(article seems to be down right now, so I have no idea what it's saying.)
>>requires two forms of self discipline
Anyway, I've tried the pure willpower self discipline approach for a long time with mixed results. Not like I never got anything done, but I wasn't as productive as I would've liked.
And the thing is, I thought that willpower was the only thing that could possibly work. All those other things people did? Gimmicks. Trying to trick yourself into being productive? Guess they didn't have the... willpower.
Well, that kind of attitude didn't improve things for me. Willpower is nice. Some willpower is needed. But there are ways to make whatever willpower you have go farther.
For instance, one thing that made more of an improvement than all the "I'm going to be disciplined starting tomorrow!" mantras was just keeping a to do list with very tiny tasks. So instead of buying a programming book and then planning to read it all in a weekend by sheer willpower and then usually never starting or giving up after five chapters, I set up my to do list manager to show me "read one chapter" as a task every day. Now I'm working through 1-2 programming books a month in my spare time whereas that used to take me half a year before.
(I realize that you weren't promoting pure-self-discipline-and-nothing else and the low barrier to entry thing you mentioned is in a similar vein... just thought I'd emphasize that discipline is the starting point, not the end all solution.)
Absolutely. Yeah, the "I'll will myself into doing this" approach doesn't work for long. There have been a handful of psychology articles on attention and self-control being limited mental resources (e.g., http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc281e.pdf -- [PDF]).
I was just saying that even with all kinds of tricks and fooling yourself and convincing yourself and whatnot, you still have to make yourself stop pushing that reward button and do some work. The key, for me, is to make it easier and easier to switch from procrastinating to getting work done.
>>requires two forms of self discipline
Anyway, I've tried the pure willpower self discipline approach for a long time with mixed results. Not like I never got anything done, but I wasn't as productive as I would've liked.
And the thing is, I thought that willpower was the only thing that could possibly work. All those other things people did? Gimmicks. Trying to trick yourself into being productive? Guess they didn't have the... willpower.
Well, that kind of attitude didn't improve things for me. Willpower is nice. Some willpower is needed. But there are ways to make whatever willpower you have go farther.
For instance, one thing that made more of an improvement than all the "I'm going to be disciplined starting tomorrow!" mantras was just keeping a to do list with very tiny tasks. So instead of buying a programming book and then planning to read it all in a weekend by sheer willpower and then usually never starting or giving up after five chapters, I set up my to do list manager to show me "read one chapter" as a task every day. Now I'm working through 1-2 programming books a month in my spare time whereas that used to take me half a year before.
(I realize that you weren't promoting pure-self-discipline-and-nothing else and the low barrier to entry thing you mentioned is in a similar vein... just thought I'd emphasize that discipline is the starting point, not the end all solution.)