Almost every great artist seems to invent the self-control to do this, whether it's writing 5 pages a day or waking up early to paint, in many cases as a response to the ennui and disintegration of an overabundance of unstructured freedom.
I'm not one of those guys because it's really difficult to reshape your life into that structure.. But all it really requires is willpower.
For me, concentration of that level only comes into play when I'm fascinated by a difficult problem... it can't be applied to mundane small incremental daily progress.
But maybe if I set my sleep and wake alarms differently...
I just finished the book 4000 Weeks, and it deals with some of the things that you mention here. Maybe you'd get something from it.
It is ostensibly a book about time management; it's in the subtitle. It seems actually to be a book that says: We can't get it all done. We're still good enough. Get clear on what's important and spend time on those things
I very much second this book. I'm not sure it teaches anything groundbreaking/new, but just seeing the words on a page was hugely valuable to me in the same sort of way that saying the things that rattle around in your head out loud to a therapist is. It really helped me gain some clarity on my own direction.
I think you are being overly unkind to yourself. It could be that the people who become great artist learn this, but it's also possible they just won the genetic lottery in terms of brain chemistry.
Beating yourself up by comparing yourself to people like that won't make you like them, but it will severely distort your self image and mental health.
I guess. But I feel like it's only such a small amount of self control I lack to get me there. Maybe it's good to beat yourself up a bit, to remind yourself to have a goal that's almost in reach.
> For me, concentration of that level only comes into play when I'm fascinated by a difficult problem... it can't be applied to mundane small incremental daily progress.
What if that difficult problem requires more than one day to solve? (E.g. most research problems?)
I'm not one of those guys because it's really difficult to reshape your life into that structure.. But all it really requires is willpower.
For me, concentration of that level only comes into play when I'm fascinated by a difficult problem... it can't be applied to mundane small incremental daily progress.
But maybe if I set my sleep and wake alarms differently...