerned enough to do something about it. I stopped eating obvious refined sugar completely. I say that very specifically - for example, if there was refined sugar in bread I didn't care about it. But I stopped my once-per-day soda habit, stopped eating dessert, candy, etc.
One year later my triglycerides were 113. Ten years later, I have not had a single soda. So I think at least one option you may have not considered is what I refer to as the "change your mindset" option. Consider an oversimplified list of options before us on the topic of dietary choices:
1. I will indulge my sweet tooth
2. I will deprive myself of sweets
3. I will change my mindset about sweets to "I don't eat that stuff."
#1 is unhealthy. #2 (and I think this is your point) is not sustainable. #3 is healthy and positively changed my life. I'm not on a diet. I don't need to exercise that willpower muscle for the next two weeks and then it's scarf city. I just don't eat that stuff.
And do you know what happened? I had two weeks of terrible cravings for soda and candy. It felt like a mild form of withdrawal. Then I just stopped caring about it. And fruit tasted sweeter. Everything tasted better - it was almost like a taste bud reset.
I've experienced similar things with non-diet things as well.
Looking at the book preview here: https://pdfroom.com/books/solving-the-procrastination-puzzle...
> MARIA, A WORKING MOTHER of three young children, reaches the end of her day with lots left to do. […] She plans carefully, but kids’ illness, changes at the day care, and both her and her husband’s travel for work always seem to necessitate change in her plans and delays on some tasks.
> These examples in Maria’s life should not be seen as procrastination
Then 3 pages later
> Everyone procrastinates. I believe this, and research has documented this in a number of different ways. In fact, I think that people who say that they have never procrastinated might also say that they have never told a lie or been rude to someone.
hhmm…So, where does poor Maria fall into this ? And should the real lesson be, that the ultimate solution to procrastination is to become a working parent of 3 children ?
I still skimmed most of the book, and it feels like it’s pointed at people that either aren’t actually convinced they should be doing some tasks, and/or can actually get by not doing them for a very long time without much actual consequences (there’s a passage about participants waiting for a week to do a report. If they have such leeway, I’m not sure why it matters they do it earlier than later…)
Discipline is what made you not fail. One can be motivated and still fail.
Having fun is the best motivation still.
A different way to put it: we all have our kinks and weird feedback loops.
Also, saying “science calls BS” is incredibly reductionist. Science can say whatever it wants, but that doesn’t change that myself and many others engage in activities regularly that they do not enjoy to achieve ends that they value.
That's fair. "Science might raise an eyebrow at this but it could still be wrong" may have been closer to the truth.
You're seen as boring or even wasting your life if you don't indulge your impulses frequently enough. Missing out on having fun is seen as a very bad thing.
Years and years ago I started training seriously for a triathlon. Then a half ironman. Then a marathon, and after 2-3 years of having a few races a year on the calendar, I just started exercising every day. At the start, a lot of the days took discipline/motivation to get out the door. After a while, it was just a few days of discipline a week. Then a few days a month, then a few days a year. Now it's automatic, and something I actually look forward to rather than dread (obviously in a hard training cycle there are some sessions I dread, but it's almost like my brain turns off and my body subconsciously gets my stuff and gets me out the door).
The longer you do something the easier it is.
A good hack to bootstrap the dopamine cycle is to start your day with a small easy win, and snow ball from there
The longer term motivation, having a big picture in which your work, fun and dull, is understood to be important and useful, makes both discipline and ephemeral motivation a lot easier to come by.
This operates at many scales - I may try very hard to please a difficult boss, both for the pleasure of approval and as a sort of technical self-challenge exercise (not as a substitute for finding a better boss, but to make the wait more pleasant). Overall, I find my life most fulfilling when it is dedicated to the well being of things larger than just my self, family, society, profession, species, the general goodness of existence.
Other people have long term goals of success or power, and from that desire can spring an impressive amount of discipline and motivation.
If you have to hammer yourself down to get thru your tasks, you might want to think about how a change would be possible.
Edit: D'oh, is dated, apologies. In any case, should have date in HN title.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8976451
Discipline can be fine for 3 or 6 months to finish a very tough deadline, but if you go through 5 years of discipline where every day you are more tired that the previous day the quality of the work will suffer a lot.
Isn't this already plainly obvious to literally everyone?
From the article:
> By contrast, discipline is like an engine that, once kickstarted, actually supplies energy to the system.
That's literally how motivation works. Discipline is just a cultural framing of it of things like motivation and rigor.
The thing is that yes, cultivating habits or even just _small_ goals and wins can snowball into you getting more and more disciplined. I know this from first hand experience having suffered depression and severe motivation issues. The only way out is to start with small goals and celebrating your tiny seemingly pathetic achievements.
If I'm allowed to play armchair psychologist, I think this article might just be that. A celebration of having built habits and getting more motivated. Call it discipline because that sounds stronger. If that's true: Great! I congratulate OP. It's hard and it _should_ be celebrated.
Clinical depression, a not uncommon issue, is characterized by having no motivation to do anything, and discipline won't help much in that situation.
Also, one's state of mind can be managed by discipline if one is motivated to do so - for example, I have a ~20-min routine to get into the proper frame of mind for writing or coding, which basically is a bit of cleaning up the workspace, a bit of breathing exercises, a bit of physical exercise, quick shower/brush teeth/etc if needed, then I can work for a few hours in a focused positive state of mind. Discipline means initiating that whole process on a regular schedule.
It's worked out well for me.
This is especially true, if I want to ship software, as opposed to just writing it.
Shipping requires a hell of a lot of "not-fun" stuff. Discipline ensures that it gets done.
Also, things like localization, accessibility, and anomaly management are things that often get left on the shelf. They are usually a complete bitch to retrofit, but not such a big deal, to add, at first.
"Winners do what they have to do. Losers do what they want to do."
- Unknown
I do agree about making chores routine work, though. After a while your brain starts being able to do things in parallel and you breeze through the annoyances while pondering actually interesting things--the only caveat is that in a chaotic organization it becomes really hard to establish a routine, and thus all the habit forming effort you put into work may be widely off the mark.
So if you are having trouble with motivation _and_ discipline, the problem may not actually lie with you (alone).
I still think that without motivation, one doesn't do any thing.
Discipline is simply how people reach the goal targeted by the initial spurt of motivation.
It only works if by discipline, people are able to reach intermediary steps toward their goals whoch further motivates them to keep going.
Th rest is pain tolerance, patience, certainty of results etc...