Freedom is a burden.
If I were one of the kids who finish school at 3pm and have to plan their own afternoons, I might have learned this early. Unfortunately, I started boarding school at 12. From the moment I woke up to the second I closed my eyes, every day was a pre-rendered script.
Want to sleep in? Too bad—at 8am, staff swept through every room. Want to stay up? Tough luck—at 11pm sharp, the lights cut out. For any teenager, this felt like prison.
So when I finally got to make my own choices, I thought I'd be free. Instead, I got stuck in quicksand. Decision fatigue. Chaos.
College was okay—classes still had schedules. Corporate life worked too—meetings had fixed times. But the moment I went solo, the training wheels came off, and everything went sideways.
Death by a thousand choices
When you have to decide everything, every boring moment becomes a negotiation with yourself.
I bought into the "sleep cycle" thing—sleep in 90-minute increments and you'll feel great, doesn't matter when. So I ping-ponged between 4.5, 6, 7.5, and 9 hours of sleep. Every night: "Okay, if I crash now, do I go for 6 or 7.5?"
Same with food. Not hungry? First meal at 3pm, no problem. Starving at midnight? Ramen time.
And those are the big decisions. The small ones are endless. Should I use a loofah in the shower? I've stood there under running water genuinely weighing this.
I thought freedom would make me a CEO. Instead I became the person who schedules the building's recycling pickup.
The genius of constraints
That's when I started missing boarding school.
Partly because humans are contrary creatures. But also because the system actually worked. You got enough sleep. The food was balanced. 40-minute class, 10-minute break—timed perfectly to when your brain checks out, with just enough recovery time.
Back then, I only felt the grind. Looking back, I see how much was on autopilot. Someone else built the track. I just ran on it. Not free, but frictionless.
Sure, there were downsides. Like zero say in what we studied.
But man, not thinking feels good.
Building my own boarding school
Turns out you can rebuild discipline from scratch.
I ditched the sleep math—now I go to bed and wake up within the same 15-minute window every day. Three meals at fixed times, hungry or not. Shower every day, loofah every time.
Morning stand-ups with myself. Sunday reports and planning sessions. All the corporate rituals I used to half-ass at work? Those are my scaffolding now.
This essay used to take me one or two months from idea to publish. Now it's an hour or two. Turns out being a well-behaved sub gets things done.
The art of self-domination
Disciplining yourself isn't that simple though. You also need to be a decent dom. Which requires some light compartmentalization.
Don't think. See.
I learned this from meditation. When I first made a schedule, I was full of delusions about who I wanted to be, trying to cram myself into that shape. A good dom doesn't do that. A good dom watches what the sub already does comfortably, then works from there.
I always thought I should work right after lunch. But every single day, no matter what I planned, I'd watch YouTube for an hour. Classic case of the architect who lays perfect brick paths, then gets mad when people cut across the grass because it's shorter.
So pave the shortcut. Schedule the hour. Go for a walk. Clean the apartment. Let your stomach digest in peace.
Hardware matters too
Students won't go to bed or wake up? The dorm supervisor doesn't argue. She just kills the lights and locks the doors. I can't hire her, but I can buy smart switches.
Morning comes, a 10,000-lux therapy lamp blasts on, pointed straight at my face. Night comes, wifi cuts out, lights go dark. This isn't discipline. This is infrastructure.
Your body runs the show
All this only works if your body cooperates. A while back, my meds triggered insomnia, depression, the usual cascade. I caught it fast and switched prescriptions, but I still rode the full rollercoaster from productive to barely functional. When your hormones are off, willpower is a joke.
The upside of running your own fake boarding school? You can take a gap semester. Fix the body first. Self-discipline can wait.
Bottom line: submit to discipline so you don't have to submit to chaos.
Be decisive. Enjoy your showers.