Think You Need More Self-Discipline? You Probably Actually Need Less
Learning to relocate your motivation can help you develop a sustained creative practice.
The explanations out there on the interwebs as to why we’re failing to achieve creative dreams center around one dominant theme: we’re just not working hard enough. Writers, for example, are told they need to write every day. But many of us aren’t able to discipline ourselves into a regular and sustained habit of creative practice, as much as we want to. I tried for years to write every day and felt guilty and inadequate when I failed. I began to believe that I just didn’t have what it takes.
That didn’t seem right, though. How could I not have what it takes to be a disciplined writer when I love writing so much? At least I thought I loved writing. As a child I wrote because I enjoyed it; I liked the feeling of juxtaposed excitement and pleasure it gave me that I now know is inspiration. But something changed over the years. As I reached adulthood, writing became more about discipline than pleasure. I thought that was how it was supposed to be if I was serious about being a writer.
Our culture tells us that if you want to achieve things in life, you have to work hard, sacrifice, and then work harder. If you’re enjoying it, you’re lucky, but that’s not a requirement.
Except that it is a requirement that you enjoy it when it comes to creative work. The major reason people struggle so much with establishing a regular creative habit is that they don’t understand what motivates them. At the start of any project we establish our motivators, whether we’re explicitly aware that we’re doing this or not. Nine times out of ten, those motivators will be extrinsic and goal oriented: “Finish the project,” or, “Get published.” The next step is creating a discipline-based plan of achievement: “Write every day until done.”
Some people are highly motivated by extrinsic goals, enough so that they are easily able to sit down every day and put in the work. But many people aren’t motivated in this way. They think they are, because our culture teaches us how to work based on external motivators. The cultural indoctrination in this area is so strong that we aren’t even able to fully understand or articulate what intrinsic motivation feels like, and we are so focused on the externals that we regard it as a relatively unimportant part of achievement.
This is unfortunate, because it is the most important part of achievement for many. For those of us who struggle with disciplining ourselves into a regular creative practice, it’s because self-discipline isn’t the way to do it. With proper motivators, you need very little self-discipline. You can figure out your motivators by paying attention to how you feel during and after your creative work, not before.
Getting yourself to sit down to do your work today and getting yourself to do it day after day are two different things. Motivating yourself with that exciting vision of the finished project (external goal) may get you to do your work today, but over an extended period of time it’s the pleasure, excitement, and satisfaction you feel during and after your work that will enable you to maintain a regular habit. This is particularly true of large projects, like novels, where the end result is far off in the future and there are so many (many) details to take care of before you’re done.
Many if not most people who desire a regular creative practice struggle throughout their lifetime to establish one because they mistakenly believe that self-discipline is the way to do it. They fall into a pattern of managing to accomplish a burst of activity, thinking they’ve finally cracked the code of self-discipline, but then they fall off, disappointing themselves again. Often they castigate themselves for wasting time and being lazy. That feeling of inadequacy that haunts us when we are unable to discipline ourselves into a creative habit that is sustainable and productive over time is soul destroying, and it often makes us turn on ourselves with even more punishing self-discipline (that again fails).
You can end this cycle now. Figure out what actually feels good to you about doing your creative work, not what you think will make you feel good at some time in the future once you achieve it.