Day Eight: Central Dogma of Self-Discipline

And so, the second week of my month of discipline has begun. With it, I am ready to focus on the next of Benjamin Franklin's areas of self improvement: "RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve."

Resolution is basically follow-through, which is what self-discipline is all about: Having the resolve to do things that may be painful in the short term but rewarding in the long term.

This truly is an important principle, and one that most people don't understand or embrace. A simple demonstration of this are 'New Year's Resolutions," ambitious goals that people set that are quickly forgotten. The archetypical examples are new diets and exercise programs.

People overestimate their self-discipline when they formulate these plans; initially they truly believe that they will follow through with their ambitious plans. The first week may go well, but it seems that inevitably, motivation runs thin and old habits resurface to the detriment of the new. Soon the resolutions are forgotten, perhaps until the next December, and the cycle begins anew. What is the cause of this? Why can't I bring to fruition the ambitious plans that I want to follow through on?

The fascinating insight is this: There is an internal conflict between what the new years resolutioner wants to do and the short-term pain that it involves. Accomplishing the ambitious task of losing weight from a new diet or workout plan is a long-term goal that involves regularly forgoing the short-term pleasure of not working out or not eating some fatty food. Each workout or meal is inconsequential, but the sum of all these decisions adds up over time. The problem is then that at each isolated infinitesimal short-term step it is very tempting to cheat, to eat, to not work out, and to say that you'll make it up by doing tomorrow what you should do today.

The key to success when dealing with an ambitious long-term goal (such as a new year's resolution) is the ability to delay gratification. If you can master delaying gratification, then your possibilities for success are almost boundless; a master of gratification delay could do whatever they set their mind to. They could impose on themselves the most stringent diet or workout plan, aspiring to a long-term goal that they would not self-sabotage by cheating, and thus would have a very good chance of successfully meeting that goal. Gratification delay is the central dogma of self-discpline, and is a muscle that can be built up by strategically working it out.

Working out the 'gratification delay' muscle strangely borders on masochism: It involves actively doing the opposite of what you want to do. For example, running is a somewhat painful activity as it basically involves purposefully pushing your body to its physical limits. People run because it is beneficial to their health (and some people actually do enjoy it), but to me running is an opportunity to exercise 'gratification delay'.

At each moment that I am running I am physically getting farther from the point at which I started, and at some point I will turn back and run home. Each step then, is a temptation to turn around and start back, because with each step my task is made harder as I have further to return. At each step I must exercise gratification delay in order to not turn around because I would rather run less than more because I am inherently lazy.

There is a relationship between gratification delay and Benjamin Franklin's principle of resolution: Gratification delay is what allows one to accomplish resolution. It is easy to say 'I will eat healthy this week,' but hard to actually eat healthy this week. That is, the first part of the principle is easy: 'resolve to perform what you ought.' But the second part is the challenge: 'perform without fail what you resolve.' And the key to meeting the second part is gratification delay; with perfect gratification delay one would also master the most difficult part of resolve.

And so, the conclusion is that Resolution is central to self-discipline, and by mastering it, one can achieve incredibly ambitious goals, but strangely it bears some relation to masochism: one inflicts short term self-discomfort for the purposes of long-term gain. Each following day during this month of discpline (and hopefully continually after), I will attempt to embrace gratification delay, to work out this metaphorical muscle of key importance, in hopes of one day being able to perform without fail what I resolve.