By disciplined people I mean people who are able to constantly put themselves into uncomfortable situations and delay gratification for a very long time.
Do these people have a higher pain tolerance / higher pain threshold? So situations which are unbearably uncomfortable for other people feel comfortable to them?
Do these people even enjoy things which others might find unpleasant?
Do undisciplined thoughts simply not enter their brain so they don’t have to force themselves to work and can fully focus on the task? While others will have to battle constant thoughts to be lazy or give in to temptation which distracts them from the task and drains their energy until they eventually give in?
Do they find their goal so important that not trying to reach it no matter how hard it is is not an option to them?
The Problem I see with the marshmallow test is that depends on other factors than pure willpower, and I didn’t see those accounted for.
It assumes that the children, when being told by an adult that “later” there will be more marshmallows, have reason to trust and believe the adult to Keep that promise. Many children don’t have that trust because many adults in their life are unreliable. For them, it’s quite rational, not lack of willpower, to eat the marshmallow now, instead of waiting for a promise that might not be kept.
And no, it’s not just children from poor families, or children with visible signs of abuse, who lack that trust: lots of middle-class families abuse their children. Many families look happy to Outsiders but are anything but.
Also (as the article does Point out) it depends on how much an individual child desires a marshmallow - or two marshmallows. If it’s just a “meh” Snack, using willpower to wait may not be worth the bother for the child.
Overall, studies seem to indicate that to a certain degree, it can be trained; but also, that there is a limited supply of willpower. So denying yourself a dozen small treats during the day may Train you up if have very poor willpower; but they might also drain you so that you shirk the big Thing you were preparing for.
I don’t know. My three kids are all highly disciplined as adults and I can’t think of anything my wife or I did in raising them to bring that about. We did not try to get them to read early (that’s what school is for) although we always read to them. We never bugged them about homework and they just did it. Easiest kids ever to raise and we hardly lifted a finger.
I have no clue. I will say that in some aspects of my life I am very patient and disciplined compared to other people, and in other aspects I’m lazy and short sighted.
So I don’t think it’s entirely one personality trait, but several of them. One example being people who are highly successful in their career but who become extremely obese, like William Taft or Marlon Brando. These guys had extreme discipline in their political and acting careers, but were very undisciplined in their diets. Another example might be soldiers or police who go home and beat their wives or kids. Professionally disciplined, but can’t stop themselves from harming the people they love outside of work. So it isn’t just one on/off switch, but a couple, at least.
Meh, its partly nature, as indicated by Hari’s experience for one example. My own son is very strong willed and disciplined when he wants to be with nothing we, as parents intentionally did except contribute genes, a coworker of mine is self disciplined to a degree I used to find astonishing. His son is shifting to be more like him now that he has full custody, so maybe there is an element of nuture as well. It’s been kind of interesting to watch actually.
Are we talking disciplined in the sense of “able to do the stuff you should, but don’t wanna” or "able to resist doing what you really wanna, but shouldn’t "? Because they’re very different skills.
The marshmallow test is clearly testing the latter. Highly successful people are adept at the former. I think it would be difficult to be good at both.
Real suggestion: attention span; the tendency to pay attention to what one feels not merely in the present moment but as emotion pertains to developments (and hence the outcome of decisions) that take place over time.
My alarm goes off at 4:55 AM. I work out for an hour then take about an hour to get ready to go off to work where I bust my ass running the landscape company I own for about 8 hours.
I know that if I didn’t work out like I do, I wouldn’t be able to do my job. I’m 64, weigh the same as I did in high school and never felt better.
It takes discipline to get up when that alarm goes off, but the results I get from doing so make it worth it.
Yeah, to me that sounds/feels like the same thing as attention span. You do what you do because of the outcome. “Discipline” is thought of as "ignoring the yummy outcome like the marshmallow and doing what’s ‘right’ " but what it really is is paying attention to the outcome…farther on down the line, using a longer attention span.
Discipline, in most instances, is as form of Social Obedience. There are certain behaviors in which you are expected to conform to the social imperative, and how well one does that is broadly described as discipline.
So, cooperative society depends on peopole who have been conditioned to be a part of the machine, without excedssive coercion, and have learned to do so as their “nature”, but it is learned.
There’s another necessary condition too - the ability to feel pleasure in a successful outcome. If you don’t have a strong emotional response to the ‘farther on down the line’ result, then why would you sacrifice to achieve it? If having a buff body doesn’t actually make (generic) you feel any better than being a blob of lard, you’re unlikely to be the one getting up at 4 for the gym every day.
This is why it’s so hard for people with depression to have ‘willpower’
I don’t know about that. Doesn’t it take discipline to do many of the things that people decide to do for themselves, not just the things that society tells them to?
