Discipline Equals Freedom

The title of the book Discipline Equals Freedom by ex Navy Seal Jocko Willink, got me intrigued. I went to read up more about him and the book, checked out his Twitter account. Some bits that resonated:

The shortcut is a lie. There’s no easy way. There’s only hard work. Discipline is the driver of daily execution. Discipline defeats the infinite excuses that say: Not today, not now.

Discipline is an internal force. It comes from making a decision to be disciplined. It comes from deciding to be better, to do more, to be more.

Don’t count on motivation. Motivation is fickle. It comes and goes. Count on discipline.

Everyday he posts a photo of his watch at 4.30am. NOW GO GET AFTER IT, he said. He’s super hardcore, in a way that’s almost expected of someone coming from an elite military unit.

I like it.

I can relate to the discipline part because of my background in athletic training. But what was surprising was how discipline is different from motivation. I had always conflated the two, but now that he mentioned it, it makes sense. That discipline comes from deciding to be disciplined, and committing into it.

It’s refreshing to see a perspective of extreme ownership to habit formation, to work. In the habit hacking circles, I often see lots of productivity porn, little tips and tricks to get yourself to do what you should be doing. Yes, they are scaffolding to start on. But over-indulge in them, and it gets distracting and counter-productive. It’s like fussing over your note-taking tools, systems and processes, but not actually using or applying any of the notes in any practical or beneficial manner. The tooling becomes the endgame, not the means.

I also enjoyed his take on “discipline equals freedom”. Typically we don’t think about discipline to be associated with freedom. In fact, most would find discipline to be restricting, having less freedom. Many would say, “I’m not a very disciplined person” as some way to reason and justify their actions, when it fact, they had simply decided to make a trade-off to remain comfortable over getting better.

Discipline is freedom because it’s empowering one to achieve freedom from bad habits, poor choices, old, unwholesome way of doing things. It’s enabling a better future version of yourself to emerge. It’s freeing you from the shackles of past narratives of yourself, towards the dreams and aspirations you used to hold before those shackles snuffed them out.

When seen this way, oh hell yeah, discipline IS freedom indeed.