Ah, but what is discipline? Shifting the vocabulary burden around doesn't accomplish much. Discipline easily translates to will power (to do even in the face of adverse circumstances). But haven't we learned recently to consider will power a finite resource? Something that cannot be switched on at will arbitrarily[0]? The author himself escapes this accusation only by the skin of his teeth in the next-to-last paragraph: How do you cultivate discipline? By building habits – [...] Habit. This word, comparatively unprepossessing as it may sound, sits really at the core of the…
It's actually easy to "Just do it" I will roundly reject your 3 steps to discipline, as they are wishy-washy and completely irrelevant to actually creating self discipline. Here's a few steps that might help someone who isn't trying to be a massive poseur. 1. Be really really hard on yourself. Tell yourself constantly that you are not good enough, and you MUST do better, in fact it's pathetic how little you have accomplished. 2. Work, work, work, work, work... think you have time for fun? Think again smart girl|boy, now, WORK HARDER. 3. Develop a sense of humor about the horrible pain…
Color me underwhelmed by Covey's writing. I always found it a bit too obvious, and found it disingenuous that while he spoke at length about the importance of religion and his large family, he never came out and stated that he was Mormon (not that there's anything intrinsically good or bad about that, but ... it's like appearing multiple times on the news as a small businessman without revealing that you're also an officer for a decidedly partisan political organization (http://www.onthemedia.org/2012/jul/13/introducing-joe-olivo/... -- no, not Covey). His association with Darl McBride (of…
Stephen Covey wrote a profoundly influential book which made a big impact on my life. At a time when most self-help authors were focused on improving your personality, Covey was concerned about your character. A quick summary of the habits: 1) Be Proactive - accept that while you can't control what happens to you, you can always control how you respond 2) Begin with the End in Mind - imagine what you'd like people to say about you at your funeral, live each day with that vision of your best self in mind 3) First things First - don't let the urgent take precedence over the important - make…
> woke please. Dang should be down on this word, its designed to elict bad responses. It adds nothing. Self help has a very interesting consequence on the politics of social service delivery to people. I've had this conversation a LOT with US voters, and they resent their tax dollars funding type-2 diabetes intervention precisely because its perceived as a self-acquired voluntary disease. Never mind the horrific health economics outcome of ignoring it, some wierd, quasi-moralistic "I shouldn't HAVE TO" enters the room. I believe quite strongly this is a consequential corollary of the…
Your comment got me to read the article. But. 1. First, the style is atrocious. I am not a native speaker but the style is circumvoluted, jumping from details to details. I believe the main idea could have been summarized and exposed clearly in fewer paragraphs ("process of cultural homogenization for its own sake in/through historical American self-help literature" or something). 2. > Well, I will say one thing about the article. It summarily dismisses Stephen Covey's Seven Habits as nothing special, without engaging the content of the book in the slightest, and criticizes Covey for not…
This is a common type of HN thread where the linked article is pretty bad, but the headline topic is interesting enough that people want to comment on it from their own experience. In this case, every single comment (100% as of this posting) is a riff on the headline topic and says nothing at all about the content of the article. Well, I will say one thing about the article. It summarily dismisses Stephen Covey's Seven Habits as nothing special, without engaging the content of the book in the slightest, and criticizes Covey for not talking about racism and sexism. If you want this article…
In my mid 20s, I was about $100K in debt, failed in the career that I thought I'd have after undergrad, compounded my problem by running to a grad school program because I thought it would give me a new chance at money post program and make my family proud. In my late 20s I was about $200K in debt, in a bad marriage, still unsure of what I wanted to do in my career. Fast forward to today (early 40s). I make more money than I ever imagined I could, I have a wonderful (2nd) marriage, I'm out of debt, life is good. Learnings that led me here (in no particular order): * don't think about…
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey is a pretty seminal personal management book. It's my top recommendation in terms of "foundational" material. It's not got much in the way of practical tools, but the ideas are applicable everywhere. I would recommend Drive by Dan Pink if you're interested in learning more about creative motivation. It's pretty short, and actually very well summarised here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister is very good programmer-specific management material. They cite a lot of work benchmarking…
Covey's "7 Habits" taught me everything I needed to know. I use the app Things to throw new items into an Inbox. This takes half a second and doesn't distract me from whatever it is I'm working on at the time. Later, when I have a free moment, I use the classic time management grid to mentally map every item in the Inbox into one of four categories: 1. Urgent & Important 2. Not Urgent but Important 3. Urgent but Not Important 4. Not Urgent & Not Important (Visualized as a 2x2 matrix) This categorization step could be done once a day or once an hour depending on how much incoming work…