Thread: About Discipline

You've heard everywhere that in order to success you should discipline.

So the question is: Could we become success without being discipline?

Yes: you could be a defender for the English football team.

That's pretty vague...

However, in my best effort to answer the question, I'd have to say no and if it is possible it would require a tremendous amount of luck. The need for discipline in being successful turns up in many places. One, it's required when you must study and improve aspects of your trade that you might not be fully interested in. I suppose this could be avoided if you have a profound interest in all aspects of your trade. Two, it is required when you must perform tasks for your superiors that might not be fully interested in or fully in agreement with. If you somehow become an overnight success and become your own boss in a day, I suppose this is avoidable, but very unlikely that you will get anywhere without at some point be under someone else.

... and then finally, even after you are a success, it demands discipline to maintain that success by developing your ideas further and working with others to achieve greater things. This is avoided if you die young, at the peek of your success, and manage to get a piece of history without really maintaining it for a long period.

So the answer is no, unless you expect to be a child prodigy that accomplishes something tremendous at a young age and then subsequently gets hit by a bus. Then you can avoid the need for discipline...

So the answer is no, unless you expect to be a child prodigy that accomplishes something tremendous at a young age and then subsequently gets hit by a bus. Then you can avoid the need for discipline...

Sorry. This came to mind.

YouTube - Regina gets hit by a bus

Originally Posted by audinue

So the question is: Could we become success without being discipline?

Of course you can.

It is not wise to assume too much around these things. Discipline, dedication, effort, skill, study, all are nice words. Important, even. And conducive of success. But if I'm undisciplined, will I never succeed? I think the question answers itself when put this way.

Other factors come into play. What about dedication? What about my own genius? What about luck?

Success certainly is dependent on these things, including discipline. But none of them single-handedly eliminates the chance for success.

EVOEx you are a lot like me...

However, I found a nice blog about "how to become disciplined":
Self-Discipline

It seems contains some theory and philosophies about discipline.
Gonna try it somewhat...

I don't think that's an issue with discipline. It's merely a problem of motivation, or self-motivation. And it's quite common and, IMO, unalarming.

Approaching this problem from the wrong angle will not help you solve it.

I have this problem where I am unable to discipline myself, and whenever somebody tells me to do something, whether it be a professor or boss or police officer, I get red in the face and I shout "Don't tell me what to do! Woman!"

Someone gave me a old surfboard late last year (I live on a beach) and I just picked up a wetsuit this morning. Having just watched this:

Surfing: How To Stand Up (Sports & Outdoors: Surfing)

I've now spend maybe 5 minutes jumping up from prone by the hall mirror to get into "stance". In the video he says practice for a good 15 minutes first.

Because I'm undisciplined, I'm gonna test a hypotheses here that it doesn't matter, and head for the water! Will report back later...

You can be motivated but not disciplined though. I am mostly the opposite. There are a lot of ways I guess becoming self-disciplined and self-controlled what works for you or anybody else depends.

As for the question, discipline is merely a factor on success. It helps it is not the only one. If all the other qualities are great, you will become successful. Self-discipline is self-control. The idea is that with self-control you can go closer to what you want to do.
But probably any positive quality is helpful. Well, because its positive

Success is also a very vague meaning.

A motivated person without discipline spends more time daydreaming about when s/he will be successful than actually trying to get there.

Discipline, as others have said, is one aspect of success, but unlike what others are saying, success demands all aspects to be reached. You can't miss one and still be successful, you need them all if you want to achieve success in your field.

I suppose I didn't make it clear when I told you the question was vague... you see, "discipline" wasn't the only subjective term there... there is also plenty of subjectivity in the term "success"... if by success you mean you make it to an old age and die feeling like somebody still cares about you, then yes, you can get there without discipline... however, if by success you mean achieving a level in your trade greater than all or most of your peers, then you'd be hard-pressed to try to get there without a fair amount of discipline.

Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom

[...]success demands all aspects to be reached. You can't miss one and still be successful, you need them all if you want to achieve success in your field.

I'll have to disagree. Eventually I suppose I could come up with known cases of success being achieved by undisciplined, lazy, dumb, lucky or undedicated people.

I'm not, by any means downplaying the importance of discipline, or any other qualities for that matter. But I think its a little too unrealistic in this day and age to expect success achievement (and that goes for software development too) to follow such high standards. Especially in the presence of a, clearly evident, dumb market ready to gobble up every crap you throw at them.

Or maybe I'm talking of a different kind of success.