Thursday, September 07, 2017

MYSTERY OF DISCIPLINE

Funny thing about discipline. If I'm given a task, an assignment, a job or a request, whether professionally or personally, I immediately go into soldier mode. I don't exactly salute but almost. All my dutiful and resourceful neurons start firing and a timekeeper starts keeping time and if there's a deadline I will meet it, you can be sure of that.

But for that machinery to start working, the task or request has to come from outside myself. If it's only me myself and nobody else telling me to do something, even something I really really want to do, you can bet your life I will procrastinate and procrastinate until procrastination becomes my middle name. It's my Achilles heel, my nemesis and my bĂȘte noire. Fortunately, tasks and requests do come along to save me whenever procrastinitis has bound and gagged me. For me, discipline is freedom.

5 comments:

Catalyst said...

"Discipline is freedom." What a great thought. I fear, too, I am a victim of self-procrastination.

Tom said...

Yes, I agree, a great thought. On the TV programme, "The Brain" [being shown on BBC4 on Saturday evenings] Prof. David Eagleman said that it appears that will power seems to reside in us as a fund which can steadily be depleted. If finding the discipline to carry out a task is dependent on where the task comes from [outside rather than inside] then perhaps does also does the will which overcomes procrastination. So perhaps our store of will is like potential energy stored in a petrol/fuel tank, which needs to be refilled from an outside source. [Well, at least my store of verbage/chat has now been reduced! :)]

Unknown said...

Jet-fueled,eh!

Natalie d'Arbeloff said...

Bruce, looks like there are a lot of us suffering from (or enjoying?) the same affliction! I think the procrastination has something to do with the feeling of "What's the point?" which lies hidden deep inside many, if not all, of us.

Tom, maybe the fuel tank behaves differently for each person. Take someone like Van Gogh (since he appears below): his fuel tank/will power supply was pretty much full up all the time. Many obsessive artists and other creatives in various fields are driven by an inner motivation which only death or illness puts a stop to.

Leah, you're back! Jet-propelled?

Unknown said...

:))