The word discipline literally means "to teach children", but such word has become quite a taboo in school. Its currently most used meaning points towards the ability to sustain a plan that requires effort. We will use this word in this sense from now, although I would love to recover its literal meaning as well. Discipline for children, when correctly understood, is the key to education.
These laws of discipline defy common sense. Please, take the word "law" in a ludic sense. They are just personal thoughts. Moreover, the domains of these laws strongly overlap. Don't expect a rigorous approach.
0) The landscape law: The less you do, the less you do. The more you do, the more you do.
1) The law of anti-conservation of energy: the more energy you spend, the more energy you have. The more energy you save, the less energy you have.
2) The limit law: There are real limits (r), but they are always way beyond your imagined limits (i).
3) The anti-commutativity law: Effort + Rest ≠ Rest + Effort
4) The reward law: Reward an effort, but reward even more the lack of reward.
5) The paradox law: To begin an effort you need discipline. To become disciplined, you need effort.
6) The meta-inertial law: The inertia of inertia.
7) The sacred law: The believer can look dumber than the sceptic, but is way stronger.
8) The dangerous law: You must have fun in the effort, but in a masochistic way.
9) The social law: Motivation is a social phenomenon.
The less you do, the less you do. The more you do, the more you do.
This creates a dynamics that could be described by the following potential energy landscape:
\ discipline /
\ ridge /
\ ·'· /
\ / \ /
\ / `·-'
\ / action
`·-·' valley
inaction
valley
When you are in the sedentary valley, any effort you do meets a resistance to turn to the bottom of the valley.
Crossing the discipline ridge or barrier is the most difficult thing to do.
Living in the action valley, any small deviation from your ideal efforts will meet a help by the landscape to go back to the bottom of this well.
Notice I have not called the second valley "the discipline valley". To me, discipline is not about the action itself but the action that allows you to be in the action valley.
A disciplined person lives in the action valley. An undisciplined person lives in the inaction valley.
A undisciplined person is characterised by a landscape like this:
\ undisciplined /
\ profile /
\ /
\ .-'-. /
\ / `·-'
\ /
`·-·'
A disciplined person is characterised by a landscape like this:
disciplined profile
\ /
\ /
\ /
\ .-'-. /
\ / \ /
\ / \ /
`·-·' \ /
\ /
\ /
`·-·'
Then, an undisciplined person can eventually perform an action but will not stay in the action valley, while a disciplined person will stay in this valley for longer.
The level of discipline is determined by the relative depth of the wells.
The more energy you spend, the more energy you have. The more energy you save, the less energy you have.
This applies to energy and also to time.
For example, if you stop your physical training to have more time and energy to study, you will probably end up studying less, with the feeling of suddenly having less time and with less energy when you expected the opposite.
Usually, people are used to think time (always add "and energy") like
available time without actions +-----------------------+ | | +-----------------------+ how I plan two actions +-----------------------+ |1 | 2 | +-----------------------+ how I plan three actions +-----------------------+ |1 | 3 | 2 | +-----------------------+ how I plan five actions +-----------------------+ |1| 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | +-----------------------+
Instead, I propose it is thought like
available time without actions +-+ | | +-+ how I plan two actions +-------+ |1 | 2 | +-------+ how I plan three actions +--------------------+ |1 | 3 | 2 | +--------------------+ how I plan five actions +-------------------------------------------------+ |1 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | +-------------------------------------------------+
Of course there is a limit to it, but this is the core of the third law:
There are real limits (r), but they are always way beyond your imagined limits (i).
How limits evolve as a person becomes more and more disciplined:
+--------------------------+ | i r| +--------------------------+ +-----------------------------------------+ | i r| +-----------------------------------------+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | i r| +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Effort + Rest ≠ Rest + Effort.
In fact, Effort + Rest > Rest + Effort.
Rest is great *only* when you are tired from an effort. If you rest before the effort, you will probably never do such an effort because of the following lemma:
So if you begin by resting, you will become more tired than if you do the effort.
Reward an effort, but reward even more the lack of reward.
We can draw an effort-reward cycle like
+--------->-------------+
| |
∧ ∨
| effort |
+--------+ area |
| reward | |
+--------+ |
∧ ∨
| |
+---------<-------------+
The effort is the path, while the reward is a stop you do at some point in the path. Both have delimited areas.
Rewards are useful, but also dangerous. If your are exposed to highly rewarding doses or to low doses but received too frequently, then you undergo this process:
+--------->-------------+
| |
∧ ∨
| effort |
+--------+ area |
| reward | |
+--------+ |
∧ ∨
| |
+---------<-------------+
+--------->----------+
∧ ∨
| effort |
+----------+ area |
| reward | |
+----------+ |
∧ ∨
+---------<----------+
+--------->-----+
∧ effort |
+----------+ area |
| | |
| reward | ∨
| | |
+----------+ |
∧---------<-----+
+--------->-+
+------------+ |
| |e |
| |f |
| reward |f ∨
| |o |
| |r |
+------------+t |
+---------<-+
And this ends in a short circuit, where the reward area becomes comparable to the effort area, so that you barely do the effort to go around the reward box to enter it again.
Your main goal is to be able to undergo big effort cycles *relative* to the reward box. If, due to a great effort, you give yourself a great reward, your discipline will not grow well.
Moreover, you can increase your discipline by reducing your reward while keeping the same little effort.
In summary: fight for and effort and reward it to keep the effort flow running, but try to develop an effort/reward ratio as large as possible.
Discipline = ( (effort/reward) - 1 ) / (effort/reward)
The minimum effort is effort=reward, and in this case discipline = 1 - 1 = 0.
An infinite ratio would lead to the limit of discipline 1.
To begin an effort you need discipline. To become disciplined, you need effort.
You can spend all your life waiting for discipline to come at you.
You can also conclude that you *are* not disciplined, as if discipline were a static, given thing, and abandon yourself.
You can also be trapped forever in this vicious paradox and never start any action.
It is important to acknowledge the existence of this stagnating paradox before proceeding to its solution.
The inertia of inertia.
Without friction forces, a body keeps its state of motion unless an external force acts upon it. But we live in a very dissipative world, where friction will stop you immediately after you stop struggling. Then, inertia has little prominence in the science of discipline.
However, when you are used to make an effort, you build meta-inertia. When you have a low meta-inertia, your meta-state of effort is very low, so when you start trying to do efforts you find a lot of resistance: not only resistance to the effort, but resistance to sustain that effort and to reinstate it after a rest.
When you have developed a considerable amount of meta-inertia, you keep a tendency to maintain and reinstate the effort that will be progressively lost if you stop the effort and the meta-effort.
Effort fights friction forces. Meta-effort fights meta-friction (sedentary) forces.
Every time you want to *begin* an effort and find resistance to *start* such effort, you must remember that the resistance to begin is due to meta-inertia.
Otherwise you fall into the paradox of the previous section: to do an effort, you need to begin it, but to begin it you need an effort as well, so that you need to begin such effort! This never ends and the effort never begins. You fall, Zeno-like, in the dungeons of recursive logic.
The solution to the paradox is: the effort will meet friction forces, while initiating the effort will meet meta-friction forces. To do the effort you will need strength. To begin the effort, and also to reinstate it tomorrow and every day, you need a meta-force. Discipline is such a meta-force.
Discipline is a meta-force that fights against meta-inertia. Or, if you prefer it, discipline is the meta-momentum you possess.
The believer can look dumber than the sceptic, but is way stronger.
God may exist or not, but truly believing in It makes you a stronger person. There is no doubt about it.
I doubt Bach would have written his most amazing music if every morning he doubted about the existence of God.
Here, the existence of God is not what matters. It is your strength what is important. And not believing in anything makes you weaker and weaker.
You don't need a God to be a strong believer. You can invent any fiction you like. Just make sure it brings you more strength.
Consider two disconnected realities:
+-----------+ +-----------+ | reality 1 | | reality 2 | +-----------+ +-----------+ (weak) (strong)
You are currently in the (weak) reality 1. You know the (strong) reality 2 exists, but somehow there are no *real paths* that connect these two realities.
Now consider there is a fictitious world that connects them:
fiction bridge
+-------------------------------+
| +-------------------------+ |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
+---+ +----+ +---+ +----+
| reality 1 | | reality 2 |
+-----------+ +-----------+
(weak) (strong)
The question is: wouldn't you take the bridge?
As a species, are we biologically adapted to belief or to scepticism? I really don't know, but I wonder!
It does not matter whether you believe in Buddha or in The Force. If it makes you stronger, then it is a good path.
A summary of this law could be: remove your friction to fiction!
You must have fun in the effort, but in a masochistic way.
It is a common thing to read that you need to have fun in order to sustain a big effort. However, this can be severely misunderstood as a need to mix effort with reward.
Many teachers today think that they need to motivate their students. And that they must design their plans in such a way that effort and reward is the same thing. This is plain wrong.
This law is about learning to *enjoy suffering*, not about sugar coating the suffering with a layer of pleasure, which would short-circuit your effort-reward system.
Another misconception can be explained with this example: if you are studying violin, you cannot have much enjoyment at the beginning. However, with years of practise, you can convert your practise in an extremely gratifying activity.
This is wrong!
Each step of improvement of your skill is a reward of your effort/reward system.
As you progress along your skill, each next step is harder and harder to climb.
If you are already a skilled player and play for pleasure, *this is not training*, but just enjoying. Real training becomes harder and harder as you progress.
The neighbours of this player become more and more annoyed with trainings, but also awarded with better and better rewards, although less and less frequently.
This player, in order to keep improving, must not rely only on the good moments of playing, but must learn to enjoy the extremely painful training, when devoid of any self-gratifying action.
Enjoying suffering is a very dark art, but indispensable nevertheless.
Who said that the way of discipline has to do anything with the way of sanity?
Motivation is a social phenomenon.
Motivation, either as a long-term goal or as a short-term reward, has a social character.
It doesn't matter if you are an extroverted or an introverted person. Both types of person are social in different ways.
If you want to be a violinist, you must see other violinists in action. You must also interact with them, and with other musicians.
Motivation is social pressure in a positive form.
You may want to be like that violinist you like, or you have the commitment to play in a quartet and cannot allow technique flaws, or you don't want to disappoint your public in the next concert. These types of stress keep you plugged in the action.
People who struggle with their levels of motivations are usually people that are not plugged enough, socially speaking, to the context of a given action.
A social context does not only involve currently living persons. The (one-way) interaction with dead people can also be powerful. Similarly, imagined connection with people in the future, you being alive or dead, can also be a source of motivation.
Looking for a path to discipline means to look for discipline without discipline. It makes no sense at all.
You can follow all the advise you get and never achieve discipline.
You can be a guru of discipline and the least disciplined person in the world.
You can ignore all advise and tricks and gurus and be the more disciplined person ever.
There are no shortcuts to this. But I think that keeping these "laws" in mind can help:
0) Visualise the dynamic landscape.
1) Visualise time and energy as non-conserved quantities.
2) Don't listen much to limits.
3) Rest is more tiring than doing an effort.
4) Discipline as a function of the Effort/Reward ratio.
5) Acknowledge the paradox of beginning.
6) Solve the paradox by considering discipline as meta-momentum.
7) Fiction can lead you to stronger realities.
8) Discipline needs masochism.
9) To stay motivated, stay plugged to (past, present and future) society.