I have been thinking about discipline lately. I had to channel a lot of it in order to complete my MA thesis, and it was so trying and spiritually painful at times. But, it feels really good to be on the other side.
Growing up, I had a pretty intense relationship to discipline, as many people who came of age in ballet studios might say. I understood discipline as a beneficial quality in my relationship to myself, as opposed to how many young people may interpret it, as punitive and motivated by external forces. I had clear goals (ie: the qualitative execution of certain steps, getting specific roles, a professional dance career) and I understood intimately very early on that it was through discipline I could achieve them.
But as I aged, my association with discipline became convoluted. In college, my relationship to dancing, my body, achievement, and discipline itself, became very toxic, and what was once grounding practices of discipline turned more into practices of self-hatred. Now, many years on the other side of that challenging and agonizing time, I see in retrospect how I rebelled and ran from discipline in the immediate aftermath. I was fearful it would morph again from discipline to something mean and self-hating.
Though in hindsight I maintained many disciplines, like going to dance class regularly, turning my phone off at 10:30pm (I envy myself for being once able to do this!) and journaling every night, I removed the term “discipline” from my vocabulary, if not using it pejoratively. What I look back on and see clearly as disciplines, I would have classified then as rituals. I had begun to see discipline as punishment, as a product of white supremacy and capitalism, as a useless expenditure towards unachievable perfection.
But part of writing this is to say I no longer believe it has to be this way. I don’t think it’s inevitable that discipline turn to self-flagellation, even though capitalism surely wants it that way. Capitalism would love for us to be either undisciplined or self-hating, or both, as often manifests. My relationship to discipline has both blossomed and grounded recently, in ways that feel worth exploring, concretizing, and holding myself accountable to. Perhaps you too have an inquiry, wound, or need regarding discipline to follow, heal, or attend to.
Writing my thesis while balancing wage work (which also happened to involve typing words from my brain and into a computer), domestic chores, acknowledging my health, maintaining relationships, caretaking a baby puppy, and staying accountable to all my other commitments, was the ultimate time management test, and sometimes mine proved very fallible. I couldn’t show up quite how I wanted in all the areas a lot of the time. I had to make changes to the daily reality of under-resource and over-capacity I experienced in order to channel the focus and will to complete such a big project – it was not one like previous papers or substack essays that I can squeeze in here and there before dinners or during lunches.
I ultimately created two “retreats” – aka – I went to friends’ empty houses and forced myself into a writing routine for week-long sprints. This was the only way I was able to tap into the discipline I ultimately needed to complete the project. I needed a clear slate, to wake up somewhere other than my own bed, to look at walls (or gardens) that were not mine, in order to kick my butt into gear each morning and remember what the day was meant to be – a day of writing.
Before my first “retreat,” a friend recommended I visit Yumi Sakugawa’s musings on discipline to help pump me up. I returned to Yumi’s words when I needed re-grounding and I printed this piece (pictured below) of theirs to live on whatever surface I was working on at any given time during my retreats. I looked at it to remind myself to be soft and gentle with the parts of me that feel resistant to discipline, while holding the importance of continuing and persevering, even if it’s hard or uncomfortable.
I’ve read countless writers on writing and creators on creating. On the routine, the planning of days, and the enjoyment that comes from discipline – little by little, word by word, note by note or step by step. I couldn’t begin to repeat all the musings I’ve consumed over the years, which surely don’t even begin to scratch the surface of all the musings ever recorded. But I will always remember from reading The Creative Habit when I was a teenager that Twyla Tharp starts her days at 5:30am with a workout at a gym before going into the studio to choreograph.1
Or, I’ve been kind of obsessed with this image of Olivia Rodrigo writing her emotional, angsty pop songs, ever since I read Jia Tolentino’s profile of her, where she says, “I wake up and make my little matcha and I make bacon for myself, and then I sit at the piano and try to write something, even if it’s shit,” on which Jia elucidates, “this solitary discipline is a point of pride for her. After the success of Sour, she had to deliberately stop herself from crowding her life with distractions.”
In my professional development class, I scoffed at Jane Ward’s piece about Binge Writing because what I wanted was consistency, ritual, structure. I wanted 5:30ams at the gym and sitting at the piano with bacon. I chided Ward’s privilege, to be able to just escape from her world and write whenever she needed to finish a piece. I thought, I want to be more disciplined than that. But I realize now, these judgements were misguided. As I learned, to “binge write” takes discipline, time management, and a system too.
Altogether I had 11 days of “retreat” – each of which I spent the first moments of the morning making a detailed schedule for, in 15 minute intervals, on paper, using pencil. The first 5 days, a monday thru friday in early July, I was still in generation phase. My goal was to write at least 1000 words a day, and I did. The second 6 days, a friday thru friday (in which I took the weekend off after the first day, because balance!) had clearer goals for each day, like finish this section, edit this chapter, etc.
For both sprints, if I went over time or needed to make adjustments to my schedule, I did so on the paper schedule, so I could log exactly what was happening and still needed to happen. I’m not sure how much this system actually helped me stay on track as much as it helped me stay grounded in something and reminded me what I was doing was tied to a clear end goal.
I love writing, and once I got into the groove I enjoyed myself thoroughly, though this is not a sustainable way for me to practice. Olivia Rodrigo and Twyla Tharp can create their days around their artistic discipline because it is their job. And while I’m sure they are very busy people, they aren’t having to balance their rituals with their wage work (as I was) or having to carry out the minutiae of day to day tasks that makes such rituals possible, because they have assistants for that. Jane ward uproots her life to binge write four times a year, in part, because writing is her job. They all enjoy their crafts (I assume), but they can capitalize off their respective practices in a way that isn’t realistic, sustainable, or even desirable to me.
So for some of us, for whom art is not our 9-5, discipline in our art practices might take … even more discipline? Or a different timbre of it. Or at least, more intrinsically motivated discipline. But discipline is not just an action, or a way to organize the day, it’s also an approach. It’s a quality which may be behind anything, or everything, one does.
When I worked at Skywatchers, we called it rigor. We used to wonder whether prioritizing and celebrating rigor was in alignment with our values as community artists, or if it idolized a type of ethos and aesthetic only available to people who were moneyed, young, not-disabled, and otherwise resourced. We also recognized the value of rigor in any art practice and recognized how it transferred uniquely into community art praxis: building relationships, deepening community, and enduring a commitment to justice. In the Skywatchers handbook (which you can get a hard or PDF copy of, just send an email here :)) there’s a section dedicated to rigor – starting with critiquing whatever dominant narrative might first be associated with the word and continuing on to “reclaim” it. Here are some excerpts:
“Rigor practiced over time is required to release our own conscious and unconscious standards’ of good and bad in favor of values of heart: courage, vulnerability, and honesty, in dialogue with shared values such as clarity, craft, and potency.
Rigor is truth-telling. In a practice rooted in relationships, we attend to honesty and trust with rigorous care
we believe that process is product. If we apply rigor to our process, we believe it will manifest in the public performance or display of the work, in all the many forms that takes.”
This speaks to the how of discipline, the quality beyond the action. It’s not just consistently making the art, it’s consistently caring about how the art is made, and with whom, and for whom, and why?
One of my favorite writers, Hanif Abdurraqib, puts his relationship to discipline like this:
“One thing that defines my life is that I’m really disciplined. I’m very beholden to my disciplines. …The thing that excites me is affixing myself to these disciplines, even if they don’t have a reward. The reward is that I show up to something repetitively and that showing up is a reminder that I have endured, that I’ve survived enough to have the will and excitement to show up for something else. Sometimes that discipline is how I simply survive from sunrise to sunset.”
For Hanif, and for me when I can zoom out enough to be in a productive headspace about it, showing up to the practice is the goal beyond any goal that might be associated with the practice. In the excerpted quote, Hanif was speaking specifically to fasting during Ramadan while still maintaining his running practice. I went to his book talk when he was doing publicity for his most recent book, the same time he did that interview, and it’s clear his discipline when it comes to running and fasting informs his writing, too. He said he was committed to writing the best book he could write, which meant confronting edges such as divulging details about his life that he had never shared publicly. The emotional and psychological work behind making your best possible work is a part of the discipline too.
I haven’t gotten a chance to read the book yet, but its gotten numerous accolades, effusive reviews, is being recommended by writers Hanif himself idolizes. Which is to say, presumably, the book is good. The discipline it took for him to write the best book he could, one could say, was rewarded in all these ways. But perhaps for Hanif, the discipline transcends the awards and celebrity blurbs. Transcending beyond my teenaged ballerina dreams, where discipline could be rewarded with a role or nailing a triple pirouette. In some cases, discipline itself is the reward.
“Discipline negates and creates. It induces the subordination of personal interest for the sake of producing a new force, a force strong enough to endure the long years of revolutionary struggle and prevail.” -Jodi Dean2
It’s no coincidence my musings on discipline coincide with Black August, a commemoration I had heard of, but embarrassingly never really familiarized myself with until this year. The four principles of Black August are: Study, fast, train, fight. A month in which we recommit to high discipline as revolutionaries.
As we near one year of increased aggression against the Palestinian people and their land, carried out by the brutal and barbaric zionist entity but funded and supported by bipartisan US policy and our tax dollars, I am in awe of the discipline shown and practiced by the movement in for a liberated Palestine. I remember naively thinking back in November of 2023, how soon it would be over, though I, and so many others, would be forever changed, a ceasefire would soon be reached and we would no longer be waking up to such horror on our phone screens. And yet, here we are. Though the movement may ebb and flow, there are so many who have remained disciplined all year. Building capacity, base-building, educating others, studying, meeting, coordinating, rallying, agitating… This past year has taught me a new kind of discipline.
As Jodi Dean describes in her epic essay on political belonging, Comrade, discipline is not just about one’s own individual relationship to their time, goals, and values. It also exists relationally. Through understanding comradeship, we can better understand discipline as relational. “As a mode of address, figure of belonging, and carrier of expectations, comrade designates the relation between those who are on the same side of a political struggle” she defines. And “comradeship is a disciplining relation: Expectations, and the responsibility to meet them, constrain individual action and generate collective capacity. Comrades learn to push immediate self-interest and the desire for personal comfort or advancement aside for the sake of the party, the movement, and the struggle.”3
A few years ago, if I heard the phrase “relational discipline,” my mind might have gone to a toxic power imbalance, where one person exerts their power over another using discipline as a punitive force. But after spending a year studying friendship and revolution, in distinct but inevitably overlapping containers, I understand better that few, if any, things happen spontaneously. Whether nurturing a friendship or building a movement able to respond to revolutionary conditions, discipline is necessary. Discipline can show up in or as one’s own personal and individual commitments, desires, necessity, or goals. For comrades, that individual discipline exists, and it also contributes to a vast and overarching collective vision.
“Through comradely discipline, we make one another stronger. Our commitment to working together toward our common goal works back on us, enabling us to surmount and maybe even abolish those individualist attributes produced by capitalism. We can make mistakes, learn, and change, by recognizing our own inadequacies, we come to understand the need to be generous and understanding toward the shortcomings of others. We develop an appreciation for the strengths and talents that we had been unable to see. We become a new kind of collectivity.”4
When we allow discipline to grow beyond ourselves as individuals and into comradely discipline, it becomes an antidote to disarming forces like cancel culture, burnout, or hyper self-scrutiny. This practice of relational discipline, towards a common and revolutionary goal, is not only capable of producing revolutionary wins, but is also capable of producing joy.
“The joy of discipline is internal and external, felt by comrades and experienced by those who witness how discipline changes the world. Through the intense collectivity that discipline enables, comrades can do the impossible; they are liberated from prior expectations and constraints. Joy accompanies the sense of collective invincibility. Together we made it happen – and we did it for purposes larger than ourselves.”5
In a culture which likes to confuse joy for revolution, which claims experiencing pleasure and love will somehow produce a revolution, this point is crucial. Contrary to what some of us have been told, experiencing joy will not achieve revolution, but disciplined comrades have, and will again. And as Jodi Dean details, the discipline required to carry out the strikes, to win our demands, to defeat capitalism, will be accompanied, undeniably, by joy.
I write this not to romanticize discipline. Personally, I embark on disciplined practices not because they are enjoyable but because they are necessary for me to provide structure, ritual, and nourishment to my life. Enjoyment or relief may very well be a byproduct, but is not necessarily the driving motivation.
This nuance is articulated in Wisam Rafeedie’s The Trinity of Fundamentals, when Kanan comes to realize, “he no longer entertained the same beautiful and romantic images of revolutionary work as he had in the prime of his youth … Romantic imaginings of revolutionary action are good as the setting for a fiery song or beautiful poem. However, they are not adequate for educating a person who is going to take up revolution as his profession because he will find out sooner than later that a revolution is one thing and romanticism is quite another.”6
Zooming back into creative discipline specifically again, I think about the phrase I learned in choreo 1 class that has seldom failed me in any artmaking process: “Sometimes you have to kill your darlings.” There’s nothing romantic about making a phrase (in a dance, in an essay, in whatever form) that you love, and realizing there’s no place for it in this work, or that including it would undermine your intentions for the work altogether. While it took immense discipline to produce the 89 pages I turned in for my thesis, it may have taken even more to delete the 28 pages worth of content that went into my “rogues” document – all the writing that just didn’t belong in this collection, that wasn’t intrinsic to the work at this stage, or I didn’t have capacity to flesh out fully. In that document were stories and passages I really loved writing, but discipline isn’t just about producing and showing up, sometimes it’s about scaling down, revising, and retreating.
Part of discipline is learning how to assess the conditions (in an art-making process, in organizing, or whatever is relevant to you), knowing when to do what, and what kind of discipline is required when.
Black August is over, but now is still a great time to commit or re-commit to discipline. Whether it’s joining an organization, getting off social media, embarking on or deepening a creative or spiritual practice, starting a research project or study habit, moving the body, learning a new language, or disciplined care for yourself or others – may it support you and those around you.
May it offer structure, affirmation, ritual, reward, guidance, joy, connection, or whatever it is you need from it.
May we allow ourselves to be changed and create change through our disciplines!
I guess this fact just lives in my brain, rent-free. I believe I have the book at my mom’s house but I can’t cite it now
Comrade pg 86
Comrade pg 86
Comrade pg 86-87
Comrade pg 88
Trinity of Fundamentals pg 157