This has been a hard week. I have not slept more than four hours a night, and some nights I have not slept at all. I have a long list of items on my to-do list, and I stay busy, but I don’t seem to be making any progress.

This mystery is probably explained by two changes that I have made recently. First I have stopped keeping a work log: at some point I was too busy to update it, and after that the habit of keeping it up to date just slipped away. (I have the same problem with this blog, I admit.)

The second change is that I am working a lot from my flat, where there are not too many, but still some distractions. Well, come to think of it, there is only my bed. But there is also a phycological difference: at home I’m much more inclined to listen to music or make a sandwich, while at work I would tough it out until I had to go home.

It may seem that I can improve my productivity by undoing these two changes, and I’ll probably try to do that. I have accomplished something this week and it has not been a complete waste, but I could perhaps get a lot more done. On the cosmic scale of things, my low/high productivity may not seem like a big issue, and — to be honest — it doesn’t bother me that much. But it raises a more disturbing train of thought about a personality defect that has bothered me for a long time: my lack of self-discipline. I have often wondered if there is some kind of training or exercise that I could perform to improve it.

Does it come down to a (perhaps neurological) weakness in making trade-offs between short- and long-term rewards? Or perhaps highly-disciplined people conduct some kind of inner dialogue that I am just not able to keep up? Do they instinctively use some form of visualization (like gymnasts and other athletes) that impel them to work and not to play? The answer is probably that it is a mental habit that anyone can learn, but not without effort, combined with some powers of concentration. My boredom threshold is quite low, and I work hardest when the task is new and still stimulating. Once I get used to it, it loses all its appeal and I easily convince myself to take a nap instead.

On the one hand there is a refrain in my head that tells me that I am getting to old to change my ways, while on the other hand I don’t believe that for one minute. There are plenty of examples of almost-middle-aged and older people who have taken their lives in new directions. Let’s hope I can be one of them, at least in this small way.