How to work hard

[AndyC]

How does one do it? I can never motivate myself to do work, and I'm sick of it.

 

[The Gopher]

How does one do it? I can never motivate myself to do work, and I'm sick of it.

Motivation is fleeting. Discipline is forever.

Motivation either comes from desire or fear. Fear what will become of you if you don't work.

 

[AndyC]

Discipline... Where could I find some?

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

Discipline... Where could I find some?

Be your own disciplinarian and live by your own rules of conduct.

 

[crippli]

It is hard work just being alive. You may not notice it, but even in sleep the body is working hard with all the crap it's been exposed to during the day.

 

[Nebulous]

Friends.
There's an ISFJ I'm friends with who makes sure I get my schoolwork in. I'm someone who can spend an entire class doing everything but the work I'm supposed to do, but she has some magic power that eventually gets me to do stuff

She'll even stay after school with me when I have a lot of stuff due (like at the end of the marking period) and she'll help me get work done by either explaining and walking me through things or just letting me copy her answers. And she's a frikin genius so like. It's awesome.
She's like a disapproving mother
But she's not condescending
And she has a great sense of humor so I pay her back for all the work by giving her comic relief.

But yeah. My advice is to find someone who makes you feel like doing work. - if you find a cute girl or guy or whoever you're into who can help out, that's an added bonus
Or someone who has the patience to help you get it done. I dunno. I definitely would have failed some classes if it weren't for her.
---

Btw 'discipline' is probably my least favorite word in the English language.
Gross. Horrible. It makes me want to run and hide.

I don't do things unless I feel like doing them. So the trick to getting things done is to switch up your environment so that you're in a place where you want to do things.

 

[TheManBeyond]

i work hard in my interests but not because of the money
i can spend 12+ hours per day in recording music or making psycodelic videoclips for it
every day until i get the final pice, let's say 2-3 months in a row
sure, i don't get paid for it (at least atm) but i will be able to look behind when i'm older and say: here's my legacy to this pile of shit of world

in my job i want to run as soon as Windows asks my username and password
but i solved the problem, i'm done with it.

 

[Cheeseumpuffs]

why would you want to?

if life does not make itself free and easy before you it's probably not worth doing.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

Not how.

You must ask yourself:
Why.
What.
Where.
When.
Who.

Only thing will things become clear.

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWHNr0BrNgo

 

[PmjPmj]

Come live with me.

I'll motivate your ass to move mountains

 

[cheese]

Come live with me.

I'll motivate your ass to move mountains

This is actually an awesome idea.

Pay someone a slightly inflated amount of rent to live with them, train under them and thereby absorb those habits and traits of theirs which you covet. Like an apprenticeship, but for discipline (or whatever else).

Joining the army takes it too far imo.

 

[PmjPmj]

Or just hire a coach.

There's a lot of money to be made in telling people what they need to do.

I did a spot of training for it myself, but in the end I binned it off because there were too many fluffy-feeler types between where I was and where I needed to be. I may pick it up again in the years to come.

 

[Minuend]

Well, for me, it's easier to get things done if I'm reminded I have that task that needs to be done frequently. Eventually I get either sick of thinking about it or I get in the mind state where I feel like or feel compelled to do it. For instance, I was dog watching this weekend and every time I saw the dog I was reminded of walks, so at like 5-7 in the evening I just had to go for that walk. Though, I'm a bit weird so maybe this just works for me.

Also, if you're like depressed or something, motivation tend to sink drastically. If that applies to you, consider eating better and do some exercise every now and then, even if you don't feel like it at all. It wont do miracles, but it can have a slight positive effect for a few hours.

 

[Happy]

In no particular order:

-Start working early. Don't stop.

-Work in silence and with indirect sunlight.

-Immerse yourself completely in what it is you're doing. The focus will come.

-Drink plenty of water. Get plenty of sleep.

-Don't ever think of yourself as being above whatever you're doing. Strive to be better always.

-Don't fall into the trap of listening to music. Music is for pros and all those who aren't truly engaged in what they're doing. Rule of thumb: if you have questions, you're not a pro yet.

-If you're not tired at the end of it, you haven't worked hard enough. If it's late when you finish, you haven't worked hard enough.

-Always be afraid of failure. It'll help you push harder.

That's all I've got for now. One last thing though:
Learning to work hard is only step 1. Once you've mastered working hard, then you get to realise you're working too hard and you'll have reached step 2. Step 2 is learning to be more effective (not to be confused with efficient). Don't fall into the trap and skip to step 2; you'll just become lazy.

 

[redbaron]

find something you enjoy, then you'll work hard

don't increase your cortisol levels for something that doesn't have inherent meaning to you, that'll just turn you into more of the same shitty humans already populating everywhere

 

[Happy]

find something you enjoy, then you'll work hard

don't increase your cortisol levels for something that doesn't have inherent meaning to you, that'll just turn you into more of the same shitty humans already populating everywhere

Largely, I agree, but with one major caveat. The whole "find something you enjoy ... work hard" thing breaks down if you don't find something you enjoy. The way to find what you enjoy is to work hard at a number of things until your understanding of them has developed enough that you may appreciate its intricacies. The things you like will stick.

So,
work hard at lots of things > discern the one(s) you enjoy most > work hard at it/them > win

 

[cheese]

OP:
Discipline isn't motivation.

http://www.wisdomination.com/screw-motivation-what-you-need-is-discipline/
Read this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/
Subreddit for people looking to practise discipline together.

There are a ton of useful tips out there which I won't cover in depth here, but I'll note a few: environment has a big influence on what you achieve, so put yourself in an environment conducive to work and make hardworking friends. Pressure is helpful, as is accountability (weekly reports to a friend or family). Writing your goals down is helpful too; clearly-defining them is essential (use external yardsticks rather than vague abstract terms). These are all supported by research, with accountability having the greatest impact. Start your day with the hardest task you absolutely must get done that day, NOT with something fun, because that initial victory sets the tone for the rest of your day. Slowly developing clear knowledge of what is fundamentally important to you in life (your core values) is crucial and will save a lot of time down the road. This is also the best way to remain both motivated and disciplined, because nothing gets you going like doing something you really believe in (even if that something is pure hedonistic short-sighted pleasure).

At the moment I'm trying to keep in mind a few simple, useful principles I found on a blog somewhere (after spending months/years reading about the topic and not putting much to actual use I decided to just take the first thing I saw that I liked and stick to it):

Go directly to work.
Start, often. (ie No matter how many times you stop, just keep going back to work)
You are accountable.
Clearly-defined tasks.
Give a damn about what you're doing/Have a good reason.

The rest of this post deals with the experiential side of things.

Spoiler

I struggle with working hard when unmotivated too, but the difference between being motivated to do things and doing them out of discipline can actually be felt. For me the first step was recognising that I procrastinate to run away from the 'bad feeling' I get when I think about a task I don't want to do. Knowing I was emotionally escaping made me decide to reverse my emotional direction, and instead of flinching away from the bad feeling, turn towards it. I made myself chase after feeling awful, which made me do the shitty things I didn't want to do. When I felt bad, instead of flinching away I'd bury my attention in the feeling so that my whole mind fully understood it was going to keep feeling this crappy, now and all throughout the task, because I wasn't going to move my attention away from the crappiness. Once that became clear, doing the task was the only logical option. This is a good quick-fix for easy tasks like paying a bill or sending an email, and overall learning how your mind works.

The second step is to set "awareness" alarms. If you've got the procrastination bug bad (or attention issues like ADHD) you probably zone out for hours with zero awareness, then suddenly 'come to' after midnight realising you've achieved absolutely nothing. To combat this you have to start regularly checking in on yourself - set literal alarms every hour if necessary. This gives you the opportunity to break the spell of your fun activity, ask yourself some hard questions and if you choose to re-engage in the procrastination, know that you're entirely choosing to do it. (Constantly questioning yourself like this leads to better choices over time, in my experience, even if you suck at first and have to feel pretty terrible about your conscious choices for a few months. You just have to frequently interrupt your fun to make sure you're engaging in whatever activity consciously.)

So now you should have a clearer idea of how you're choosing to engage your time. It's time to get a clearer idea of your internal process: start taking note of every instance of escapism, every instance of self-pity at having to work, no matter how fleeting, and recognise that they're bullshit and irrelevant, because what needs to be done needs to be done regardless of how you feel. You have to start identifying your larger patterns and start admitting that whenever you say, "I'll just do [favourite procrastinatory activity] first then I'll DEFINITELY start on the Task", you don't get anything done 9 times out of 10, and start being realistic about that 1 time you actually keep your word (no, it doesn't count as proof that procrastination is fine). You don't want to just win/lose "this one time" - you want to shift your entire behavioural pattern, which means you need to start working with the *bigger* numbers ("9 times out of 10, I fail if I start my day with this activity") and follow their implications. You have to acknowledge that every time you tell yourself that you managed to get something done even after procrastinating as an attempt to justify procrastinating now, you're lying to yourself about your true *overall* ability to manage your time. You have to make "You" - everything you feel in that moment that is at odds with the goal - irrelevant. You have to stop letting "You" matter. (And for god's sake set a goal that matters to you. Don't do this to yourself for some bullshit someone else wants you to do. The goal must be genuinely meaningful to you on some level.)

The third step has to do with how to actually Do. I realised at some point that one of the biggest blocks to me Doing Stuff is the loop I get trapped in in my head. It starts off with thoughts, branches out in a hundred different Ne directions and ends with an avalanche of shitty feelings (failure, shame, anger, frustration, confusion) after I've lost hours to arguing over why I should or shouldn't do the Task, while also getting distracted by more fun things which allow me to stop arguing with myself for a little while. I'd developed plenty of awareness of how I chose to spend my time, I had plenty of awareness of my inner thoughts and the sneaky tricks my mind pulled, but I still couldn't Do, and I was stumped. I couldn't work out how other people could do simple things while I couldn't, even though I knew just as well as they did why I should, and even had a host of elaborate arguments. I expended so much mental energy on working out how to do things but could never find that magic switch that other people seemed to have which made the things they thought and cared about doing appear in the real world, while the things I thought and cared about doing stayed trapped in my head. Then one day I discovered that the part of you that makes your body move and do stuff is sort of separate from the part of you that thinks and feels. (I know it seems abysmally asinine, but this was honestly news, at least in a sense, to me - the disconnect was that severe.) Thinking is different to Doing! I discovered I could shut off the part of me that thought and felt, argued and got distracted, and focus only on the externals - basically do things mindlessly - so I stopped getting internal interference from my procrastinating self.

I didn't learn to do this till I started learning to lie to myself in a totally different area of life about what I was feeling by ignoring it and shutting it all off. That's when I realised I had a feelings/thoughts switch I could flip on and off at will (still not 100% success rate, but more control than before), rather than in unconscious response to environmental changes. [Please note: Not advocating lying to yourself. This was an experiment which I've ended. Discovering the switch was its main use.] The easiest way I can put it is this: When you feel something, instead of looking at it, look away. Turn your attention away from it and forget it exists. Immediately put your attention on something else. In the context of discipline, you want to immediately put your attention on taking action, without a further thought on anything at all. It's thought and desire for other things that gets in the way of us achieving the things we want long-term - they compel us to do things that don't actually help us. I've learnt you can actually ignore what you think and feel for your greater overall good, and you don't need much motivation in that moment to do it. You don't even need to be that motivated by future benefit, you just need to ignore whatever you're thinking and feeling and get your body moving. When you're lucky enough to shut your headvoice down entirely, Doing becomes almost automatic. Those times are awesome.

Sometimes however, plain ignoring is all you can manage, and your head will keep yammering while you do things. That sucks, but your body is still capable of moving about and being controlled by another part of you. Remember: Your head can think one thing while your body does another. That's basically what feeling bad about procrastinating while procrastinating is anyway. So make your body move. You just need to break your tasks down small enough that you can direct your body to do them easily without much supervision even while your mind is begging to do something else. "Pick up the textbook." [No! Let's play a game instead!] "Open it up." [I'll only play for 30 mins I swear! Then I'll study EXTRA hard to make up for it!] "Stare at the page." [This is a waste of time, I obviously can't concentrate. I probably need to get all this excitement out of my system with a game then I'll be able to focus.] "Read every word out loud." [Just HALF a gam- "A sausage is a cylindrical meat product usually made from ground meat, along with salt, spices, other flavorings and balls."]

The key thing is, the more actions you take, the more your mind will eventually shift away from its complaining to becoming engaged in the new task, and you will build momentum which will make it easier and easier to continue. The physical action must come first. If you are a chronic procrastinator, stuck in your head, you will basically NEVER be able to think your way into doing ANYTHING. I want to make this really clear: Your mind, and whatever feelings/internal experiences/thoughts/sense of self you have associated with it, is not the part of you that does things in the outside world. Your mind will never get you there. There is a fundamental disconnect between your mind and the world around you. That disconnect is not bridged by more thought, but by your body moving. You must just move your body and do things until your mind catches up to the new programme.

You're probably not going to feel good about it, so feeling good isn't what you should be aiming for. When I'm doing something out of discipline, I feel either grim or blank. I'm generally not engaged in a thought or feeling-loop - at most, I feel irritated and maybe determined, and my determination is something I experience through my continued actions and my continued decisions to take those actions, rather than a mere internal feeling. Often, I'm actually just mindless. So what you should be aiming for is defining your goal, placing attention on that goal, shutting off attention on everything else including everything that has to do with you as a person, and coming to grips with feeling like shit.

Posted all this because I've never seen this talked about anywhere (how to make the shift from procrastinating - and feeling you can't do anything and have zero idea how to change it aside from external factors like fear of consequences, pressure, environment, peer help, etc - to discipline). I'm familiar with the basics of GTD (breaking tasks down into the next actionable step) and other productivity tools, but I've got really *bad* procrastination. I can break things down to the smallest task imaginable and *still* put it off. Learning how to understand and control my *internal* process is what has made some difference for me, because nothing I'd seen before covered the actual inhabited experience of changing from procrastinating in one moment to Doing the next.

The funny thing is, it actually really does come down to, "Just shut up and do it", but it's never really been made clear how, or what you feel like when you're being disciplined (like I said, I feel pretty dull and mindless during because I'm divorcing my self-sabotaging, instant-gratification-seeking mind from my behaviour - I only feel good at the end because I've accomplished something). I'm not sure if my explanation helps at all, but I hope it does! You can learn to gain some control over yourself and learn where the parts of your mind are that allow you to do things despite hating them at the time.

1) Build awareness of your habits, your internal beliefs and feelings, your large-scale patterns, and call yourself on your bullshit. Go with the big numbers, not the one-offs.
2) Run towards shitty feelings instead of away from them and drench your mind in them
3) Move your body and have it take physical, task-related action while your mind is telling you to procrastinate
4) Turn off your feelings and thoughts when convenient
5) Don't expect to feel great. Expect to feel like shit, or to feel nothing. Your feelings and experiences are absolutely irrelevant: the Doing continues regardless.
6) If you do feel great, awesome. Lucky you. Plan all your next moves while you've got that nice motivation going. But don't stop Doing if the feeling stops.
7) When you've achieved something, celebrate it to the motherfucking fullest. You want to store this memory of achievement deeeep inside your brain, and gradually build up a library of them over time. This is where your motivation will start coming from: real victories, and the knowledge gained from your own personal experience that hard work pays off. That certainty is what will start fuelling you and help make the focus on long-term gratification - something most humans are not well-suited for - easier.

[Note on 4): You might be great at accepting shittiness in other areas of life. Don't assume this means you've accepted feeling shitty while Doing as well.]

I've done work I had no external pressure for while depressed and with terrible brainfog, barely able to make essential decisions and hating every minute of it. I made myself go on for hours, and it fucking sucked. It was taxing, physically painful and I was constantly reminded of how awful it was because I had to make the decision to keep going over and over (this was one of those days where I couldn't shut my mindvoice up). But now I know I can do it, and ultimately it was worth it (and I've done it many equally shitty times since). I've learnt unpleasant, taxing pieces for work while crying so hard my hands kept falling off the keys. Today, far less dramatically but much more usefully, I found my "automatic action" after waking up to myself and realising I was procrastinating was not to keep going with the activity after a moment's deliberation, but to switch my attention off it and go straight to what I was supposed to be doing. I've literally never experienced that kind of automatic refocusing on a task I'm not already motivated about (through fear/obligation/excitement/values). I'm still not a hard worker, nor am I consistent. I'm just slightly better than I was before, with more tools to hijack my constantly self-sabotaging process and replace it with something better.

Of course, the best way to get things done is to do things deeply aligned with your core beliefs, because this naturally creates deep motivation, which creates discipline of its own. This might require either an environmental shift (stop doing shit you don't believe in) or internal organising (building stronger associations between the mundane tasks you do now and the results that are in line with your values/goals). But these both take a lot of time. For now, you can learn to make yourself do basic shitty things by chasing the shitty feeling, or flipping your mental switch off and getting your body moving. Seek crappiness, seek mindless doing. You'll get there! (Or somewhere, anyway!)

Final note: If you feel terrible all the time for a long time, you're probably doing something wrong. Most likely, you're doing something in a way which fundamentally conflicts with your values (true for Fs and Ts alike), or you've tricked yourself into thinking you're powerless in a situation where you're really not and thus feel disengaged, which means all the work you do is forced, unmotivated work. "Feeling terrible" isn't the eternal home of discipline and goal-achieving, it's just something you must bear for true discipline to develop. Long-term, motivation and alignment with values is just as important.

 

[redbaron]

Largely, I agree, but with one major caveat. The whole "find something you enjoy ... work hard" thing breaks down if you don't find something you enjoy. The way to find what you enjoy is to work hard at a number of things until your understanding of them has developed enough that you may appreciate its intricacies. The things you like will stick.

So,
work hard at lots of things > discern the one(s) you enjoy most > work hard at it/them > win

lol

you probably don't enjoy it if you have to "work hard" and "develop understanding" before you get any kind of benefit from it

"hard work" must be the most overrated ideal to ever occur in the modern world - it's how we got to baby boomers. i'd like to think we're collectively smart enough to not repeat that but i'm probably wrong.

 

[cheese]

Or just hire a coach.

There's a lot of money to be made in telling people what they need to do.

I did a spot of training for it myself, but in the end I binned it off because there were too many fluffy-feeler types between where I was and where I needed to be. I may pick it up again in the years to come.

I don't think that's anywhere near as effective as living with a coach.

Seriously, environment makes a difference.

You trained to be a coach? Cool.

 

[redbaron]

not sure why anyone would want to reduce their soul to engaging in soulnumbing work for the sake of meeting pointless external or internal criteria that exist to further the ego and not the actual self, with the accomplishment of each menial task serving only to fuel the ego in feeling more legitimate about its place in the world and among peers

it's just typical carrot on a stick and/or mating game bullshit on crack. the modern world rewards the slow decline of your worth in positive correlation to its decline in the form of promotions, payrises and changes in job title and description. things you can now tell the other drones about and have good feelings because your ego has carved a little territory of robust enough construction to prevent other egos drowning it out

careerism is actually so hideous, just keep feeding the ego until ego becomes the default mode of existence and then we can all drown in an endless sea of well-to-do fake-smiling high-achievers

and so we became the baby boomers we so desperately tried to avoid becoming, because the ego knows only how to regurgitate and is devoid of any true creative worth

 

[cheese]

^OK, what's the "actual self" and how do you further it then?

 

[redbaron]

why would it need to be furthered? are you implying that people are inadequate and somehow need to "improve"?

for what purpose are people needing to "discipline" themselves for? who and what are they working hard for?

i'd wager than in 90%+ people these things will almost invariably come down to ego or some perpetuation of expectations reinforced from childhood

~

disclaimer that this is just directed at pointless careerist-oriented advice

 

[Perfectly Normal Beast]

buy more stuff!!

 

[cheese]

why would it need to be furthered? are you implying that people are inadequate and somehow need to "improve"?

for what purpose are people needing to "discipline" themselves for? who and what are they working hard for?

i'd wager than in 90%+ people these things will almost invariably come down to ego or some perpetuation of expectations reinforced from childhood

~

disclaimer that this is just directed at pointless careerist-oriented advice

I wasn't making the assumption they need to be furthered. I thought it was implied in your post.

meeting pointless external or internal criteria that exist to further the ego and not the actual self

If not, fine.

 

[The Gopher]

This is actually an awesome idea.

Pay someone a slightly inflated amount of rent to live with them, train under them and thereby absorb those habits and traits of theirs which you covet. Like an apprenticeship, but for discipline (or whatever else).

Joining the army takes it too far imo.

Yeah but at least they pay you.