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Re:Andrew Ng on Life, Creativity, and Failure by NhanH on Saturday October 24, 2015 @02:05AM (#10442640)
> People that count on willpower to do these things, it almost never works because willpower peters out. Instead I think people that are into creating habits -- you know, studying every week, working hard every week -- those are the most important. Those are the people most likely to succeed.

That is the one insight that I wished I truly understand years ago. After figured out that intelligence barely means anything, I thought that willpower would be the most important characteristics (because of endurance, perseverance yada yada you know).

Turned out that just like physical muscle, mental muscle get exhausted and you can run out of them. You really can't exert your willpower all the time, and have to preserve them for the really tough time. As human tends to do, we reverse to our habits for the majority of our lives. Well, I hope it's not a lesson learned too late.

That said, training for habits is damn hard.

Re:Andrew Ng on Life, Creativity, and Failure by ronyeh on Saturday October 24, 2015 @02:22AM (#10442678)
If you want to try out a new technique to train for habits, check out this site by BJ Fogg @ Stanford University:

http://tinyhabits.com/

The method trains you to add a new habit to your life by doing a tiny habit every day, anchored to an already existing habit. For example, "Before I visit Hacker News, I will drop down and do TWO pushups." Eventually, you can grow your new habit to make it a bigger part of your life.

Re:Andrew Ng on Life, Creativity, and Failure by lindseya on Sunday October 25, 2015 @02:57PM (#10447896)
There is a lot of focus in the literature right now on developing habits. What I'm interested in is the deeper motivations that drive a person to select their habits in the first place. Why does Andrew read research papers and books all day on a Saturday? Why did you decided to add two pushups to your daily routine? I think that without understanding these deeper motivations, we are left with habits that do not have enough fuel to drive them, leaving us to resort to the habits with the least resistance (i.e. lazy habits).
Re:Andrew Ng on Life, Creativity, and Failure by chrismarlow9 on Saturday October 24, 2015 @03:50AM (#10442822)
but what about bob?
Re:Andrew Ng on Life, Creativity, and Failure by howlett on Saturday October 24, 2015 @04:14AM (#10442865)
Re:Andrew Ng on Life, Creativity, and Failure by geomark on Saturday October 24, 2015 @10:31AM (#10443700)
That's a very good write up. The dichotomy he describes between motivation and discipline is something that gradually came to me during my career. And some of the techniques he describes for "tricking" yourself into developing greater discpline are things that I sort of stumbled upon through trial and error. It would have been great to read something like this years ago, although at the time maybe I would not have realized its value.

When you've firmly established a new facet of discipline to the point that it is internalized and becomes automatic, that's when you've got a new beneficial habit. I like how Ng nails that in an almost understated way.

Re:Andrew Ng on Life, Creativity, and Failure by tdaltonc on Saturday October 24, 2015 @03:55PM (#10444651)
I've built an API that helps developers build apps that create habits.

http://UseDopamine.com/

Re:Andrew Ng on Life, Creativity, and Failure by icc97 on Saturday October 24, 2015 @08:29AM (#10443393)
This reminds me of a zenhabits post about The Myth of Discipline [1]:

[1]: http://zenhabits.net/discipline/

Re:Andrew Ng on Life, Creativity, and Failure by plesiv on Saturday October 24, 2015 @07:24AM (#10443240)
I love this app: http://www.habitbull.com/