Self-discipline has a reputation as a battle of wills.
Supposedly, the self-disciplined person doesn’t want to do various unpleasant things, but is strong enough to overcome that.
People who know me well think I’m disciplined. I write books, run a business that requires self-motivation, stick to a strict diet, and keep an exercise routine.
But I don’t think I’m any better at doing what I don’t want than anyone else. If anything, I’m worse.
One source of “self-discipline” I’m pretty good at is self-knowledge. That is, I’m pretty good at predicting how and why my actual behavior will deviate from my intentions.
So, I set intentions I have a pretty good chance of following through on. I know what I like and don’t, how various activities sap and replenish my energy, and my threshold for burnout. I pick goals within those limits.
But I also know that even when I work within my limits, I won’t always do what I intend. So I don’t beat myself up over it, and design my environment and schedule so that when I mess up, the damage will be limited. For example, the “grippy and slippy” tools and weekly energy-based schedule I talk about in Mind Management, Not Time Management.
Self-discipline isn’t doing the unpleasant through force of sheer will, but rather knowing oneself well enough to predict where you’ll fall off-track, then setting up the right guardrails ahead of time.
Aphorism: “The rate of interest is a quantitative measure of the general discounting of future pleasures. If the prospect of spending $1000 a year hence were as delightful as the thought of spending it today, I should not need to be paid for postponing my pleasure.” —Bertrand Russell
When I get stuck on a creative project, I grab this toy off my bookshelf.
This toy perfectly represents what I’m trying to achieve with any creative project. It’s a demonstration of a concept called tensegrity. Tensegrity is a portmanteau of “tension,” and “integrity.”
This bridge is a tensegrity structure.
Wikipedia: Paul Guard
NASA is experimenting with tensegrity to build a robot to explore other planets.
Tensegrity structures use a combination of compressive strength and tensile strength to hold themselves together. The human body is somewhat of a tensegrity structure, with rigid bones held together by flexible muscles and tendons.
I think of creative projects as tensegrity structures. The rigid elements are the constraints of the project. These could be practical constraints such as the laws of physics, budget, or time available, or constraints of a medium or genre, such as that films are thirty frames per second or self-help books tend to be about 250 pages.
The flexible elements are the choices you make within those constraints. The same way flexible elements in a tensegrity structure pull against one another, the choices you make in creative projects have trade-offs. Like if you write a character who’s obsessive, it will feel wrong if he has a calm demeanor, unless you balance that contradiction. For example, he has a calm demeanor only when he’s on a stage and feels like he’s finally in control.
You don’t build a tensegrity structure brick-by-brick, as you might do the bookkeeping for your business. Instead, you must iterate and find the right balance between compression and tension.
Like a tensegrity structure, your creative project either stays together in a cohesive, coherent, whole – or it falls apart.
Aphorism: “Many inventors fail because they do not distinguish between planning and experimenting.” —Henry Ford
Cool: I haven’t tried a Keego water bottle but as a squeezable titanium-lined water bottle, it looks like an exciting alternative to plastic.
Best, David P.S. Achieving creative tensegrity is easier for a fox than a hedgehog.
We’ve long lived in a post-labor world, where few of us require physical activity to meet our needs.
Over recent decades, we’ve entered a post-social world. Little social interaction is required beyond the perfunctory: “Here’s your coffee,” “Thank you,” “Have a nice day.”
In a post-labor world, we replace physical activity with intentional exercise. In a post-social world, I submit, we need to replace the social interaction we would normally have with intentional socializing.
Like exercise, we can logically explain ourselves out of social interaction. We don’t have to, we don’t want to, we’re too busy, and we don’t want to risk injury.
We’re lazy creatures, so are good at coming up with reasons not to do what’s uncomfortable. But our laziness works to our detriment. What’s uncomfortable is often good for us, both as individuals and a society.
Think of this forced social interaction as “social lifting.” Take opportunities to have unnecessary, inconvenient, social interactions you don’t even want to have.
I’m just beginning to think about social lifting, and, as someone whose friends routinely compare to Larry David, if there’s anyone who doesn’t want unnecessary social interaction, it’s me.
But I’m going to start thinking about ways to do some social lifting. Examples:
Pick up a friend at the airport
Instead of buying an iron/hammer/cup of sugar, borrow one from your neighbor
Ask the barista you see daily about a piece of jewelry they’re wearing
Have friends over for dinner and don’t expect a return invitation
Set up a Calendly link and share widely so old friends can schedule a catch-up call
Social lifting isn’t about making everyday interactions with people you’ll never see again less superficial. That would be great, but is more like social strolling. I’m thinking more about having interactions of consequence with people who are a part of your life either through history or coincidental proximity.
Overall, think of ways to skip the elevator and take the stairs.
Aphorism: “No one can live happily who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility.” —Seneca
Cool:Splitwise is a handy app for splitting trip expenses with friends.
Maybe 2025 is the year you write your novel. I have a hack to make it easier.
The tough thing about writing a novel is, you’re already on a computer enough. Presumably you need to make a living and aren’t assuming your novel will be a smashing financial success. So how can writing your novel be a priority?
If you’re writing a novel, hopefully you’re also reading novels. So to finish your novel, make writing your novel as much as possible like reading one.
Take some section of your usual reading ritual, and turn it into a writing ritual – a writing ritual as much as possible like your reading ritual.
So if you often curl up with a novel to read at night or on a Saturday morning, sit in that same reading spot. Yet instead of reading a novel, write one. Write whatever entertains you. Make writing a novel like reading one.
To make writing more like reading, write by hand, in a small notebook. I really like these notebooks (Amazon), because they’re only 68 pages long. So you fill one page at a time, and one notebook at a time. I’ve made it to the second notebook!
If you think it’s crazy to write by hand, it’s not. Neil Gaiman writes his first drafts by hand. He describes the process as like throwing mud at a wall, then seeing what shapes it makes.
Which is also a wonderfully low-pressure way to think about your first draft. Make writing as unpretentious as possible. I try to use the cheapest pen I can find, just because it makes it feel more casual.
Once your first draft is done, sure, you’ll have to spend some time on a computer, to transpose what you’ve written and make some edits. But writing like you read might be all the momentum you need.
Book:King Dork (Amazon) is a coming-of-age novel in the modern-day Catcher variety.
Cool:Sustainable Containables (Amazon) are LFGB-certified (I’ve confirmed) silicone containers that won’t leak phthalates into your food.
Best, David P.S. In case you missed it, I talked to behavior-change expert B.J. Fogg about how to build good habits.
If you get home gym equipment and cancel your membership, you might find you work out less.
When you belonged to the gym, you had to put things in place to get a workout. Find the time, pack your gym bag, schedule your other errands for your drive to or from the gym.
You had to create what behavioral scientists call an “implementation intention.” The more specific your implementation intention, the more likely you’ll follow through.
But when you have a home gym, your implementation intention gets weaker. You don’t schedule a workout because you can do it whenever. When you do think about working out, your brain conveniently reminds you it’s time to change the air filter on your furnace.
I propose a cognitive bias, heretofore unknown, called the “pool table paradox.” It’s the paradox that sometimes when it’s more convenient, it’s harder to do.
As most people who have had a pool table know, pool tables are lots of fun when you’re at a bar or a friend’s house. But then you buy a pool table, thinking you’ll play all the time. Somehow, you never do.
Sometimes, by making it a little harder to do, you do it more.
Aphorism: “The great difficulty of writing is to make the language of the educated mind express our confused ideas, half feelings, half thoughts, when we are little more than bundles of instinctive tendencies.” —Helen Keller
Cool:StayFocusd is a simple Chrome extension for blocking yourself from distracting sites.
Best, David P.S. Join the Patreon to support the newsletter and access a bunch of bonus videos and screencasts I created this year.
In Paris in the 1800s, if you wanted to “text” a friend, you’d send them a note in a pneumatic tube.
Yes, the kind the teller used to send you a lollipop when your mom drove-through at the bank.
This old and primitive tech was drastically affected by new tech. The electric telegraph quickly connected the globe, just by sending short electrical charges through a wire. Once the transcontinental telegraph was installed in the U.S., the Pony Express, which could send a message from New York to San Francisco in two weeks, went out of business in two days.
But the electric telegraph didn’t cause reduced demand for pneumatic tubes. It caused demand to skyrocket.
Once a telegram reached a station, it needed to be printed out and delivered to its destination. The streets became jammed with messengers. But pneumatic tubes could send messages more efficiently than wires or people.
Networks of tubes sprang up in major cities around the world, such as New York, Rio, and London. But Paris’s was the most extensive.
Once the network was in place, yet another piece of old tech rose in demand: hand-written notes. Electric telegrams, you had to pay for by the letter. These telegrams were printed on paper anyway, so Paris’s Pneumatic Post offered these little blue notes.
For one low price, you could write anything you could fit on one of these notes. It would get across town in a couple hours. If someone sent you one of these notes, they were sending you “pneus.”
We expect new tech to decrease demand for old tech, but sometimes it has the opposite effect.
Computers in offices increased demand for paper. The internet has increased demand for shipping. Music streaming services have increased demand for vinyl.
You can bet that while AI decreases demand for some things, it will increase demand for others.
Book:Cattle Kingdom (Amazon) tells the story of the gold rush that was cattle farming in the wild, wild, western U.S.
Cool: This Fluance turntable (Amazon) is a great introduction to audiophile-level vinyl-record listening.
Best, David P.S. I’ve created reels of this story on Instagram and TikTok.
Millennials and gen Xers were either taught this lesson by their dads, or they weren’t.
This is never more clear to me than when I see how quick some creators are to build their businesses on all-in-one platforms – something that is their email list and their blog and their payment processor and hosts their courses. Or, when authors build their entire businesses on Amazon.
The lesson I bet these creators weren’t taught was, Never buy one of these.
My dad told me to never buy a TV/VCR combo, in slightly more recent years a TV/VCR/DVD combo. The basic logic behind this advice was: If one thing breaks the whole thing breaks.
If the TV or the VCR stops working, you have three choices: Take it in for repairs and have neither a TV nor a VCR while it’s fixed, or get rid of it and buy a new TV and VCR.
The third choice was, Frankenstein together a monstrosity like my grandpa had in his basement: A TV on which only the picture worked, on top of another on which only the audio worked.
It’s easy to see the appeal of the TV/VCR. It’s convenient and often cheaper, if not in money, in time and mental energy. But if one thing breaks, the whole thing breaks.
If their email deliverability tanks, you have to live with it.
If they get acquired and start squeezing out every dime they can, too bad.
If Amazon randomly shuts down your account, there goes your whole business.
Like much advice, there’s a time and a place. If it’s your first apartment and you can’t even afford a garbage bin with a lid, fine, get the TV/VCR at the thrift store. Or if you live dangerously and don’t mind taking the hit if disaster strikes.
But not me. I will not buy a TV/VCR.
Aphorism: “Books…are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with ’em, then we grow out of ’em and leave ’em behind, as evidence of our earlier stage of development.” —Dorothy L. Sayers
So if you say you’re gonna smash 3 pizzas today and watch all of Breaking Bad, and you do it, you’re disciplined.
Though discipline usually has a value judgement attached to it. You gotta exercise and eat healthy. The more “boring” it is, if you do it, people think you’re disciplined.
Sustainable discipline has to lie somewhere in-between. Few of us can stand to be pure hedonists, and if you aspire to only do boring stuff, you’ll fall off the rails. If “discipline” takes a great deal of willpower, you’ll have a hard time staying disciplined.
But if you set up your schedule and environment to make it easy to do the things you intend, and hard to do the things you don’t, you’ll have automatic discipline.
The archetypal example is Ulysses having himself tied to the mast of his ship, so he wouldn’t be tempted by the song of the Sirens. If you want to eat fewer sweets and less alcohol, tie yourself to the mast – don’t keep candy or beer in your house.
But besides making it hard to do the things you don’t intend, you can also make it easier to do what you do intend. If you want to exercise, you’re better off joining the gym on the way home from work than the one twenty minutes away.
90% of discipline is making desired actions easy and undesired actions hard.
Aphorism: “In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.” —Albert Camus
Cool: This pumpkin seed protein (Amazon) is a plant-based, legume-free protein powder. The only I’ve found I can tolerate.
One of the loneliest things about being a creator is, you can’t borrow self-worth.
If you have a degree from a prestigious university, work for a big company others have heard of, and have a title that means something, you have a lot of borrowed self-worth.
Other people know a PhD is a big accomplishment. They know that university has a great reputation. They’ve heard of your employer, and “VP of Sales,” they surmise, is just one step behind President of Sales.
If that isn’t enough to make you feel worthy, you might have lots of well-known clients you can list off. It sounds impressive.
I’ve had a job before. I know, this stuff feels good, and it’s real – it comes from a lot of hard work.
But a lot of that self-worth is due to the hard work of others. It can come from sources as borrowed as the city you live in. How many wannabe screenwriters feel good about themselves just for living in Los Angeles, for example?
Everybody needs self-worth, but that need stands in the paths of many would-be creators. Because to go down the path of creator, you have to leave borrowed self-worth behind.
It takes a while to gain another form of self-worth. Because as a creator you aren’t your degree, your job title, or your clients.
You are only what you make.
Aphorism: “The innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.” —Niccolò Machiavelli
Book:Madame Bovary (Amazon) is an incredibly well-written classic, an allegory for the conflict between romanticism and rationality.
There’s what you say is important, then there are your actions.
You may say you want to be a writer, but if you don’t spend time writing, you don’t.
Economists call this “revealed preference,” but it’s also described by the adage, “Actions speak louder than words.”
But actions work in a cycle. How you spend your time shapes your preferences so you spend more of your time that way.
This is why your first hour is so important.
You may say you hate the drama on social media, but if you spend the first hour of your day doomscrolling, you love the drama on social media. You’ll spend much of the subsequent hours doomscrolling, if not physically, mentally.
How you spend your first hour is a revealed preference of what matters to you. But if you make a conscious decision to change how you use that first hour, not only will you affirm what matters to you, you’ll do so all day.
Put your moments where your mouth is.
Book:1491 (Amazon) tells what is known of the civilizations in the Americas before Columbus.
Cool:truInside: Election is a fantastic documentary about the making of the greatest film in the history of the world: Alexander Payne’s Election.
