tags: 📥️/🔖️/🟥️ publish: true aliases: - Discipline Is Destiny cover: '' general_subject: specific_subject: source: manual isbn: doi: url: author: "[[@Ryan Holiday]]" guest: publish_date: reviewed_date: ---  ## Highlights - The boxer Rubin Carter survived some nineteen years of wrongful imprisonment. How? It wasn't his wealth that got him through but the opposite. He stripped himself, deliberately, of the most basic amenities in prison: no pillows, no radio, no rugs, no TV, no porn. Why? So that nothing could be taken from him. So that the guards had no leverage over him. By being a little hard on ourselves, it makes it harder for others to be hard on us. By being strict with ourselves, we take away others' power over us. (Page 35) - one secret to his success was rather simple: having a clean desk. Actually, as Robert Caro observed, it wasn't technically a desk. Robert Moses preferred to work off a large table, because it made him more effective and encouraged better workflow. Moses believed in processing: Something came in and he dealt with it. Mail, memos, reports-he didn't let any of it sit, let alone pile up. "Since a table has no drawers," Caro wrote of Moses's system, "there was no place to hide papers; there was no escape from a nagging problem or a difficult-to-answer letter except to get rid of it in one way or another." By keeping his desk and office organized, Moses got stuff done. But you? You're drowning in papers. Or digitally, your inbox overflows, your desktop is packed with icons, your phone an endless mosaic of apps and programs. Then you wonder why you're stressed, why you're behind, and why you can't find anything. Precious seconds-piling up into precious minutes and hours-spent shuffling, scrolling, searching, moving (Page 39) - The session in the weight room goes better when the weights are stacked and the dumbbells are in the right place. The craftsman is safer when the workshop is tidy (Page 40) - There was really only one avenue to affect change available to the Queen, and in her judicious, restrained way, she used it: by asking questions. If she was concerned about something or objected to it, she requested more information above and beyond what she found in the Red Box or the press. Sometimes over and over again until, eventually, the potential issue became clear to the relevant policy makers. She didn't blurt out what she thought ought to be done, yet in time it became clear enough. (Page 103) - as Aristotle reminds us, "Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet." (Page 128) - It doesn't matter the cause, whether it was from procrastination or perfectionism, the result is the same. You didn't do it. (Page 135) - Montaigne said, "anything you can do another day can be done now. "He who postpones the hour of living right," Horace wrote, "is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses. To paraphrase the Stoics: You could be good now. Instead you chose tomorrow. To procrastinate is to be entitled. It is arrogant. It assumes there will be a later. It assumes you'll have the discipline to get to it later (despite not having the discipline now) (Page 137) - "Remember to conduct yourself in life as if at a banquet," Epictetus said. "As something being passed around comes to you, reach out your hand and take a moderate helping. Does it pass you by? Don't stop it. It hasn't yet come? Don't burn in desire for it, but wait until it arrives in front of you. Act this way with children, a spouse, toward position, with wealtth-one day it will make you worthy of a banquet with the gods (Page 152) - If you have money, spend it the problem is when people spend what they don't have, to get things they don't need, at a price nowhere near worth the cost. (Page 183) - I am prepared to forgive everybody's mistakes," Cato the Elder said, "except my own." Ben Franklin, many generations later, would put forth an even better rule: "Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices." Or as Marcus Aurelius put it, Tolerant with others, strict with yourself. (Page 239) - Because their life is not in your control. Because you'll burn yourself out if you can't get to a place where you live and let live. Credit them for trying. Credit them for context. Forgive. Forget. Help them get better, if they're open to the help. Not everyone has trained like you have. Not everyone has the knowledge you have. Not everyone has the willpower or the commitment you have. Not everyone signed up for this kind of life either! (Page 239) - It doesn't matter what you bear," Seneca would say. "It matters how you bear it." The truly great bear it with grace. (Page 252) - A leader must be selfless, they must sacrifice, they must face the same deprivations as everyone else in the organization. If you can do this, Mattis learned from the writings of General Viscount Slim, "they will follow you to the end of the world.” "The privilege of command is command," Mattis once told a lieutenant he'd caught shirking. "You don't get a bigger tent." (Page 253) - Best is the person who adds shine to their accomplishments with their discipline, not the other way around. This is what Posidonius was trying to tell Pompey, although Pompey failed to fully realize it. In the end, it's not about what we do, it's about how we do it and, by extension, who we are. (Page 282)