It's a little before 11:00 pm. And I'm writing this post from the confines of 11 3/8" of my queen-sized bed. If I hadn't stayed up until 5:00 am the night before last, I might be able use one word to succinctly describe the fact that I am literally wedged between two sleeping forces: Big man on my right, little man on my left. My arms are kind of losing circulation as I hold my phone above my head to type and keep my claustrophobia at bay. I guess I could always get up and go clean the kitchen.
But I've always been better at procrastination than problem solving.
After a long hiatus, I've returned. Maybe just to rest from my labors for a moment.
Life has been good. A little like, whoa-slow-down-I-gotta-catch-
Recently I've been thinking a lot about the secrets of really successful people--of all kinds. And in all my unscientific research, I have come to this unscientific conclusion:
Drive + (Hard Work ^ Self Discipline) = Success
Success is combination of drive and hard work, which seems to be directly impacted by self-discipline. Or lack there of.
(I'm brilliant. I know.)
Let me illustrate:
If we were to give drive (or desire, or ambition or motivator or whatever) a value, it would be between 0 and 1. I mean, either you kind of want something (.25) or you want it 100% (1). I guess you might not even want it at all...but are forced into it for your own good (0). At any rate, drive by itself gets you up to 1 point of success.
Yay.
You're not an android.
That is success, I guess.
[And might I pause here and say that the claustrophobia won over and I am now hugging the edge of my mattress listening to my 2 year old laugh in his sleep. As cute as that is, he is also snoring loudly and just smacked me in the face with his subconscious flailings. He will be deposited back in his bed shortly.]
But next comes hard work. Or intense effort. I can't say that hard work would ever have a negative value. Intense effort (whether for good or bad) is always a propelling force. Is it not? However, it does have an infinite upper range. Because we are imperfect, our hard work will never be perfect, thus it cannot be capped by a single integer. Do you agree?
Finally, we come to self discipline. This is the ability to be the master of one's own thoughts and actions in space and time. Again, because we are imperfect, and can always be more disciplined, we cannot reasonably cap the upper range. Even if we were "perfect," we would have to perfectly exercise self-discipline in any new situation to remain perfect. And if you believe in the eternal nature of the soul, you believe in the never-ending stream of new situations. Thus, we still cannot cap the upper limit of self-discipline. (Some call it eternal progression.) Nor can we reasonably cap the lower range because by the same logic, undisciplined actions have no outer bound. (Some call it eternal damnation.) So this results in an infinite range of values.
But I've always been better at procrastination than problem solving.
After a long hiatus, I've returned. Maybe just to rest from my labors for a moment.
Life has been good. A little like, whoa-slow-down-I-gotta-catch-
Recently I've been thinking a lot about the secrets of really successful people--of all kinds. And in all my unscientific research, I have come to this unscientific conclusion:
Drive + (Hard Work ^ Self Discipline) = Success
Success is combination of drive and hard work, which seems to be directly impacted by self-discipline. Or lack there of.
(I'm brilliant. I know.)
Let me illustrate:
If we were to give drive (or desire, or ambition or motivator or whatever) a value, it would be between 0 and 1. I mean, either you kind of want something (.25) or you want it 100% (1). I guess you might not even want it at all...but are forced into it for your own good (0). At any rate, drive by itself gets you up to 1 point of success.
Yay.
You're not an android.
That is success, I guess.
[And might I pause here and say that the claustrophobia won over and I am now hugging the edge of my mattress listening to my 2 year old laugh in his sleep. As cute as that is, he is also snoring loudly and just smacked me in the face with his subconscious flailings. He will be deposited back in his bed shortly.]
But next comes hard work. Or intense effort. I can't say that hard work would ever have a negative value. Intense effort (whether for good or bad) is always a propelling force. Is it not? However, it does have an infinite upper range. Because we are imperfect, our hard work will never be perfect, thus it cannot be capped by a single integer. Do you agree?
Finally, we come to self discipline. This is the ability to be the master of one's own thoughts and actions in space and time. Again, because we are imperfect, and can always be more disciplined, we cannot reasonably cap the upper range. Even if we were "perfect," we would have to perfectly exercise self-discipline in any new situation to remain perfect. And if you believe in the eternal nature of the soul, you believe in the never-ending stream of new situations. Thus, we still cannot cap the upper limit of self-discipline. (Some call it eternal progression.) Nor can we reasonably cap the lower range because by the same logic, undisciplined actions have no outer bound. (Some call it eternal damnation.) So this results in an infinite range of values.
So, what we see is that our success in becoming more than just not an android any is directly impacted not only by hard work, but by disciplined hard work.
Let me illustrate.
Say I have a project I need to complete. Here are my factors:
Say I have a project I need to complete. Here are my factors:
Desire = 1
Hard Work = 4 (in this case, we'll qualify it by stating it's the number of hours needed to complete the project)
Self-discipline = 5 (about where I am on a good day in being the master of myself)
1 + (4^5) = 1,025
A killer job on my project, with time left over for canning 3 bushels of peaches, washing and folding 5 loads of laundry, composing a piano concerto, teaching my 2 year old sign language in Spanish and knocking off a 10-mile run in my marathon training, right?
But what about on a not-so-good day for self-mastery? What if, after staying up until 5:00 am (ahem), and waking up at 1:00 pm, I eat a tub of chocolate ganache and french fries for breakfast and get sucked into watching cat videos on YouTube for 3 hours, then zonk out from over stimulation, but still manage to squeeze in my project somewhere around 3:00 am the next morning? Let's give me a self-discipline score of -5. All other factors remain constant.
1 + (4^-5) = 1.00098
I'm not an android and I had time to brush my teeth before zonking out.
Yay.
OK, maybe slightly dramatic. I mean, I'd probably only be able to fit in 3 loads of laundry, seeing how my dryer doesn't have much self-discipline.
But you get the picture, right?
I think successful people aren't successful just because of the single end result. I think it comes down to what else happens under the surface of that end result...all of which comes from being incredibly self disciplined.
(Again, brillant. I know.)
I think successful people aren't successful just because of the single end result. I think it comes down to what else happens under the surface of that end result...all of which comes from being incredibly self disciplined.
(Again, brillant. I know.)
Plato says it best,
And then maybe the 2-year old who has conquered your bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment