PDF Summary:How to Do Things You Hate, by Peter Hollins

If you struggle to stay disciplined in work and life, there’s just one thing you need to learn. In How to Do Things You Hate, Peter Hollins explains: Self-discipline is hard but simple—all you need to do is stop avoiding discomfort.

Hollins, an author and self-described “student of the human condition,” writes that avoiding discomfort doesn’t protect you from it—it creates a vicious spiral that makes everything worse. The solution? Learn to work with your thoughts and feelings rather than against them, focus your attention and efforts like a laser, and learn to show up even when you don’t feel motivated.

In this guide, we explain Hollins’s approach to self-discipline. In our commentary, we explore related perspectives from other self-discipline experts including Josh Waitzkin (The Art of Learning), George Leonard (Mastery), and Wim Hof (The Wim Hof Method). We also discuss the origins of the ideas Hollins shares and expand on key concepts with additional research from psychology and neuroscience.

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Hollins recommends clarifying your values by doing the tombstone exercise: Ask yourself what you would want to see written in your obituary or on your tombstone. Then, when things get hard, remind yourself that upholding your values by facing discomfort is more important than comforting yourself.

(Shortform note: The tombstone exercise comes originally from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and involves writing two different obituaries for yourself—one you fear you’ll end up with, and one you’ll ideally live to deserve. It’s meant to help you identify how you want to live your life, and what you don’t want to waste it on.)

View #3: Responsibility Trumps Reactivity

According to Hollins, we all have the ability to consciously override our knee-jerk reactions, ride out our emotions, and act more intentionally. Realizing this will help you responsibly face discomfort rather than reactively avoid it.

Hollins explains that in the brain, the neurochemicals that produce emotions break down after 90 seconds. This means that if you’re still feeling those emotions, you’re refreshing them by thinking thoughts associated with them (such as by ruminating on how angry you feel). So when you feel caught up in some emotion, like discomfort, remind yourself: It’s better to ride this out than react unthinkingly.

(Shortform note: The 90-second rule comes from neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor. Taylor writes in My Stroke of Insight that strong feelings come from the brain’s limbic system, a primary center of emotions and the fight or flight response. She further explains that you can practice positive self-talk to distinguish between helpful and unhelpful emotions, saying to yourself things like “Do I really need to get hung up over that comment? I’d rather move on and feel good again.” This helps you learn to respond to things intentionally, rather than react to them, as they come.)

Bring Awareness to Your Discomfort

Now that we’ve seen how to adopt a mindset that embraces discomfort, let’s look at Hollins’s method. In this section, we’ll cover how to move into and through your discomfort using a mindfulness-based awareness practice and simple action steps.

Hollins writes that by bringing awareness to discomfort, you’ll learn that you can actually feel it without being controlled by it. In turn, you’ll realize that your tolerance for discomfort is higher than you believe, and that you can push at your edges without giving up or falling apart.

(Shortform note: How does awareness help you embrace discomfort? One possibility is that it teaches you to see your experience more objectively. In Why Buddhism Is True, Robert Wright argues just that. He explains that practicing mindfulness meditation trains you to step back from your experience and not get caught up in suffering. As a result, he writes, mindfulness can help you overcome cravings, change your habits, and live a more tranquil life.)

Hollins discusses a few distinct frameworks for awareness practice; we’ve distilled them into the below method that preserves the essentials without redundancy. Before beginning, he recommends that you first forgive yourself for spiraling in the first place. Realize that everyone messes up, everyone gets stressed, and everyone has a hard time with hard work. You can and will get through it, but being overly critical of yourself won’t help.

(Shortform note: In Lighter, Yung Pueblo writes that to truly heal and grow, you have to accept yourself unconditionally. This means forgiving yourself for everything you’ve done that you aren’t proud of, as well as embracing the parts of you that you do more easily like. Welcoming everything, even the dark, painful parts of you, will help you stop spiraling and start growing.)

After forgiving yourself, follow these four steps:

1. Notice your discomfort: Become aware of the state of mind you’re in. Simply recognize that you’re feeling that way, without judging.
2. Own your discomfort: Allow it to be just as it is, without analyzing or pushing it away or otherwise trying to change it.
3. Investigate your discomfort: Ask about the possible causes of this state of mind, about what would happen if you act on it, and whether it aligns with your values.
4. Release your discomfort: Realize that you aren’t your spiral, whether it involves fear, anxiety, depression, self-critical thoughts, or something else. You’re in a temporary state of mind that isn’t you, per se, and it’ll pass.

Practicing this method, Hollins says, creates a state of inner calm. From there, you can better respond (such as by doing the work even though you don’t want to) rather than simply reacting unthinkingly. Then all you need to do is start, taking one small step—like opening your word processor—to get the ball rolling.

(Shortform note: In the book, Hollins presents the above four steps as the RAIN framework for mindfulness practice—Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture. Though he doesn’t credit it to her, this acronym comes from Tara Brach, a mindfulness teacher and author of Radical Acceptance. She writes that when negative feelings arise, it’s crucial to be patient and kind with yourself. RAIN is meant as a tool for these situations, and you can use it to accept pain, fear, anxiety, and more.)

Staying Disciplined for Good

Up to this point, we’ve covered the main problem that prevents us from being more disciplined (avoiding discomfort) and Hollins’s solution for it (working with discomfort). But once you get moving with his main advice, you’ll need a way to keep up your efforts for the long run. We’ll look next to his recommendations for stabilizing and sustaining your newfound discipline by sharpening your focus and using smart productivity strategies.

Stabilizing Your Discipline

It’s all well and good to confront discomfort once or twice, but how do you keep it up over time? Hollins says that to stay disciplined, you need both focused attention and focused commitments. That is, you have to train your mind to concentrate clearly, steadily, and on command; and you have to set your life up to support focused action that serves your values.

(Shortform note: Focus can work wonders, but how do you know what to focus on? In Discipline Is Destiny, Ryan Holiday writes that to truly live a disciplined life, you have to know your purpose. Without a purpose, you have nothing to practice discipline in service of. Holiday says your purpose should be something you enjoy doing for its own sake—not for external rewards—because that way, you’ll be motivated to keep going even when things get tough.)

Focus Your Attention

To develop your powers of concentration, take up focus-based awareness training. This involves learning to train your attention on a single point of reference, like your breath. Hollins says this will sharpen your mental acuity, giving you greater control over your mind and, therefore, your actions.

You can do this by sitting at rest in a regular chair, bringing your awareness gently to your breath, and practicing maintaining your attention there. You will mess up, early and often. That’s OK—reframe loss of focus as a cue to gently bring your attention back to your breath, and consider that one “rep” of practice (training your attention to focus is like training muscles at the gym).

(Shortform note: Hollins recommends focusing on your breath as a good starting point, but this can be difficult to do. For a simpler starting point, consider trataka, or candlelight meditation. It involves using the flame of a small candle as your focus point, and because the flame is tangible, it can be easier to maintain that focus. Historically, trataka was a preparatory practice for more difficult meditations, like those that involve focusing on the breath or internal sensations. It’s said to improve mental concentration and clarify your thoughts.)

Hollins adds that beyond directly training your mind to focus, you have to take care of your body, too. Since the mind emerges from the body (he writes that it’s generated by the brain), a well-cared for body will produce a healthy mind.

Care for your body by eating well, getting regular doses of good stress (stress that pushes but doesn’t blow through your limits, like moderate exercise), and getting plenty of good sleep. All of these contribute to healthy maintenance of your energy, motivation, and mental sharpness.

(Shortform note: Holiday agrees that you need to keep your body in good shape to be disciplined. Like Hollins, he recommends eating well and exercising, and he emphasizes why this matters: It’ll help you make better decisions, resist temptations, and push through mental challenges. And in Discipline Equals Freedom, Jocko Willink makes more specific recommendations, saying that you should practice Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (because it’s mentally stimulating, practical, and fun) and eat a diet composed mainly of protein and fat from whole foods. He recommends avoiding processed foods because, he says, humans didn’t evolve to digest them well.)

Focus Your Efforts

A focused mind will take you far—but you also need to focus your efforts, according to Hollins. He writes that all highly successful people know they have limited daily energy, so they focus obsessively on the few things that matter most to them. Concentrating their energy like a laser into just one or two efforts, they get more done. In contrast, unsuccessful people scatter their energy around like a weak flashlight, wasting it on unnecessary distractions.

To focus your energy like a laser, let go of everything but your most cherished aspirations. Hollins recommends that you do this by taking stock of what you want to achieve in your life. Write down 25 items, then eliminate all but five. Put the other 20 on an “avoid at all costs” list and don’t do them. For instance, you might want to found a startup, travel the world, marry a good partner, get fit, and learn to surf. You might also want to eat your way through NYC, raise puppies, bike across Asia, plant a garden, and more—but you drop these to focus on the five that matter most to you.

(Shortform note: Hollins isn’t the first to use lasers as an analogy for focus, and some say it’s a misleading metaphor. Lasers don’t focus light; they produce coherent, stable beams of light. By contrast, lenses—like magnifying glasses—do focus diffuse streams of light into one powerful beam. Regardless, focus matters. In Discipline Is Destiny, Holiday agrees that you have to prioritize aggressively in order to fulfill your purpose. He recommends refusing all opportunities that distract you from your purpose, as well as setting clear limits around what you do and who you give your time to. If those things or people cross your limits, cut them out. Your purpose needs to come first, if you truly want to achieve it.)

Sustaining Your Discipline

We’ve seen how to focus your mind and your efforts; now, let’s look at how to sustain your discipline for the long haul.

According to Hollins, the key to lasting discipline lies in learning how to persevere through the inevitable trials and travails of life. Self-discipline isn’t a box you can check off a to-do list—it’s a lifelong effort. You’ll never always feel perfectly competent, perfectly motivated, or perfectly inspired. Life will get unexpectedly hard at times, and your drive will fluctuate. This is all normal.

In fact, most of the disciplined life involves toiling for long periods of time without much in the way of a reward. Progress and success come intermittently, Hollins says, so you’ll have to sustain yourself through these plateaus. He offers three strategies for doing this, which we’ll look at below.

(Shortform note: In Mastery, George Leonard writes that plateaus make up most of the path toward success, and that if you want to live a life of self-mastery, you have to embrace them. Further, he describes plateaus not as problems to suffer through so you can stay disciplined, but as the path itself. For this reason, you should treat them as opportunities to learn to love the steady, diligent, unglamorous work of practice. If you stick to it, you’ll eventually reap the rewards and, as Leonard says, fulfill your potential to master anything you choose to.)

Work With Your Body

First, Hollins recommends that you learn to work with your body’s natural cycles. He explains that within the more familiar circadian rhythm (your body’s sleep and wakefulness cycle), we also have ultradian rhythms. These are shorter, 90- to 120-minute cycles in which our energy rises to a peak, then falls to a floor. You perform best when your energy is rising and peaking, and you perform worst when your energy is falling and flooring.

To take advantage of these cycles, observe your energy levels for a week and take note of when you feel awake and alert versus tired and sluggish. Then, schedule your toughest tasks—like complex work or hard exercise—to coincide with your rises and peaks. Likewise, schedule breaks for your falls and floors.

(Shortform note: Ultradian rhythms are a natural physiological feature of the human body that mediate your energy, performance, and need for rest. Because we live in a world defined by cycles—night and day, the seasons, hunger and thirst—we naturally have these patterns of up, down, up, down in our energy. Ignoring them can disrupt your body’s hormonal balances and metabolic processes, leading to lower performance throughout the day. But if you learn to respect your body and work with your natural rhythms, you can achieve higher and more consistent levels of performance than you’d previously thought possible.)

Learn to Shift Your State

Even if you work with your ultradian rhythms, Hollins says, you’ll sometimes feel unmotivated anyway (which is normal). To handle this, develop a startup routine. This is a set sequence of actions you take to change your state from unmotivated to motivated, and it’ll enable you to get ready and going no matter what.

Begin your routine with a single easy step, like washing your face. Let that easy step cue you into some form of movement, like taking a brisk walk or stretching. The movement is what gives you energy and motivates you. Practice this sequence consistently until it becomes second nature. Then when you need to change your state, you can just take the first action and let the rest unfold.

(Shortform note: Hollins isn’t the only one to argue that shifting your state is a key skill for high performance. In The Art of Learning, Josh Waitzkin suggests creating a routine that gets you going, as Hollins describes, and then compressing it into a shorter and shorter form that immediately triggers the state shift. For example, you might have a routine of walking for 10 minutes, stretching for 10 minutes, and doing 20 jumping-jacks. You’d then gradually shorten and intensify these activities until the state they activate comes on sooner. Waitzkin says that if you link this routine and state shift to your breathing, you can eventually shift states with just a few breaths. In high-performance environments like sports, this can give you a real leg up.)

Never Give Zero Effort

If working with your rhythms and using a startup routine both fail you, Hollins has one more piece of advice: Never give zero effort. As long as you do your best to do the bare minimum every day, you won’t lose your discipline. Even if that best fluctuates wildly, you can rest easy knowing you did something—and that you haven’t given up on trying. And that’s all you really need to do, day in and day out, to succeed.

(Shortform note: Other experts agree that maintaining discipline means always trying, no matter how poorly things go. One popular approach to this is the “don’t break the chain” approach, which supposedly comes from comedian Jerry Seinfeld. It involves getting a physical calendar, then marking a large “X” over every day that you perform your effort—whether it’s starting a new habit or just doing your best. This works because building a streak feels rewarding, and you don’t want to lose the little hit of motivation that comes from extending it each day.)