Discipline? What's that?

Lately it seems like my self-discipline has gone to hell, although to be fair I'm not sure it was that much better even a few years ago.

A couple days ago I mentioned -- obliquely, so that none of you could really hold me to it [see how clever I am?] -- that I intended to write something in this blog every day.  Then I posted the multi-part reply to Debbie's letter, and said that even though it was spread across several days that didn't count.  So then I didn't post anything Wednesday ... or, if you count on Wednesday the post that I started Tuesday night, I didn't post Tuesday.  Maybe that one post counts for both, I don't know.  (It looks like I posted on Tuesday, but those were both written Monday night and queued up till I connected to the Internet Tuesday morning.)

Of course the question whether I post this day or that is pretty trivial.  It just nags at me because it was so recently that I decided I wanted to be better about this.  And it seem of a piece with other things I see myself doing.  I was going to get up at 5:00 this morning to get some stuff done.  Alarm went off at 5:00, I got up to take a leak, then re-set the alarm for 6:00.  Or last weekend, I had a shitload of things I was planning to do Sunday; so of course Sunday morning I lay around reading a book I've read a couple of times already, in years past.  I mean ... it's an interesting book and all, Sebastian Haffner's The Meaning of Hitler.  But why bother?  Why now?  I'm not in the middle of any kind of historical research.  The only reason I can think of is that it was a way to kill the morning in a relaxed and easy manner, thus forcing me to cancel about half the things on my to-do list (including my laundry).

And so on.

Why am I telling you this?  Shit, I don't know.  Confession, I suppose.  It's safe telling you all my faults because I don't have to look you in the eyes afterwards and you don't have to live with me.  Maybe if I can expatiate on these faults over here then it keeps me from having to recognize those faults over there, and all the while I can give myself credit for being open about my faults ... in a totally safe and risk-free way.  See, I'm courageous too, as well as honest and forthright.  Боже мой!  

Maybe a better question is, why can't I get my ass in gear to get done the things that I want to get done.  I do want to, right?  It's not like somebody else is making me do these things.  Wife's not handing me to-do lists.  I really did want to have clean clothes for the week, just as an example.  And while I don't remember what else I had planned for last Sunday, I'm sure that whatever it was I must really have wanted to do it.  

So why don't I?

I suppose the answer has to be that while I want to do this and that, I also want to spend a certain amount of leisure time farting around.  My enthusiastic plans don't take that into account, so when the time comes to execute them I say, "Aaah, the hell with it" and do something else instead.  Once upon a time I think I used to be better at forcing my nose to the grindstone.  Now, consciously or not, I seem to shrug and say, "Look, I'm over fifty. Whaddya gonna do about it?"

In some cases, the answer could be bad.  Right now at work I have a whole lot of stuff to get lined up looking pretty before the company faces a big audit next month.  I've started work on it all, but probably I should have started months ago.  Probably I need to figure out some good story to tell our auditor about why we're only halfway through all this crap when he gets here.  In some ways I think I've been spoiled by the fact that I can usually get away with spouting a line of very well-informed and highly intelligent bullshit: people figure I must know what I'm talking about, and so there must be good reasons why I haven't done whatever it is that I haven't done.  It's useful and all, because it keeps me employed and somebody's got to pay for all that expensive education the boys are getting.  But every time I get away with something like that it makes me more likely to figure I can get away with it again.  That's probably not a good cycle to encourage.

Now that I think about it, though, ....  If I can realize that part of what I really want is leisure time, and if I can understand that I want it badly enough I'm willing to disrupt any other plans I've made in order to grab it, then maybe I can actually make a point of planning it into my day, or my week.  I wonder if that would help?  I wonder if I could talk myself into buckling down and getting this done now, on the grounds that I know for a fact I'll let myself goof off at this time later?  Since all self-discipline really involves various levels of self-manipulation*, maybe I can get myself to fall for this.  Or at least it's worth a try.

I remember years and years ago, reading a book by Jon Elster about imperfect rationality, where he specifically considered the case where I want X now, but I know that later on I will want Y instead.  So if I can't have both and I really want X now, is there some way to constrain myself so I can't go after Y later, even though by then I will have changed my mind about what I want?  The whole thing came back to me as I was thinking about my alarm clock this morning: last night I wanted to get stuff done this morning, but by morning what I really wanted was more sleep.  (When I say "the whole thing" I don't mean any of his technical analysis, none of which I really understood all that well even thirty years ago when I read it. But I remembered the examples he used, and took time away from finishing this blog post to go browse the Internet until I could find the man's name again and a reference to the book. See how this works? It's insidious ....)

I've probably figured out as much as I need to figure out with this post.  Maybe I should shut up now.  See ya ....
__________

* I'm quite serious about identifying self-discipline with informed, intelligent self-manipulation.  I remember a story my father once told me that just disgusted me with his lack of self-control (I assume he was trying for a different kind of effect), but I realized even at the time that what I mean by "self-control" was really "self-understanding".  The story was all about one time when he and my Mom were young marrieds and I was just a baby.  He had had to be out of town for a couple of weeks, and so when he came back and my Mom was trying to get his help with this and that (things he hadn't been there to do) he was totally incapable of paying attention or helping her because, as he put it, "I was so horny I honked."  They ended up fighting because of course she had been on her own for two weeks with a new baby, her nerves were frazzled, and at that precise instant she really wanted help more than she wanted sex, thank you very much.  Anyway, I didn't say anything to my Dad but what I was thinking was, "Dude, how could you be so inconsiderate? Jesus, don't you know that's what masturbation is for? So that you don't go crazy and can still function? Why the hell weren't you whacking off every night while you were gone, so that when you got back you could be sweet and helpful ... and then be ready for sex when she was finally ready instead of rushing things?"  I didn't say it, but I thought it.  And the key, from my point of view, is that "self-control" in this context did not mean for me some kind of violent self-mastery through an iron will.  No, it meant understanding yourself well enough to know what you have to do to set up conditions so that you will naturally act in the way you need to act.  If you are at risk of being too sexually demanding, it means whacking off enough that you can relax.  It categorically does not mean forcing yourself to be continent when every cell of your body is crying for release ... just for example ....