Discipline First: Managing the Weight of Responsibility
Balancing the lenses of discipline and leisure to find fulfillment.
Leisure is the basis of culture. It allows us to step back from the chaos of life and appreciate what it means to truly live.
Josef Pieper
Humans are enamored with the extremes. We want to be remarkably disciplined or entirely carefree.
Very few people have a well-balanced life as their grand vision for life.
We either gravitate toward accomplishment and progress and feel guilty when we relax or indulge, or we crave the freedom and flexibility to do whatever we want whenever we want without suffering through discomfort or difficulty.
The truth is both extremes are equally difficult to achieve and unfulfilling.
They aren’t opposite ends of the same spectrum. Instead, they are intertwined; we can’t have one without the other and we need both to live a fulfilling life.
Choosing a lens
Most of us approach life with a lens that leans toward the extreme of discipline or the extreme of leisure. These lenses color how we see the world, plan our lives, and react to new obligations or circumstances.
Someone living life with a lens of leisure sees the need to work on the weekend as a massive intrusion on their life. It disrupts their plans and even if it’s only 30-45 minutes of work, it ruins their entire weekend and prevents them from doing what they think life is all about: relaxing.
Someone living life with a lens of discipline sees spending time with their friends as something that’s holding them back. It’s something that should have been resisted or avoided. Rather than enjoying the leisure and time to relax, all they can think about is what they could or should be doing.
These extremes rob of us the best parts of discipline and leisure. If we’re obsessed with discipline we can’t enjoy the fruits of our labor or the time we have to relax. If we only have the lens of leisure then we never experience the joy of progress or the true relaxation that comes from enjoying ourselves once we’ve completed something difficult.
Balance needs order
Although these philosophies need to be equally prioritized in our lives, discipline first is the more enjoyable and sustainable path.
When we focus on the hard things first, we create a foundation of progress that enhances our ability to enjoy leisure.
To become become better we must be disciplined and do hard things, but the value of those things diminishes if we never stop to enjoy the outcomes we’ve worked so hard to create.
Every day we wake up with a weight of responsibility and obligation on our shoulders. The sooner we do the work required to lift that weight off our shoulders the sooner we can enjoy guilt-free leisure that helps us appreciate what it means to truly live.
Prompts
Do you view life through the lens of discipline or leisure?
How can you better balance discipline and leisure in your own life?
What is one hard thing you can do to start every day that will make the rest of your day more enjoyable?
Deep Dive
Presenting the case that leisure is a key pillar to a fulfilling life.
Thanks for reading! I’ll see you next Sunday.
Kevin