A note from Daniel

There is an old German word, sitzfleisch, which basically means sitting your butt in the chair and not getting up until the task is complete. Even as it goes numb, even as one by one, the people around you call it a day. Showing up yourself, day after day, until your back aches, your eyes water, and your limbs turn to mush. Many a great conqueror in the days of horseback were called "Old Iron Ass" for their ability to stay in the saddle. This is a trait that far too many of us are lacking. We think we can make up for it with brilliance or creativity, but what we really need is commitment. What we need is a willingness to put our body where the problem is, throwing ourselves completely into solving it, to show that we are not for turning, that we will not be deterred.

Daniel Discipline Is Destiny, page 86 · April 29, 2025 Save to shelf
Notes like this take four seconds in Booksense. Scan the paragraph, it lands on the right page, and comes back for review later. Take your first note

More from readers of Discipline Is Destiny

Daniel p. 141

When we fall short, when we are revealed as the fundamentally flawed, vulnerable, beatable, screwed-up people we are? It can be hard to get going again. If we're too hard on ourselves, we'll knock ourselves out… out of the fight entirely. We are all going to screw up. We're going to relapse-on the diet, on the bad habit, whatever. We're going to blow it in public. We are going to lose. Nobody stays undefeated for long in this life. And then what? Can we gather ourselves back up? Can we regroup and try again?
Daniel

More from Daniel

See their profile
Ultra Successful p. 60

The False Constraints That Limit Your Potential: - How Quickly You Can Scale Whether it's your business or your career, there are unspoken timelines that people accept as gospel.They are all untrue: "You can only really grow at 10% a year." "You need to pay your dues for a decade before getting promoted." These artificial limits keep people moving at a crawl when they could be sprinting or pushing for more. The most successful people I know refuse to accept conventional wisdom about timelines, and oddly enough, they break them all the time.
Daniel

Stop losing the best parts of what you read.

Booksense pushes your highlights back to you for review, so a note from page 174 is still yours a year later. Free on iOS.

Get Booksense free
Daniel on Booksense 5,999 notes 387 hours of reading