{"id":274,"date":"2020-06-29T15:09:54","date_gmt":"2020-06-29T15:09:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/danwritescode.com\/?p=274"},"modified":"2020-06-29T15:09:55","modified_gmt":"2020-06-29T15:09:55","slug":"path-to-technical-mastery-part-2-discipline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danwritescode.com\/path-to-technical-mastery-part-2-discipline\/","title":{"rendered":"Path To Technical Mastery, Part 2: Discipline"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the last article I talked about patience<\/a> being the base on which I build my path to expertise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I use patience is needed to build discipline. But what’s discipline and why did I need it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discipline<\/strong> is the practice of making people obey rules or standards of behaviour, and punishing them when they do not.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Not what I have in mind <\/strong>when I say discipline in work. Punishments don’t really work for me and what I am trying to do does not involve this type of discipline. There’s one more definition:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discipline<\/strong> is the quality of being able to behave and work in a controlled way which involves obeying particular rules or standards. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Yes, this is more like it, and this is what I mean. I discipline myself following my own set of rules and standards which I do my best to keep up with. I always motivated myself to reach my goals and it’s enough for me to keep me going. Some people need to be publicly accountable for their goals so they need to announce it to an audience. That’s completely fine, if that works for you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How I built and then lost my discipline<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I used to have a good discipline as a child. I was not forced into it by my parents, but I felt motivated to excel in school. I took every challenge as a serious test and I did not like to fail. I wish I knew that failure is a great teacher, but I had a big ego and I wanted to win all the time when it mattered to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later on, I started losing that discipline that made me excel in school. High school was fun and distracting so I spent less time preparing and more time having fun. Looking back at this, that was pretty much ok, given the age. However, getting my full discipline back didn’t happen up until recently. Let me tell you how I finally did it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout my young adult life I embraced the “live in the present, live in the moment” philosophy and things went remarkably well. I still did my professional tasks well and at the same time I put myself in a multitude of spontaneous circumstances that made me feel happy and fulfilled. All was good until I grew out of it. I started wanting something after the FOMO was gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It took some time to understand what I wanted but I realized after a while that it was the desire to excel again. The choice of my field of expertise was a simple choice for me – web development. I like what I do. Actually, I simply love it. So why not take it to the next step, or better yet, to the top of the staircase! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

No discipline for me = a lot of mess in my life<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

My whole “live in the moment”, “don’t say no to anything” and “embrace every opportunity” lifestyle has brought me a lot of cool experiences, put me on an interesting personal and professional trajectory, but on the same time it had its darkside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a moment at the end of my 2 year cofounder of a startup adventure when I realized things are out of control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are some things that were going very wrong and were putting me to a path of losing my mind:<\/p>\n\n\n\n