Daniel Crenna

Discipline

“Do what you know you should.”

The hardest part of discipline sounds like the easiest.

If you did what you knew you should, you’d be ten years younger metabolically, you could count all eight of your abdominal muscles by sight, and you’d be much further along most of your personal endeavours.

Things get interesting when we attempt to live in to the self that knows what should be done. The realities of following this principle bring you directly into the den of your psyche, where hunger, fatigue, comfort, emotions, and every incongruent patchwork personality you’ve ever sewn for yourself will have your willpower for breakfast.

You’ll know when you’re practicing true discipline because it won’t get easier the second time around. Whether it’s sufficient reward or repetition that causes the switch, if it’s easy, it’s a habit, not discipline. You’ll be fortunate if you can automate a handful of your “shoulds”, but strictly speaking they are “shoulds” for a reason: you don’t want to do them when you’re not feeling like the peak version of you that issued demands of itself. Discipline is hard, and it stays hard. Just like programming.

Not all encounters with discipline revolve around the kitchen or the gym. They’re everywhere, and for the chair surfing developers among us, they’re plentiful. Sometimes your battles come from a seemingly ideal situation.

Here’s an example. I’ve worked hard to sharpen my skills and improve my business senses to the point where I’ve been able to leave the cubicle and pursue a career on my own terms. A short time ago this was my mothership. But after a long, drawn out while I realized I was actually losing a battle with discipline every day and it was taking its toll.

Even though I freelance, my clients are on the other side of the continent, and I could work from home, complete with varying shades of “business casual” ranging from housecoat to worse, I now share an office with two other software companies. This means I have to get up when you do and take the bus to work rather than sleep in, and I pay for office rent. 

I do this because I’m a terrible remote worker in many respects, though I get my work done, I do it to the soundtrack of the rest of my life falling apart around me; I forget to eat, I forget to unplug, and non-programming but equally important tasks pile up. The discipline problem here is helped by honest recognition: because I know that I overdrive myself and do not thrive outside of structure, I have to set the structure myself, even though it’s cheaper and more convenient to maintain the status quo.

Self-recognition is a powerful tool. Rather than go head to head with a bad habit, you can run around it and avoid it all together. This is running from a fight, no doubt, but picking your battles is a smart play.

“Do what you know you should.”