Decline of Discipline
Despite recent rants about other people, this is a purely personal observation on my continual struggle to achieve and maintain discipline.
Discipline is a hard thing to maintain. It’s widely celebrated by all the influencers who tell us hapless peons to ‘Just do It’ as if “doing it’ was at our fingertips all the time, and all we needed was a suitably driven person to act as our arbiter of agency to enable movement.
It’s never that bloody easy.
The stories that celebrate the grind and determination of the people who maintain such fantastic levels of discipline never really dig into the background of how they managed to find it; instead, they just always seemed to have it. I very much wish that I could summon those same levels of determination but they seem to escape me.
Yes, I have achieved determination before but in a different field; relentlessly solving problems irrespective of the personal cost - these came easily to me when I was assigned the responsibility for the work and the ownership of the outcome. Essentially, when I was granted Agency, or simply acquired it myself through the expertise I was able to leverage.
Over time, though, that Agency has gradually eroded, and the discipline that came from that has similarly disappeared.
As may be obvious from this, I’m tying together Agency - the ability to assume responsibility for the work and the outcome, without doubt - and Discipline - the ability to continue in the face of insurmountable odds.
I’d argue that the two have to be tied together to be effective. One can’t achieve agency over anything in their domain without a degree of discipline, and discipline without associated agency doesn’t deliver any results.
I guess I’m just venting here, for the sake of it.
My journey towards a fully self-driven future without any dependence on the man requires both qualities in spades, and so I’m doing the normal thing anybody would do in these circumstances; beginning with the tiny steps of routine - building discipline from the inside by completing simple tasks reliably every day, thus demonstrating that I can do so, and that the Agency to continue doing so is entirely within my grasp.
These tasks are simple. I’m meditating every day, drinking a measurable quantity of water, journalling, and doing other small tasks besides. None requires more than 15 minutes of effort, and yet doing so repeatably makes a big difference when the less confident part of my addled brain disbelieves my ability to continue this on larger tasks.
I’ll add further notes on this as my effort continues. ADHD traits tend to chip away at this - as I forget the work needs to be done, or forget the desire to keep going.
Small steps. Every day.