Make the decision and strongly commit to being a mentally strong person
Continuously monitor your actions to ensure they are the actions of a mentally strong person
Maintain this (for weeks/months/years?) until a new self-identity is formed.
If I’ve misrepresented something point it out, but this looks to me like a recipe for failure. It’s missing fundamental parts of the human experience. People most often fail at their goals because of conflicting short and long term desires, forgetfulness and existing habits. Jocko doesn’t adequately take that into account. Making a decision is useful—you start preparing for the new challenge, (e.g. If I’m going to wake up at 5AM I better get breakfast ready the night before...) and there’ll be some self consistency effect with the newly formed intention. There’s two obvious problems,
a) It’s massively mentally energy intensive. It’s hard to choose the kale over the donut or work over reddit. Temptations don’t disappear after you’ve decided not to pursue them. You have to decide over and over again throughout the day not to chase them. Decision fatigue is a thing.
b) Humans forget. Anyone that has done any meditation will be familiar with the experience of not being able to sustain attention on an object for more than a few moments despite the most earnest effort. Even if we didn’t have all the other things we need to think about every day to occupy our minds, maintaining consistent attention is an impossible goal.
Jocko’s framing that discipline is a decision represents an incremental improvement over Nike’s ‘Just do It’.
I definitely don’t think Jocko’s material on “how to get things done” is his strongest suit, and I don’t think he intends it to be really.
I would say that temptations do disappear if you successfully implement a mindset of “it’s really not an option”, but again, the implementation of that mindset in the first place is tricky.
Honestly I think one of the benefits of being in the military, at least for a certain type of person, is that the military provides a supporting framework and incentive structure for building good habits. You work out every day because it’s part of your job, basically. You put yourself through all kinds of physical deprivation because you have to, it’s required, you’re not making yourself do it, you’re being ordered to do it. For the same reason, professional athletes don’t have to badger themselves to go to the gym—going to the gym is aligned with their other goals. For people like me, going to the gym is a distraction from my other goals.
So,
Make the decision and strongly commit to being a mentally strong person
Continuously monitor your actions to ensure they are the actions of a mentally strong person
Maintain this (for weeks/months/years?) until a new self-identity is formed.
If I’ve misrepresented something point it out, but this looks to me like a recipe for failure. It’s missing fundamental parts of the human experience. People most often fail at their goals because of conflicting short and long term desires, forgetfulness and existing habits. Jocko doesn’t adequately take that into account. Making a decision is useful—you start preparing for the new challenge, (e.g. If I’m going to wake up at 5AM I better get breakfast ready the night before...) and there’ll be some self consistency effect with the newly formed intention. There’s two obvious problems,
a) It’s massively mentally energy intensive. It’s hard to choose the kale over the donut or work over reddit. Temptations don’t disappear after you’ve decided not to pursue them. You have to decide over and over again throughout the day not to chase them. Decision fatigue is a thing.
b) Humans forget. Anyone that has done any meditation will be familiar with the experience of not being able to sustain attention on an object for more than a few moments despite the most earnest effort. Even if we didn’t have all the other things we need to think about every day to occupy our minds, maintaining consistent attention is an impossible goal.
Jocko’s framing that discipline is a decision represents an incremental improvement over Nike’s ‘Just do It’.
I definitely don’t think Jocko’s material on “how to get things done” is his strongest suit, and I don’t think he intends it to be really.
I would say that temptations do disappear if you successfully implement a mindset of “it’s really not an option”, but again, the implementation of that mindset in the first place is tricky.
Honestly I think one of the benefits of being in the military, at least for a certain type of person, is that the military provides a supporting framework and incentive structure for building good habits. You work out every day because it’s part of your job, basically. You put yourself through all kinds of physical deprivation because you have to, it’s required, you’re not making yourself do it, you’re being ordered to do it. For the same reason, professional athletes don’t have to badger themselves to go to the gym—going to the gym is aligned with their other goals. For people like me, going to the gym is a distraction from my other goals.