8
votes
Motivation
If you don't have motivation but you can master discipline. How will it work out in real life? Will you still be successful,happy, bla bla bla...
Is is similar to, "hard work can beat talent"? Or is it something else.
P.S Related example of these scenarios are appreciated.
There's a good saying thrown about a lot re: Working Out.
Motivation won't get you into the gym every time but discipline will.
I think motivation, or rather our perception of motivation is warped ,similarly to how our perception of happiness is warped, by how people portray themselves to other.
Nobody is always happy, but there are a lot of people who only ever show their happy side to others and so the perception becomes "So and so is always happy, why am I not always happy? Is there something wrong with me, everyone else is always happy, why am I only sometimes happy?"
It's the same thing with motivation, people arn't always motivated but when you see the results of their discipline it can come off as if they are highly motivated people. That guy you see in the gym 5 days a week, it might appear like he is highly motivated but his internal dialogue could very well be "I want to be at home right now watching netflix and eating candy, but it's Monday and on Mondays I go to the gym for an hour so that is what I'm doing." but because of your perception you see it as " I wish I could work out 5 days a week but I have barely enough motivation to get myself in here once a week, I wish I was a more motivated person." or "I've always wanted to write a book, I just don't have the motivation though, not like all those published authors, I wish I was a motivated person."
GRRM asked Stephen King how it is that in the same time it takes him to write 3 chapters King can publish 2 or 3 books; Kings response was that he writes 6 pages a day, he just sits down for 3-4 hours and writes 6 pages. You might think with how many books King has written surely he loves to write and he has overwhelming motivation to just sit down and write and write, but no, it's discipline, he sits down and writes every day, 6 pages.
So whilst motivation comes and goes and surely be a boost to whatever you're doing, if there's something you want to do consistently , it's discipline that will get you there, not motivation. There are no people who are motivated 24/7 to achieve there goals, just people who have built up discipline.
An important - and obvious but often overlooked - aspect of discipline is persistence.
The thing to be aware of with persistence is that we tend to vastly over-estimate what's feasible in the short-term and vastly under-estimate what's feasible in the long-term and I think this is critical for planning - don't front-load your goals by trying to achieve too much too quickly.
I feel like this describes me. I have trouble getting amped up or "motivated" for much of anything unless it's directly related to something I am genuinely passionate about. That said, I can produce high quality work if I'm in a position that's somewhat... routine.
I don't know if hard work beats talent in the general sense - it probably doesn't, tbh, but that doesn't mean we can't succeed. There are jobs where consistency and diligence outweigh talent or innovation or what have you, and I think that's where we can actually stand out.
For me a routine beats discipline every time. But discipline helps me more than I think motivation ever will because motivation evaporates.
I have a fairly decent sized property needing a lot of work to get it back where it needs to be due to prior owner neglect. I'll get off work and it will be a night I had decided I would do x, y, and z. I am motivated in the morning, and excited through the day that I get to do it because I like doing whatever it is. But I get off work, I make dinner, and I sit down. So now I am comfortable and daylight is dwindling. I will eventually say to myself, "It needs to get done. You're going to be mad at yourself if you waste this daylight and the weekend comes around and you can't do the other thing dependent on this getting done." And that gets me up and moving. Knowing how irritated I'll be later. Because I am the type to fall into that, I know I need to do little by little all week. I should do little by little all week. Then I wait until the end of the week. Or I will do the whole ten more minutes 5 times if I let myself. So what works for me is, "Shut up. You'll be mad at yourself. I know you. Get up now."
I would consider routine just one method of building up discipline, I'm going to do x,y,and z on Monday night because that is what I do on Monday night, is discipline, just because you've put it into a routine doesn't make it not discipline (you're the one who created the routine and has decided to stick with it after all)
Routine for me is just going through the motions more than anything so I just never look at it like that.
I don't think you can begin to master discipline without being motivated in the first place. Even in a routine, you need motivation to keep that routine going. Maybe I am misunderstanding, but in my opinion, motivation != discipline.
Regardless, once you have the motivation to work yourself into a routine, you can ask "does hard work beat talent?" I think it most certainly can, and does in most cases. If you listen to any actor, writer, musician, etc worth their salt, they talk about how hard they had to work to be where they are. Being talented is great but for anyone one person with talent, there are 50 others who can outdo them. When you do anything, especially creative, you will keep getting shot down from every angle. Only people who preserve through the BS are the ones who reap the real rewards. It takes longer for some people, but if you just let every little thing stop you, how will you get anything done?