Discipline and Sacrifice
I have a stack of old journals on the bookshelf at home. They fill a box, spilling out into a neat pile next to it. This are a random lot: spiral bound notebooks and overpriced black notebooks of questionable heritage. And every one is full of me telling myself to be better. A twenty year record of assessing my weaknesses and planning to do better, be better, be more.
At some point, a few months ago, I realized that there is little value in kicking the ass of my long-gone, twenty-year old self. Maybe it’s fatherhood. Maybe it’s wisdom of the middle thirties. But that’s a tale for another day.
Today’s tale is about sacrifice and discipline. Instead of criticizing myself for the things that I have not done in the past week or past decade, I choose to think of the things I can do. As in today. As in this morning.
Sacrifice
Right, now, I should be getting my son’s lunch in the car and rousing him from bed. I am quickly losing my window to get to work by eight. I took a few minutes to exercise and write. Probably no more than twenty minutes. I will get to work at eight-thirty. This is a small sacrifice. My decision to refocus my morning may cause me stress later in the day, most likely, when I need to leave. But part of this is my own doing. I would likely feel the same stress if I arrived at seven-thirty or ten-thirty. This may have more to do with my work stream throughout the day than how choose to spend a few minutes in the morning
If I dive into it, I am not sacrificing work. What I am sacrificing is the leisure to be inefficient at work.
Discipline
I begin every morning with a list of tasks throughout the day. Some things have to happen that day and others can wait. Throughout the day, other items appear on the list. This the nature of knowledge work: We spend our days answering email and revising priorities on a task list. But every single day, I am distracted by this growing list. I forego something that must be done today for something that can wait. And this is what causes me stress at the end of the day. Instead, I need to exercise more discipline in focusing on the priority items on my list. And it’s not easy. Inevitably, I end up doing the lower priority items because they are a high priority to someone else. And no one likes to disappoint. Discipline isn’t easy. It takes work.
And the Point?
Work is one example. I also sacrifice a little sleep to get out of bed a few minutes early. I sacrifice morning TV watching to exercise in the basement. And keeping up a morning routine takes discipline. And what is the point, exactly?
The point is to take advantage of life. Life is not lived on the grand scale, within memories built on vacations and holidays. Life is lived on the daily scale, in the hours after work or the Saturday mornings when no one feels like getting dressed. All the minutes spent criticizing myself or planning on personal improvement are moments outside of real life. This is not practice. There are no sick days.
So the point is not to live in regret, but to analyze the push and pull of my focus so I can do better, be better, be more.
