Quotes About Discipline

there is a conflict in our lives between adventure and discipline, or evil and virtue, or freedom and security. But these are only phrases we use to describe an ambivalence that troubles us, and to which we never seem able to find an answer.

Perhaps this sounds very simple, but simple things are always the most difficult. In actual life it requires the greatest discipline to be simple, and the acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook upon life.

Avoiding hard work required discipline and a complete awareness of his surroundings, as well as an intuitive sense of when to be in the wrong place when extra time or effort was demanded. Like golf or fly-fishing, it was a lifelong pursuit that he knew he might never perfect but he could certainly continue to improve.

Inspiration doesn't "strike." Inspiration is scheduled. It happens when you allow it the time and attention it deserves.

England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales might have been partners in an imperial project that required the projection of 'English Literature' as one of the defining elements of cultural superiority that justified the continuous extension of Empire throughout the nineteenth century, but they were also engaged in an internal struggle over the origins and the dynamics of that literature, and about the role of their national literatures within the consolidating discipline of English.

Doing things we know how to do well is enjoyable, and that's exactly the opposite of what deliberate practice demands….

Leisure Lesson #1: Prioritize demanding activity over passive consumption.

With these rough categorizations established, the strategy works as follows: Schedule in advance when you'll use the Internet, and then avoid it altogether outside these times. I suggest that you keep a notepad near your computer at work. On this pad, record the next time you're allowed to use the Internet. Until you arrive at that time, absolutely no network connectivity is allowed—no matter how tempting.

You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it. Your will, in other words, is not a manifestation of your character that you can deploy without limit; it's instead like a muscle that tires.

the differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain." American

Doing things we know how to do well is enjoyable, and that's exactly the opposite of what deliberate practice demands…. Deliberate practice is above all an effort of focus and concentration. That is what makes it "deliberate," as distinct from the mindless playing of scales or hitting of tennis balls that most people engage in.

Be disciple of depth in shallow world.

to succeed with deep work you must rewire your brain to be comfortable resisting distracting stimuli. This doesn't mean that you have to eliminate distracting behaviors; it's sufficient that you instead eliminate the ability of such behaviors to hijack your attention. The simple strategy proposed here of scheduling Internet blocks goes a long way toward helping you regain this attention autonomy. Work

There is a middle ground, and if you're interested in developing a deep work habit, you must fight to get there.

Perhaps Marshall's most striking habit was his insistence on leaving the office each day at 5:30 p.m. In an age before cell phones and email, Marshall didn't put in a second shift late into the night once he got home. Having experienced burnout earlier in his career, he felt it was important to relax in the evening. "A man who worked himself to tatters on minor details had no ability to handle the more vital issues of war," he once said.

To learn hard things quickly, you must focus intensely without distraction. To learn, in other words, is an act of deep work.

Like fingers pointing to the moon, other diverse disciplines from anthropology to education, behavioral economics to family counseling, similarly suggest that the skillful management of attention is the sine qua non of the good life and the key to improving virtually every aspect of your experience. This

monastic philosophy of deep work scheduling. This philosophy attempts to maximize deep efforts by eliminating or radically minimizing shallow obligations.

Three to four hours a day, five days a week, of uninterrupted and carefully directed concentration, it turns out, can produce a lot of valuable output.

Deliberate practice is often the opposite of enjoyable. I like the term "stretch" for describing what deliberate practice feels like,

You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it. Your

How to study wisely: (1) don't skip classes; (2) study early in the day; (3) study in isolation; (4) keep your energy levels high; (5) actively recall the material and quiz yourself until you're completely satisfied.

The use of network tools can be harmful. If you don't attempt to weigh pros against cons, but instead use any glimpse of some potential benefit as justification for unrestrained use of a tool, then you're unwittingly crippling your ability to succeed in the world of knowledge work. This

I keep a tally of the total number of hours I've spent that month in a state of deliberate practice.