Formula for healthy self-discipline
This article by Dr Piotr Wozniak is part of SuperMemo Guru series on memory, learning, creativity, and problem solving.
Definition
Self-discipline, self-control or grit is the ability to rationally control one's actions in face of adversity. Understanding self-discipline is essential for high productivity and for health. Poor self-discipline is one of the main reasons of low productivity. At the same time, poor understanding of self-discipline may lead to unhealthy lifestyles. In the discipline of the mind and the body, best outcomes can be found in the goldilocks zone. In the ideal case, that optimum goldilocks zone should require minimal mental effort, and self-discipline should gradually become the pleasure of productivity.
Futile grit
Self-discipline is a uniquely human attribute. The emergence of the rational mind makes it possible to harness the emotional mind. In anatomical terms, the consciously-controlled executive has the ability to override control signals that originate in the reptilian brain. As a result, we may see extreme acts of self-control or self-sacrifice such as kamikaze.
For maximization of human productivity, self-discipline is extremely useful. However, these days, excessive self-control may be more of a problem than insufficient self-control. The reptilian brain plays an essential role in homeostasis and the control of behaviors necessary for survival. When self-discipline leads to a harmful override on that central physiological control, I use the term futile grit to separate it from a health ways of mind discipline.
Ever since the marshmallow experiment, we have extolled delayed gratification and self-discipline as quintessential tools of success. In the process, we have driven the value of will power to grotesquely harmful levels. It is true that kids who show good self-control are likely to be successful in life (see: The error of the marshmallow test). However, if we attempt to train what comes naturally, we may arrive at futile grit, i.e. the ability to persist without the ability to detect the harm of persistence.
For a modern man, self-destructive training of futile grit may begin in the cradle. A child is made to sleep in her own bed without access to mother's breast. When she attempts to raise a protest, she is made to "cry it out" (the criminal Ferber method). First days of daycare are usually pretty traumatic for little children due to maternal separation. Modern societies, e.g. Sweden, turn this brutal act into a cultural necessity in which a child's health is sacrificed for the sake of poorly conceived "equality of sexes" or "female liberation". The ultimate training ground of futile grit comes with compulsory schooling. Children are trained in discipline and self-sacrifice for the sake of cramming. The employment of futile grit strips schooling of the right to be dignified as "learning".
To understand true free learning, read: Pleasure of learning. To see the difference between good learning and futile grit, read 50 bad habits learned at school. For some examples of futile grit see: Harms of self-discipline.
War of the networks
When we face a range of behavioral choices, we experience a degree of internal conflict. When we pick a product in a shop, and need to choose between brands, the pros and cons are weighed up in the brain. This is a natural process that usually leads to a prompt resolution.
When there is a conflict between the rational brain and the emotional brain, the degree of the clash between the networks may be far deeper. Some conflicts will lead to stress. If the stress is chronic, it may accelerate neuronal death. Resolving neural conflict with neural death is rarely a desired outcome. In early development, in competitive learning, in wiring the brain architecture, brutal battle of neurites and neurons is inevitable and necessary. However, chronic stress is a scourge of modern societies. A majority of people in rich western societies experience chronic stress on a regular basis. This is entirely unnecessary and avoidable. However, to avoid chronic stress we will need to see a cultural paradigm shift in which a distinction between self-discipline and futile grit is made clear and obvious to everyone. We would need to minimize daycare, maximize open behavioral spaces, minimize closed system socialization, end compulsory schooling, and, in the longer run, institute tools such as basic income that would free the productive potential of mankind.
When we discipline the mind with a micro-decision: "I will learn English now", we contribute to self-development. If we employ futile grit with a macro-blunder such as "I will study law because my dad will be proud", we hone futile grit and often set ourselves on an unhappy course in life in which the grit makes one declare "I am happy" without understanding the alternatives. For anyone in doubt, I recommend the concept of creative vacation or periods of farmer's lifestyle, as excellent tools of self-discovery.
War of the networks unfolds on an epidemic scale in the system of compulsory schooling. Over a decade, children are trained in futile grit, which can leave them damaged for life:
Figure: This is how school destroys the love of learning. Learn drive is the set of passions and interests that a child would like to pursue. School drive is the set of rewards and penalties set up by the school system. Learn drive leads to simple, mnemonic, coherent, stable and applicable memories due to the fact that the quality of knowledge determines the degree of reward in the learn drive system. School drive leads to complex, short-term memories vulnerable to interference due to the fact that schools serialize knowledge by curriculum (not by the neural mechanism of the learn drive). Competitive inhibition between the Learn drive and the School drive circuits will lead to the weakening of neural connections. Strong School drive will weaken the learn drive, destroy the passion for learning, and lead to learned helplessness. Powerful Learn drive will lead to rebellion that will protect intrinsic passions, but possibly will also lead to problems at school. Storing new knowledge under the influence of Learn drive is highly rewarding and carries no penalty (by definition of the learn drive). This will make the learn drive thrive leading to success in learning (and at school). In contrast, poor quality of knowledge induced by the pressures of the School drive will produce a weaker reward signal, and possibly a strong incoherence penalty. The penalty will feed back to produce reactance against the school drive, which will in turn require further coercive correction from the school system, which will in turn reduce the quality of knowledge further. Those feedback loops may lead to the dominance of one of the forces: the learn drive or the school drive. Thriving learn drive increases rebellion that increases defenses against the school drive. Similarly, increased penalization at school increases learned helplessness that weakens the learn drive and results in submission to the system. Sadly, in most cases, the control system settles in the middle of those two extremes (see: the old soup problem). Most children hate school, lose their love of learning, and still submit to the enslavement. Their best chance for recovery is the freedom of college, or better yet, the freedom of adulthood. See: Competitive feedback loops in binary decision making at neuronal level
Copyright note: you can republish this picture under a Creative Commons license with attribution to SuperMemo World, and a link to the updated version here
Optimum self-coercion
Self-discipline is a form of coercion on ourselves. It is the rational mind trying to coerce the emotional mind into submission. The problem with coercion is that it is not uniformly harmful. All forms of micro-coercion may lead to positive outcomes, in which the signal from the emotional brain may turn out suboptimum. A classical case is a micro-coercion in which a child is forced to read the first page of a book only to discover utter fascination with its contents. A micro-coercion may lead to a macro-pleasure of learning.
A more dramatic example is winter swimming. The health benefits of swimming in winter are immense. However, the natural response of the reptilian brain to cold water immersion is panic. All winter swimmers know that a tiny bit of self-discipline may lead to extreme euphoria in less than an hour. The reward is so immense that the brain may actually recondition itself to experiencing pleasure at the time when it should report pain, fear, or anxiety. At the very least, it is an anticipatory pleasure.
In learning, problem solving, and self-discipline, we may experience a small degree of coercion or displeasure that leads to improved learning, productivity, health, etc.
For details see: Optimum push zone.
Figure: Optimum push zone (in blue) is the range of external pressure that is likely to improve learning outcomes. If the pressure increases beyond the push zone, the learning outcomes decrease. At some point, instead of more learning, pressure will result in less learning (regress zone in black). Schooling results in increased tolerance for coercion via learned helplessness (in green). It also decreases the learning outcomes and increases the required level of coercion. Note the similarity of the coercion function to the hormesis function
Micro-rules of productivity
I know dozens of young men who leave school with a serious injury to their self-discipline and painful awareness of the resulting devastation in their productivity and growth potential. I was one of them too. The news is good. It is far better to feel lazy or inadequate. Schools may equally well result in learned helplessness in which the adult submits to the flow of life, battered by social forces, often in the state of depression. Less often, school may produce an individual with strong futile grit. This type of an individual will plod through adversities of life with clenched teeth, ready for self-destructive stamina that affects himself and his family. Almost never, the final outcome of schooling has a form of a happy, well-rounded and productive individual consumed with her passions. This rosy scenario is more frequent among unschoolers or school drop outs. The usual optimistic outcome of long years of schooling is a student who is painfully aware of her weaknesses and shortcomings. That student will hesitate between various options for college. He may wonder if college makes sense at all. He may feel a big craving for being his own man, but school provides little or no preparation for running one's own business. For this group of young smart brains with immense potential, the micro-rules of productivity are the best tested way towards strength and perpetual self-development.
Micro-rules are minor decisions that are easy to make, easy to execute, and which provide compound interest in productivity in the long run. A micro-rule may say: "as of today, I will read at least one page of a super-smart book till the end of my life". Micro-rules comply with the optimum push zone. They are easy enough to be harmless. They are easy enough to be executed on a regular basis. They provide a positive feedback that fortifies the rule. For example, it may take some effort to "force" one's mind to read a page of a book. However, if the choice of a book is good, chances are good that after 30-100 days, the reading will become a pleasure (pleasure of learning is an expression of the learn drive, which itself can be enhanced with learning). The positive feedback loop of micro-rules makes it possible to painlessly introduce self-coercion and gradually convert it into a pleasure of productivity.
For more details and my own story see: Micro-rules of productivity
Self-discipline in learning
There is no room for self-discipline in learning. The only efficient way to learn is to adhere to the Fundamental Law of Learning. It is possible that a dose of self-discipline may help initiate learning. For example, a young man engrossed in a Netflix movie may need a bit of self-coercion to get down to learning. However, if the learning process does not proceed spontaneously, if it is not based on the pleasure of learning, it will never live up to its maximum potential, esp. in reference to comprehension and knowledge coherence.
Compulsory schooling is the main obstacle on the way towards the ideal in which learning is purified of displeasure. After a mere 1-2 years of school, children lose their natural learn drive. At the age of 10-11, a typical student is no longer able to make progress on her own. She needs a push from a teacher or parents, she needs the whip of homework and grades. It is virtually impossible to be unaffected by coercion in learning. This loss of a passion for learning is alien to unschoolers and to students of democratic schools with the exception of those who landed in the world of free learning as a result of a conflict with the coercive school system.
Even the best students lose a degree of their love of learning as a result of schooling. My own passions for biology or chemistry were systematically battered at school. As a result, I needed self-discipline to set myself back on course. Thankfully, I never lost my love for learning. Without that love and appreciation, I would not even sit down to write down my micro-rules of productivity in August 1983 (aged 21). In 1984, I developed love for physics, mathematics and computers. Those short-lived passions were hit again when I started studying computer science. Only when I "invented" perfect schooling, I managed to spring back to life. After college, thanks to SuperMemo, and then thanks to incremental reading, I was able to truly understand what efficient learning means. This is why I preach freedom and the pleasure of learning. Compulsory schooling must end. Coercion in learning must end. Coercion and schooling destroy the love of learning and the ability of self-directed learning. Human brain is curious enough to learn all it needs in life, and more. It is a monumental historic mistake to push school on children. For similar reasons, we should ditch the myth that learning is based on grit or self-discipline. For a healthy mind, learning is its own best reward.
Life without self-discipline
A famous physicist inspected my Genius Checklist and disagreed with my point on self-discipline. He loves physics and can do Nobel-level research driven by passion of discovery. He claims he never needed to force himself to anything in life. I applaud. However, on closer inspection, I believe that without Plan, being driven by spontaneous improvisation, I would definitely neglect many areas of life that I would not want to neglect. Would I even be able to stop working in time to go to bed without a detriment to health. My college years are a proof that I loved pulling all-nighters in the wake of passionate research, or programming. To this day I need to consciously step away from the computer in time, and dim the lights to be sure that sunrise works to advance my circadian phase rather than delay it. Will my weight balloon above 100kg if I do not discipline my eating habits? How would I adhere to the natural creativity cycle without a well-timed pulse of activities?
To prove my point I observe that the famous physicist does not exercise. He is a picture of health, but is this optimum health? I would never trade my love of exercise for the extra time it consumes per day. Exercise powers my creativity! Has the physicist been damaged by the comforts of modern living? It is also interesting to note that the physicist is childless. To me, his contribution to idiocracy is an indication that he departed from the forces of nature. We must all collectively answer the question why so many young super-smart people decide never to marry, never have children, or just fail in their quest to find a mate. This is an epidemic phenomenon, and it needs to change. Naturally, self-discipline should not be involved in reproduction (I think). We need to restore those natural instincts and behaviors that helped Homo sapiens survive over the millennia.
I do not know if life without self-discipline is possible. It would indeed foster best learning and best attitudes. In my own case, without micro-rules of productivity, the damage done by the coercion of schooling would never be reversed. I needed serious self-discipline to snap myself out of dismal productivity instilled by coercive push from the school system. For me, life without self-discipline is an interesting thought experiment. I am not sure it is possible and optimal. I suspect that interference from modern lifestyle necessitate a degree of rational control over the natural control systems (e.g. in reference to sleep, nutrition, exercise, etc.).
Disinhibition
Alfie Kohn is no fan of self-discipline at school. He notes that futile grit may result in disinhibition. In the war of the networks, there is always a winner. However, prolonged battles do not always end up in the death of the opponent. The war may lead to a temporary resolution by means of synaptic inhibition. Outwardly, a student may suppress his true feelings. He may grin and bear it. Internally, however, he may harbor the worst of human instincts (see: Students with murder in mind). In some circumstances, we may observe the process of disinhibition in which futile grit works like a ratchet on a tense spring that builds up explosive potential to fire back (source):
Impressive self-discipline may contain the seeds of its own undoing: an explosive failure of control, which psychologists call “disinhibition”. From one unhealthy extreme, people may suddenly find themselves at the other: The compliant student abruptly acts out in appalling fashion; the pious teetotaler goes on a dangerous drinking binge or shifts from absolute abstinence to reckless, unprotected sex. Moreover, making an effort to inhibit potentially undesirable behaviors can have other negative effects. A detailed review of research concerning all sorts of attempts to suppress feelings and behaviors concludes that the results often include “negative affect (discomfort or distress) [and] cognitive disruption (including distractibility and intrusive, obsessive thoughts about the proscribed behavior).”
This phenomenon is well-known to all dieters who control their appetite with self-discipline only to experience a catastrophic failure of a relapse, in which they regain weight at double speed. Many a teacher will also recall stories of the inverse correlation between grades and how students react to a teacher on the street years later. It is the "bad" student that is often most cheerful and effusive.
Long-term outcomes
All humans face a different set of adversities. For that reason, it is impossible to provide a guarantee of the long-term outcome of a self-discipline training based on the micro-rules of productivity. However, in the ideal case, the role of self-discipline and grit should disappear. Life should be based on the pleasure of productivity.
I personally run my life along a pretty strict schedule (see: Planning a perfect productive day without stress). To most people around, this may sound like a life of a robotic monk whose minutes are programmed by the computer. However, the trick to that productive plan is the pleasure of productivity. I rarely need to employ much self-discipline. It happens often that I need to do things in a hurry, which I rather see as eustress. It happens that I may be reluctant to switch from a creative activity to an activity based on obligations. I try to use the circadian cycle to adapt the flow of activities to the functional performance of the brain. I never force the brain to work against its own indications (e.g. working while being sleepy, or exercising in the wrong circadian phase). Day after day, I look for ways to eliminate sources of conflict that undermine productivity. The goals become integrated with micro-valuations. This flows on instinct. Life becomes less of a struggle. The mind has more scope for creative pursuits. Most of my self-discipline acts are trivial enough to almost becoming pleasurable. A daily ritual of jogging in preparation for a marathon is just a set of tiny steps in the routine that escalates into some pleasurable effort of a cardiovascular workout that bring a degree of addictive euphoria. Productivity has similar addictive powers. If we listen to the brain's demands, the brain can be the best facilitator in a happily productive life (see also: Simple formula for happiness).
Dieting
Obesity is one of the modern problems that stem from the war of the networks. We are born well designed to self-regulate, incl. the intake of foods. Raised in meager communist times, I was also able to self-regulate efficiently for many years. However, the trouble started when I received my first salary and paid my first visit to a super-market in my fourth decade of life (i.e. 30+). Within a year, I noticed that I started losing my usual athletic attributes. As of 1995, I regularly employed exercise and diets to stay in shape. However, my study of the brain told me that dieting is not a healthy solution. It is a way of overriding one's natural instinct that gradually increases the need for self-discipline. It increases artificial control of food intake. That artificial control may lead to sub-optimum nutrition. There is no better ally in healthy nutrition than one's own brain equipped with dozens of complex control mechanisms. All attempts to override that control must have negative side effects. Consequently, in 2017, I gave up dieting. I was hoping that overtime, the brain would finds its natural ways of the past. Within the first six months, my weight shot up from 88kg to 93kg. As I was physically in a great shape, I decided to continue my natural experiment hoping the increase would stabilize at some healthy well-balanced optimum. I instantly noticed annual cycles in which the weight would drop in summer. Unfortunately, when I hit 100kg this winter, I started having doubts. Is 100kg a real true natural optimum? After all, I do not see much change when running barefoot marathons. The risk of injury seems to be even lower (wild estimate). Even more convincing is the fact that I eat as little as a child. Dinner is my only sizeable meal. I try to take it in the 7th hour of the day. Except for vegetables, my dinner is microscopic in comparison to what I see other people eat. I concluded that my plan for free nutrition may not work without some rational system. I still do not know the system! It will sure not be based on self-discipline or dieting. It will rather be based on habits and re-conditioning. I easily conditioned my mind to dislike sweets. The same should be possible in reference to other habits as long as they can be safely identified as unhealthy.
If you have experience or literature that could helps me solve that habituation dilemma, please let me know. Note that I have studied biochemistry as of 1976, and healthy nutrition is not the issue. I am looking for hormonal and circadian control of the appestat. I am pretty sure the answer is in the circadian cycle of food intake. I am determined to find that answer, and publish my findings here.
My own story
My own story of employing self-discipline is long and shows a clear evolution in thinking in proportion to acquiring new knowledge about health, physiology, behavior, and the brain.
My best guess is that my interest in self-discipline might have started around 1974 (aged 12). I got a book about body building and was in awe with what is possible to achieve in the realm of body sculpting. In those days I started some exercise and developed an obsession with breaking records in pull-ups, press-ups, or in … holding one's breath. I kept increasing my pushups daily until I hit 90 (probably of awful prepubertal quality). I was proud that I can stop breathing for insanely long periods (recording 3 min 15 seconds during a physiology class on Dec 3, 1982). I was proud of how slow my heart could be in the morning.
Some time in high school, I came up with the idea that each time I think "I am not willing to do it", I must do it. As if proving that the rational mind is the boss. Each time I thought "I am not willing to run up 12 flocks of stairs up", I had to do it. Each time I was too lazy to get up to turn off lights on the corridor of our apartment block late in the night, I had to do it (the only good person to care about it).
Soon I discovered that the mind can do harm. In 1978, I qualified for Polish championship in boxing. I decided to drop by one weight category. I worked hard on dehydration without much understanding of its disastrous effects. I came to my first fight sleepy after an early morning trip by train. As a result, I lost in the first round by hardly being able to stand straight: sleepy and dehydrated (Friday, May 12, 1978). I spent the next week in bed with irregular heartbeat. I learned my lesson and paid more attention to human physiology, which became one of my favorite subjects to study over the next four decades.
As of August 31, 1983, with micro-rules of productivity, I slowly transformed my life by improving my performance on a regular basis. Previously, I lost some of my love for learning due to the pressures of school. This is why I had to push myself to do more learning with a bit of self-discipline. In 1984, I went a step further and sent 3 letters to my friends in 3 music bands I played in. I quit. With pain, I had to give up my favorite hobby at a time when it just started bringing first fruits. By 1985, I was devouring books like "Brain and machine", and started thinking that it would be nice to be as efficient as a machine. At the same time, I discovered many areas where self-discipline was ineffective or harmful. It became clear that the rational and the emotional minds must co-operate. In 1986, aged 24, I landed in hospital with kidney stones (thankfully, never again). They came as a result of constant battle to save the last cent to buy a computer. I would skip meals, and drink tap water instead of buying decent meals from the pocket money received from my mom. Incidentally, those kidney stones kept recurring for a decade until I solved the problem with coffee and beer (last episode on July 23, 1996). I discovered the value and power of rehydration (incl. its value for creativity and problem solving).
In the 1990s, I was trying to live a healthy lifestyle, but still could not shake off that workaholic personality. Only having introduced last minutes bugs after sleepless nights during the release of Multilingual SuperMemo CD-ROM, I decided to never do any brainwork in imperfect mental shape. Bad brain can do more harm than benefit! I also decided to stop pulling all-nighters, which was a frequent habit in college. In 1994, I started the process of self-discovery with the help of creative vacations. I started free running sleep only in 1999 (aged 37). This immediately alerted me to the problem of DSPS, and the negative impact of modern lifestyle on the quality of sleep.
On May 4, 2000, I used Plan in SuperMemo for the first time. As of that day, I was able to see the impact of minor changes in the day schedule on my life. I could add 5 minutes to the morning coffee slot to see if the benefit exceeded the cost. Would slowing down improve productivity enough? I could cut my e-mail slot by 2 minutes and see the impact on the resulting backlog on the quality of communication. In two decades of using Plan, I primarily discovered that self-discipline is easy and that productivity is fun. It is all about finding the right balance between the appetites of the rational mind, and the needs of the reptilian brain and human physiology. Most of all, the adherence to the natural creativity cycle turns hard work into productive fun. I am still a workaholic, but I do not deserve the label. I never push work beyond healthy boundaries.
I still have issues with my wording of my texts about self-discipline from the early years of the millennium (e.g. Genius checklist). Only when I fully understood the harm of coercion, and the power of the pleasure of learning, I could see that self-discipline must operate within the optimum push zone to make sure it does not inflict harm. Clearly, the story is not over. I still struggle with going to sleep early enough. I still do not fully understand the power of the circadian cycle in the control of appetite and feeding. These day the flow of new data about the brain and physiology makes me very optimistic though. Those processes can be harnessed. If so, I should scream with joy: "good life beings at sixty". For new generations, with some backup from science and good parenting, it should begin at conception!
Example ruleset
I probably employ hundreds or thousands of rules and micro-rules of health and productivity. They may all require some self-discipline. Those rules I have internalized and many are not even written down. They may be trivial oddities such as holding my breath in the presence of a smoking car. Or they may be a source of major upheavals and conflict such as my resolution not to attend funerals. They may be rock-solid, or flexible. For decades I tried to introduce the rule never walk, and always run, but I usually failed that rule. It simply quarrels with another rule: never exercise without a warmup. In practice, before I warm up by walking, I arrive at my destination.
Below I list of some of my rules for illustration. Many are useful only for me. Many are hard to replicate. Everyone should have his own set that fits the lifestyle, environment, goals, personality, etc. Some of my rules:
- run life with Tools : Plan in SuperMemo
- never work beyond the optimum time to sleep
- never miss outdoor exercise
- always exercise in the right circadian phase in full rehydration after a good warmup
- regular winter swimming (once per week in winter, daily swimming in summer)
- do fifty half-marathons per year (and one ultramarathon)
- wake up with the sun (usually long after sunrise)
- read and prioritize mail only in a short slot right before exercise (i.e. always in a hurry)
- provide good e-mail replies in creative slots prioritized with incremental reading
- do not browse the web. Find materials on demand with Google. Prioritize demands with incremental reading
- do not read articles on the web. Preview articles that are worth importing to SuperMemo and import them for prioritized increading
- do not watch YouTube. Use incremental video before sleep (preferably while walking)
- socialize only in the sports slot outdoors
- never eat sweets, cakes, or junk food
- walk or run instead of using a car
- no cell phone interruptions
- no travel
- no weddings, no funerals, no parties, no "special occasions"
I have hundreds of odd health-inspired rules that are tough to replicate (e.g. running barefoot). They are all born by inspiration from others or just reasoning about health. I discovered barefoot running on my own (serendipitously in 2004). Only then I found total vindication in the words of Christopher McDougall ("Born to Run").
The rule about weddings and funerals might have been the hardest. I have been pestered for decades for violations of social norm. Here comes the benefit of aging. As a student, I was blasted by my entire family. These days, the trouble is largely gone. Those who know me got accustomed to my eccentricities. Those who do not know me well are less likely to attack me due to my age. Sadly, most of the attack came from a generation that is dying out.
The rule about running life along Plan is a source of strife. Very often I re-iterate the rule "Plan is God". At the same time I have an unwritten rule to never waste good creativity. If I am in the flow, I often ignore the alarm for the end of the creative activity. I turn on an "approximate mental alarm" and intentionally increase the degree of stress and hurry. This helps wrap things up, and prevents major incursions into exercise and sleep slots. There are victims on the way. This is why I am so bad at replying at e-mail (on occasion). I apologize.
Formula for perfect self-control
Here are the pillars of perfect self-discipline:
- good sleep is central to self-disciple. Sleep deprivation undermines the self-control power of the brain
- avoid chronic stress, which undermines self-control and the control networks involved in executive function
- employ free learning to naturally build knowledge that provides support in all activities where self-discipline may be necessary
- employ self-discipline incrementally within the push zone to minimize negative side effects
- employ self-discipline incrementally only to activities that are naturally enjoyable in the long run in ideal circumstances (e.g. learning, exercise, etc.). For inherently unpleasant activities (e.g. a visit to a dentist), you need sheer grit (to "swallow the frog")
- work on the convergence of learning and long-term goals so that the expertise helps convert work into pleasure
The above makes sure that the control systems of the brain are healthy (sleep, stress, etc.). Those control systems are armed with necessary knowledge that makes life easier. With a strong healthy brain, it is easier to work on the adaptation of the brain to its environment in terms of long-term goals. Gradually, control conflicts should be eliminated and the need for self-discipline should be diminished.
Adversities of life are the main reason why most people struggle with self-discipline. It is easy to introduce micro-rules of productivity if life is repetitive and controllable. It is much harder to be well disciplined if life throws a great deal of unpleasant surprises. Bad sleep and chronic stress can seriously undermine self-discipline. This is why I list sleep and stress at the top of this: Genius checklist. This is also why I support basic income to help people live up to their best potential. Self-discipline is trainable. Freedom makes it easy to incrementally increase productivity.
In the quest for the "perfect control", it is important to remember that perfection will never be reached. That awareness eases the psychological burden. Improvements in self-discipline may be excruciatingly slow. For a number of steps forward, there will always be steps in the opposite direction. The best consolation comes from the fact that for most people, in the long-run, the progress can be relentless and the outcomes fantastic.
See also: