Discipline vs Simplicity
The word “discipline” has been talked about all of 2025. Gurus and motivational speakers pushing everyone towards what they deem is a “better life”. You scroll on social media, wanting to replicate the way they live their lives: ice plunges, gym, podcasts, etc. It may work for awhile, you might try it a couple weeks, then it crumbles. “What a failure I am! Ugh. I’m never going to be like Joe Shmoe over there”, then you go back to another form of escapism and consumption until you get your next fix of dopamine a few months later. I know this, because I’ve been there. What I’ll be talking about today is proposing another idea, against the trending “discipline” topics we see every day on social media.
Discipline - the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, with punishment or other undesired consequences for those failing to comply. Commonly, our culture treats it as “you got to get up at 6am”, “run before you start work”, and “grind grind grind!”. We, as the consumer, see people posting how disciplined they are on social media. There’s plenty of posts of people posting them eating healthy whole food diets, waking up before the sun is out, and various other things. There’s almost a sense of "guilt-tripping” when trying to convince people to be more disciplined. It’s been a trendy word that’s lately been used to get people to buy a “improve your life in 60 days” course.
“You aren’t achieving your dreams because you aren’t disciplined enough”, “You’re falling behind”, yada yada yada.
There is no better time than the present. All these things you see on social media is relying on “extrinsic motivation” to entice you to take a step forward. Sometimes there’s value in this. Some of us may have never got their feet wet with new ideas if we didn’t have someone on the outside try to encourage us to do new things. The problem is when guilt and shame become a motivator, it ends up becoming associated with the task we want to learn/do. Starting a Youtube Channel and being a Game Dev were my things I was excited to do and I finally took a leap of faith and tried them out! It was fun at first and then I got pretty caught up in the “grindset” content I’d see. I’d try to film videos while working full-time, try to edit them myself, script them, while also trying to learn Game Dev. It was a bridge that was ready to collapse - and it did!
I had a hard time balancing all these hobbies and I took it personally. I thought, maybe I’m just not caught out to do those hobbies. I really got in my head about it. I’d escape these thoughts when I’d get home from work and play games all day. If the thoughts were louder some particular days, I’d play games and drown out the noise with Youtube videos in the background. It was a “shame” thing, which turned me off from Game Dev for a YEAR and same with Youtube.
Something changed for me recently when I changed my mindset.
I realized that I wanted to do this. I recently watched a video from Hank Green, called “Don’t Follow Your Dreams - Follow Your Tools” (link here) and it semi-encapsulates what got me started back into my hobbies again. He mentions in the video that whenever people ask him, what helps him do what he needs to do - Hank Green says “I fall downhill”. I agree (mostly) to this. I believe I like to flow in the path of least resistance. That doesn’t mean NO resistance, but the least. The gurus and influencers may push me to “wake up at 6am and start the grind”, but I find myself not that productive to write scripts around that time. I’m actually a lot more creative at night. I usually write these blog posts before I go to sleep on Sunday nights. I usually like to work on Game Dev, right after work and all the chores are done.
I started realizing the more I embraced doing the hobbies the way I liked doing, the hobby became SO MUCH more enjoyable. I don’t need to aim for Youtube subscribers and making money. I can just enjoy making videos. I don’t need to profit or rush into making games, I have faith in myself that I’ll go to it when life permits (ps. do not use “life” as an abstract thing that allows you to procrastinate further. Make it definitive and be deliberate on finding time to work on your hobbies, if you want to keep working on your hobbies)/ I used to try “hobby trackers” and “habit streaking” and all those things actually made me feel more anxious about doing the hobby. So I did away with it (even though I loved writing the trackers lol).
Doing/Finding what you love to do, will take experimentation. If you don’t have a hobby, but looking for one - experiment! There’s no “perfect” way time or way to try out a hobby. Get your toes wet and don’t even expect a result! See if you just enjoy doing the thing. You like it? Cool! Come back another time. Some other kids on the playground, may come up and say “you should do it this way” or “that way” - but in the end, it’s how YOU want to do it. If you don’t like their way, and you keep trying their way, you’re going to stop showing up to “do the thing”.
The gurus that wake up at 6am and run marathons, they may find THAT as their path of least resistance. There is no bad thing about that, I’m sure a lot of them are not having bad intentions. But that’s not for everybody. Don’t feel bad if your way is a lot easier than theirs, because what matters most is that you show up and enjoy it.
