Jonathan Haidt speaks about something similar in The Happiness Hypothesis. Epiphanies can only take you so far, before their novelty wears off and they lose the power to change your behaviour. This is why self-help book readers tend to keep reading self-help books. 4 weeks after finishing one they need another hit of epiphanies.
Even the lamest examples listed in the OP article can probably give someone a boost in productivity for a while, as long as that epiphanic rush lasts.
I've felt this in myself over the years. I'd hit a low point and try to hoist myself out of it, with some sombre new ethical code for creating a work ethic; some new note taking system; or epiphany gleaned from Shakespeare or Nietzsche.
You can see it in the Jordan Peterson clips that haunt my YouTube shorts.
> Epiphanies can only take you so far, before their novelty wears off and they lose the power to change your behaviour.
Funny, I've experienced the same thing with philosophy.
In my teens, I've had this existential crisis where the world just didn't make sense to me. Eventually I have discovered philosophy and started reading it, and for a while the world made sense to me. However, every epiphany I've had about the world only kept my enthusiasm up for a while - after some time I'd still know all the things I learned, but they just wouldn't seem as important as before.
The world made sense... But I just didn't like the way it made sense. That's when I realized that the problem is me, not the world, and that the problem cannot be solved by pure knowledge - there is an animal inside me which doesn't give a rat's ass about all my theories of why and how, and requires a different approach.
Jocko willinck (and many others I am sure) likes to state that you can’t rely on motivation because it comes and goes. Rely on discipline, build habits using discipline if you want to get anything done. A trite but in my opinion helpful statement is discipline equals freedom.
This is not a new idea. Just a new messenger for the modern era. Marcus Aurelius was talking about this thousands of years ago.
> At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”
> Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?
Rough self-talk from Marcus Aurelius in this passage. Not a big fan of this kind of approach personally. I've found that if I need to do this kind of self-motivation, I should be thinking much higher-level for the causes -- why do I not want to get out of bed? Perhaps I'm not working on the right thing, and need to change careers? Or perhaps I'm not dealing with something emotionally that is preventing me from doing my best work. In my experience, especially if this apathy is persisting over weeks+, it's been something much deeper than "oh I'm lazy and I just need to get up"
Yeah, MA is very keen on the separation between brain (what he calls the "directing mind") and body, to the extent that he thinks it's possible for the brain to ignore pain because that's the body's problem, and it's only something that makes the brain feel bad if the brain chooses to feel bad about it. If your philosophical framework looks like that then it's not really conducive to "fix the things in the outside world that make you naturally not feel like getting up", because the axiom is "none of that outside world stuff should be able to affect my brain unless I want it to". I find his writing interesting but this is one of the areas where my foundational beliefs and his are miles apart.
MA was a sage, but as Seneca said we do not have to be a sage. We should instead content ourselves with walking the same path, if at a crawl.
But really, what negative external could be more intractable than the hordes of Germans lining upon the Rhine and Danube? And yet MA rose up each morning to deal with them as seen in that documentary with Russel Crowe
Something similar comes up in Buddhism. The concept that pain is inevitable, but suffering isn't. You will feel pain, because that's part of life, but suffering is you holding on to the pain or trying to prevent/stop it.
I think it does "let the world in", but doesn't hold on to it as it's passing through. If that makes any sense.
I think this point about spiders would be more compelling if we actually saw that some spiders were lazy and some were not, and the lazy ones died and the non lazy ones didn't. The fact is that spiders and birds and whatever animal just generally doesn't have the desire to "lay in bed under the blankets". If nature gave us the desire to do so, doesn't that mean it isn't wrong if we're using nature as a guide?
This is a good point if you take the perspective that we are independent of our environment. Our desires and needs are natural, therefore we should follow them.
However, if you consider that we co-evolved with our environment and all of its challenges and constraints, then our desires and how much we feel them are simply the result of optimizing our survival over hundreds and thousands of generations.
E.g. the 'difficulty' of our environment is a 50. We have to have a desire of 51+ to survive: a will to live. The 'lazy' spiders all had <50 and no longer exist.
Therefore, if we change environments to something much easier to live in, then our desires are kind of vestigial optimizations that may not provide the kind of guidance on the optimal way to survive in the new environment - they may take hundreds or thousands of generations to unwind. Modern civilization in particular has created such a massive shift in challenges and resource availability that it's not hard to find examples of this.
E.g. we have a strong desire to rest even when we don't need it because we co-evolved in environments where rest was scarce (due to need to survive), so when we had the opportunity we took it. Same with food: food used to be scarce, so we needed a strong desire to get it, but now food is abundant and we still have that desire and wind up eating too much.
In both circumstances, the environment was the pace-setter, but thats now changed, so we need to be our own pace-setter.
I don't think the GP or Willink himself has ever suggested it's a new idea. Stoicism and that military Willink/Goggins/etc type of motivation go hand in hand.
Nature in this context would be things you have to get done except more of a belief that each person has a specific pre defined role. He's still very much talking about using discipline to accomplish this role and often self admonished for not getting more of his own role done.
> "How do you build discipline if you’re undisciplined?"
Willink's answer is "Just do it." Very charitably, he suggests you should do things you ought to, even if they are painful and you don't want to do it. This actually has some backing in cognitive-behavioral therapy by starting with action first before motivation.
Uncharitably, it's not nuanced if there are deeper reasons why you should actually consider to not work on something you've planned to do (though it's hard to say when this should happen).
> "How do you decide what to be disciplined about?"
Willink talked about how his first motivation was to be very good at his assigned tasks while in the navy. Then, if I remember correctly, he said his mission after retiring was to provide for his family and to help others with his content. For others, he said to focus on physical health; emotional stability; spending money wisely; spending time efficiently; taking care of family and friends; and doing great at your (presumable) current job. This is actually a very good starting point.
My major criticism of his past work is that he seems to assume that leaders/managers work in good faith and won't exploit your hard work. In my experience and several reports by others, following his advice can lead to getting severely overworked for little-to-no reward by managers acting in bad faith.
He also hasn't acknowledged (as far as I can tell) the importance of managing office politics in advancement in many workplaces. He said that outworking someone is the best way to counter someone trying to make you look bad in the workplace, which in my view is insufficient - you also need to talk to your manager about it in a tactful way. Lastly, his current content seems to be increasingly monetized, and he's had more podcast guests who are politicians, when he used to be apolitical.
You need to have discipline in the first place to “just do it” consistently. For those who lack enough motivation, which is the situation the advice is supposed to address, I don’t see how it helps. If they were able to “do it” consistently despite lacking consistent motivation, they wouldn’t have a problem in the first place.
I guess that for some people, being told “there’s no way around just doing the things even when you’re not motivated” by itself creates sufficient motivation long-term to do the things even when they are not otherwise motivated. But for those for which that doesn’t happen, there isn’t much actionable advice.
> "You need to have discipline in the first place to “just do it” consistently. [...] If they were able to “do it” consistently despite lacking consistent motivation, they wouldn’t have a problem in the first place."
From Willink's perspective (interpreted charitably), there are many situations where it's useful to "just do it." For example, say you want to do a task, but you want to get comfortable first because you're anxious. You can watch a funny video or browse the internet to calm down, read a motivational blog post, and do various chores to 'get in the mood.' Then hours pass by, and you still haven't started the task.
A better solution is to start with the action causing anxiety, expecting the shift in mood to follow the action (before trying to change your mood first), which is supported by recommendations in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). Actions first, mood follows is a good, actionable insight supported by CBT counselors.
> "For those who lack enough motivation, which is the situation the advice is supposed to address, I don’t see how it helps."
If you're disciplined despite lacking motivation, you can improve your physical health and earn better career opportunities, letting you earn more and have more freedom. Therefore, by focusing on actions more than motivation, you can improve your circumstances. This is a charitable interpretation of Willink's perspective.
However, my personal view is moderate. Motivation does matter, because it reduces the amount of willpower needed for work, and lets you choose the right tasks and goals to work toward. Though in any case, action before changing your mood is perfectly actionable advice.
Plenty of actionable advice. Start small, build habits, work your way up. Jordan Peterson (love him or hate him) talks about making your bed and cleaning your room. Then build off this and tackle something a little bigger. Small personal goal that takes a year or more of regular practice (language, physical fitness, writing, anything you highly value). If you can’t manage to build a habit of this, then maybe being disciplined and getting the benefits of it won’t work for you. Nothing wrong with that.
I was calling out the GP that the mere insight that discipline is usually necessary because you can’t rely on being consistently motivated fits the pattern of an insight that doesn’t by itself makes it easier to solve the problem. The insight can explain lack of success (inconsistent motivation combined with lack of discipline), but it doesn’t tell you how one might engender a lasting change. Also, the difference between discipline and consistent motivation is arguably small, because you somehow have to consistently motivate yourself to build up and maintain a discipline.
From your framing, it sounds like the advice is to start with a person who lacks motivation, and then tell them to be disciplined, and it's sufficient for lasting change. In this framing, the advice is absurd.
But it's far more interesting to consider how the one phrase relates to the rest of Willink's perspective. For example, he argues that that you can frame discipline and hard work as a method to be physically healthier; care for your family better; or help you earn more income or career capital.
The phrase is an introduction to the rest of his arguments, and it isn't quite as interesting to debate its merits in isolation.
I’ve always viewed his content through the lens of being your own boss, so being overworked and taken advantage of by an employer might happen, but if you don’t have the ability to work through things you don’t want to do, you can rarely succeed on your own. A boss is a great way to always have external motivation. That doesn’t exist when you work for yourself.
Great points by the way. I would also add that Jocko Willinck is a master teacher in self promotion. The pioneer of “monetize my navy seal career”, but I do feel it’s mostly genuine and valuable content.
I don’t consider that to be insight porn, which is why I found it personally valuable. I feel this is a fundamental law of getting anything done. There’s almost nothing that I actually want to do for extended period of times, but I want the result from having done that thing a bunch. For example, it’s really hard to go outside and practice archery every day, but I have to do that in order to have the result of those skills - a successful archery hunt. How do I get the results when I am way past the first month or so where motivation is waning? I have to have the discipline to work toward my goal, regardless of how I feel in the moment.
I found this insight for lack of a better word to be so fundamental that I was floored when I read it in jocko’s kids book. I saw my dad do this, he clearly embodied this value and demonstrated it while raising me, but no one ever explained it to me.
For a goofy comparison, I would consider “discipline equals freedom “ to be love making between a happily married couple, and blog spam insight porn to be actual porn.
He suggests through practice. You start with something small but easy that you don't want to do, and make a habit of doing it anyway. His favorite small first step seems to be getting up early.
I've found the best way to build discipline is to find someone with discipline and have them keep you accountable. This could be a mentor of some kind. Granted finding that may be equally as hard as doing it on your own.
Also you don't necessarily need discipline in the actual thing you want to do - you just need to know what it means to be disciplined in something and then you can extrapolate your behavior in discipline itself to then be disciplined in something.
The problem is it's not even correct. Discipline does not equal freedom. Have you ever seen a well-meaning man with all his might do the same incorrect thing over and over? Of course you have, because we're all that person in some area of life.
Viewing the phrase in isolation, this response is logically correct, but it's more interesting to view this in the context of the rest of the author's arguments.
If you're consistent with physical exercise by resisting when you feel like skipping a workout, you'll have more strength, endurance, and freedom of movement when you become much older. And if you're consistent with improving at your career skills, you'll have more career opportunities in the future. Therefore, even if you may seem less free by avoiding unhealthy food or watching too much television, you're setting yourself up for more opportunities in the long-term.
I personally do agree that you can be disciplined toward the wrong goals, though I also think it's more interesting to consider Willink's arguments as a whole, instead of focusing on a phrase in isolation.
doesn't discipline require willpower though. I was told relying on willpower is bad because you only have limited amount of it per day and surely going to fail your when you run out of it.
That’s like saying you have a limited amount of muscular endurance per day. It’s true, but it’s completely trainable. Meaning just like you can go from barely able to run a mile to being able to run an ultramarathon, you can do the same thing with your willpower. But unlike running a marathon, training your willpower will yield real, life improving tangible benefits assuming you can correctly figure out how to apply it for your benefit. Maybe a poor analogy because running an ultramarathon requires lots of willpower :)
Regardless of whether one accepts the arguments in the comic, I doubt willpower can be trained. It's not like a marathon where you have to actually run to practice, every day you're faced with decisions and temptations that you can "exercise" your will power with. In a sense you can't really stop practicing with your willpower...
> I was told relying on willpower is bad because you only have limited amount of it per day and surely going to fail your when you run out of it.
This keeps getting repeated but there is no physical evidence to it. We know muscles have a limited amount of power (because they run out of ATP energy) but there is nothing that suggests it's the same for willpower.
"Epiphanic rush" is such a accurate but bittersweet term for this. It must be so ingrained in human psychology from the days of shamans, prophets and sages.
Are these really examples of what is described? The spiritualism gained from those entities persist to this day. Wars were fought and people continue to live by what those entities taught. Sounds different from the short lived rush that is being discussed.
> This is why self-help book readers tend to keep reading self-help books. 4 weeks after finishing one they need another hit of epiphanies.
I read a lot of business books that could be categorized as "self-help". I tend to continuously read them because
1. I'm aware how difficult behavior change
2. It's valuable to have more than 1 perspective.
3. Few things have had an outsized impact on my career. I do not know what those are until weeks/months/years after reading a book.
For me, I'm not looking to read a single book to emulate it fully. I'm looking to read 4 or 5 books, shape my overall perspective, then have 2 to 4 things stick very, very deeply. Lastly, I can always come back to a specific book when I loosely remember it being applicable.
Yeah, I agree. Though I will say that doesn't mean epiphanies aren't valuable long term. A little boost to get you started might translate into a huge change in personal circumstances 10 years after that small boost. Without a couple months with Jordan Peterson relaying not just the possibility but the nobility of looking people in the eyes, entering the forest at the place that looks darkest to you, etc. I would almost certainly not be here typing this.
Such basic truths spruced up with a gleaming coating of old reverent narrative and ancient godlike significance through vigorous sermon is exactly the small boost I required to make the most significant and important change I've ever made in my life. I know he's quite controversial these days but you cannot deny the man has channeled something very powerful (at least as the non-explicitely-political material goes, I choose not to watch his politics)
What always surprised me about Peterson was the fact that so many people swear by his videos. There's multiple claims about how his videos changed their lives or saved them. However, his methodology couldn't keep his own life from going awry.
What exactly has gone awry? I mean, he had some serious troubles when his wife came extremely close to death very suddenly from a terrible illness but who could stay fine watching their high school sweetheart and only love ever rapidly wither right as their lives started to take off together.
Or are you talking about the political aspect? If so I really see nothing going 'awry', he's making choices, certainly not begging for money. Someone may not like what he says or who he talks with but that does not constitute a life 'going awry' inasmuch as his supposed teachings would help avoid
Even the lamest examples listed in the OP article can probably give someone a boost in productivity for a while, as long as that epiphanic rush lasts.
I've felt this in myself over the years. I'd hit a low point and try to hoist myself out of it, with some sombre new ethical code for creating a work ethic; some new note taking system; or epiphany gleaned from Shakespeare or Nietzsche.
You can see it in the Jordan Peterson clips that haunt my YouTube shorts.