On discipline
“The first and best victory is to conquer self; to be conquered by self is of all things most shameful and vile.” -Plato
Circumstances have me thinking a lot lately about discipline. At 33, career well under way, family about to grow by +1, I have new influences on how to spend my time and ways to focus my energy.
Here’s the problem. I don’t have any discipline. My interest alone was enough to see projects through. This works fine for a single guy with zero dependents and zero reports. No timeline is required, so none is followed. Now I’m constantly interrupted. As a result, I accomplish far less than I used to.
The only way I see to fix this is to “conquer self”. There is some allowance for “this is how my brain works”, but so long as I’m not achieving things I’d like to, there’s a problem.
How I’m going to change things isn’t completely clear yet, but I’ve started my first step. Time. Becoming more aware of time passing. Floating along has made me terribly unaware of the passage of time, even if it was beneficial (12 hour coding marathons). To change this, I’ve started timing small tasks. Errands, chores, walks for coffee. It’s been about a week since I’ve started this and already I feel more clear minded while taking something on.
