Methodical work as a habit

Methodical work leads to success. 

Methodical work means being disciplined, working a lot, staying motivated, persevering despite setbacks. 

Methodical work brings results, but the work itself often stays invisible to others.

My personal challenge - and in general the key to long term growth of any person - is to stay motivated, disciplined, to do the work on a regular basis. In other words, I wish to work methodically towards my long term goals.

It's  hard. Why? Well, I guess we all know the answer. It's tiring. More often than not humans crave rest, fun, relaxation, pleasure, peace, quiet.

Work frequently means indecision, ambiguity, effort, anxiety, stress. 

Short term desires are easily satisfied. Instant gratification is easy to get, especially when we have personal freedom, time and money. 

Long term goals, even if well understood by an individual, simply lose to what some call "lack of strong will". 

I am leaning towards the belief that this thing called "strong will" doesn't exist. It's imaginary. It doesn't have its own brain area. It's not that most people don't have it (but some do). Nobody does.

If someone is called disciplined, motivated and methodical, it simply means that he has a habit of working. This habit is stronger in him than a habit of satisfying other (short term) desires. He works more often and with more ease than he watches soap operas or eats donuts.

Working is a habit. It's a habit to choose work-like tasks and actions over non-work-like tasks.

As most habits in most people, it can be trained. I'm training it right now. Not sure how exactly - haven't found a single book on the topic so far. So I'm looking at what hard working people do and how they think.

I recently read a book about methodical work titled "The War of Art".

Now, "The War of Art" has two aspects. One of them is positive, another not so much.

The positive is that the book contains a great description of what methodical work looks like in the real world. The author calls a person doing methodical work "a professional". The book contains detailed description of the behaviors and mindset of a professional (as opposed to an amateur).

A professional does the work every day. He knows his trade well. He doesn't fall victim to everyday excuses. He understands it's going to be tough to work every day. He knows he'll face fear or anxiety of publishing what he did; he doesn't trick himself into believing he'll never get tired or afraid. He doesn't stop when others criticize his work.

A professional does the work every day.

I want to be a professional in that sense. I don't think I ever was; I was more of an amateur (inspired and agitated, but easily distracted), sometimes guided by fear (especially in school, but also at work, afraid of losing face). I'd rather be a professional though, guided by a habit of hard work.

So that aspect of the book, what a real pro looks like, was nice. A good summary of what methodical work is and what it takes to do it. (It's not free! Workaholics usually sacrifice their personal relationships, good health or other life opportunities!)

The other aspect of the book is spiritual. It's pretty bad.

The spiritual dogma of the book sounds so ridiculous to me that it was really painful to find it in the same book as the no-nonsense description of a pro. The author believes that there are gods, or God, demons, angels, Muse, "other dimension" beings all around us. The book mixes all this together in a "surely you must believe in something like this!" soup. Terrible. 

The author believes that all great work comes not from people, but through people. Where does it come from exactly? Why, obviously there must be some ethereal beings that inspire selected artists (the professionals) while not inspiring others (the amateurs). They reward hard work with inspiration.

I do not approve of such nonsense. It's a classic example of a human being replacing what he doesn't know or understand with fantasy that makes sense to him. I think that the usual case is that a person is so uncomfortable with not having all the answers about the foundations of the world that they accept whatever nonsense reaches their ears.

Luckily it is quite easy to skip those "spiritual" parts since the book is divided into a series of extremely short chapters (1-2 pages each). Start a chapter, estimate how many angels show up, skip if more than zero. Worked well for me.

I am now very much focused on how to build a habit of methodical work. Doing some research, but also trying myself. Building that mindset of a pro. Incidentally, I'm a StarCraft player and I watch Korean pro league; it's quite informative as well. These are pros like any other and they also work hard, starting at an early age.

It might be the habit that's extremely hard to build. Once I acquire it though, perhaps I could share the trick with others. Would be really great to be able to help others become methodical in their work -- for a lifetime. Imagine a society that is more methodical at work than other societies around. What an advantage! Or more broadly, what a boost to human civilization if it was typical of people to be hard working citizens?

Also, once I build that habit it should feel great and bring great results quickly. As you may have noticed, I strongly believe that it's learnable and that it's indeed a habit. Could be wrong. That would be sad.

It's going to be hard work to change the motivation to work from "I love doing it so I keep doing it" or "I fear not doing it so I keep doing it" to "I will do it now because I said so, despite really craving something else at the moment". But I believe this is what long term success requires.

Do you?

Comments

[Arek Flinik]

Walter Mischel claims that this mythical "willpower" is indeed nothing more than ability for "strategic allocation of attention", ie. fighting instincts that lead us to distraction with simple mental tricks [1]. What is most important, even when it seems like this ability has genetic origin, it certainly is something that can be learned.

There is also some fascinating research ([2]) which suggests that ability to focus and self-control relies on glucose level in blood.

[1]. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all
[2]. http://www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/~lchang/material/Evolutionary/Brain/Self-control%20relies%20on%20glucose%20as%20a%20limited%20energy%20source%20willpower%20Is%20more%20than%20a%20metaphor.pdf

[Igor]

For me staying focused and actually doing work euqals compilation of two factors:

- more complicated: anxiety
- more simple: procrastination

If I'm "affraid" of the task (it's somehow new, very important etc.) I tend to do everything but what I should in order to complete it.

Sometimes the case is much more simple: there's no anxiety, it's just another boring task while there are others "pretty much damn important" (i.e. checking if there are any bargains for dishwashers).

Funny thing: If I need to do something that's really repeatable, boring, yet perfectly measurable in terms of a progress (i.e. once in a while I have to send out manually 20-40 certificates - and no, I can't easily automate it) I complete it almost as soon as it enters my ToDo list and there's no procrastination or hesitation.

Or maybe a good no-brainer is something I need every now and then as a kind of break? :-)

[Jakub Petrykowski]

@Arek Flinik
Thanks for the references, will come back to you once I've read them.

@Igor
Can you give example of 2 boring tasks that you tend to procrastinate with and 2 boring tasks that you complete ASAP without procrastination? (the last kind you describe)

I am trying to see what you mean by "perfectly measurable in terms of progress".

[Igor]

Boring tasks:

1. Verifying daily man-hours spent on my project reported by my team.

Boring and sometimes requires lots of annoying data mining (so no "anxiety" but I cannot exactly tell the "ETA" as I could encounter surprises that require more of my time).

The other problem is that it's a task that happens to me pretty much every working day.

2. Wasching dishes (perfectly measurable but I just hate it)

"The other kind"

1. As you know recently I've been giving a series of lectures/tutorials for students in Cracow. After the end of the whole endeavor we had to issue "certificates of attendance". The copy-paste boring task that lasted 20 minutes was a perfect example of "the other kind": I exactly knew where I was (i.e. 23 of 35 done) I could see the results and it was a total no-brainer (unlike example 1st from the "boring" category).

Need to get back to work, so no more examples :-)

[Jo]

Nice post and great to see you blog again, Jakub!

I think another trait that can sustain methodical work would be one's passion/interest in it. Without it, much trickier.

I work by deadline... but I dont think this is good because without it, there will be no 'fear' instilled in me to finish it asap without slacking off or coming up with excuses.

That being said, I am quite efficient in all tasks that comes attached with deadlines :)

Where are you now, still in Wroclaw?

[Jakub Petrykowski]

@Jo

Yeah, I'm in Wroclaw.

I think most people subject themselves to deadlines, unless the punishment for late delivery is severe in comparison to gains from deferring work.

If someone is only motivated by deadlines it's probably extremely hard to get great results at work.

[Greg]

Probably you already know them, but nevertheless maybe there could be helpful in your commitment series of blog posts by Steve Pavlina on "Self-discipline".

[Jakub Petrykowski]

@Greg

I treat anything by Steve Pavlina as possibly very dangerous manipulation, since style is riddled with fantasy and even worst kind of self help, akin to "The Secret" franchise (e.g. Pavlina's "1 million" wish and people "wishing" to bring into their life 1 million dollars, along with a list of people declaring to have collected certain amounts of money, obviously "thanks to" the wishing).

That said, I have looked at his "Self-Discipline" blog category, it contains 73 posts. Anything in particular you recommend looking at?

[Greg]

That's interesting opinion. Yes, I agree that some of his posts are "from another planet" and can be manipulative. Especially the latter, where he went into this spiritual "The Secret way of thinking".

Nevertheless I find some (many) of his posts helpful and well written. The ones that I metioned before is this six-part series:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/06/self-discipline/
(on the bottom there are links to next parts).
I read it long time ago and was quite impressed by it and found it helpful (other thing is whether I was able to follow his advice :) but this is different story).

If you read it, I'm really curious of your opinion...

[Jakub Petrykowski]

@Greg

The one you linked looks more reasonable and promising. I'll read it and share my thoughts here or in a new post.