Keep At It
Do you ever feel like you are doing all of the right things, but you’re just not getting the results? It can feel discouraging. It can also provide a tempting rationale for quitting, because it can seem like all of our hard work is for nothing. In today’s email, I am reminding you to keep hacking away, consistently putting effort into the habits and projects that matter to you.
You’re not stuck. And it’s not that you’re not making progress, it’s just that you haven’t broken through yet. It’s all helpful. The first swing of an ax doesn’t fell a tree. It’s the 20th, 30th, 40th swing that brings the tree down.
When you feel like giving up due to your apparent lack of results, this is an experience that habits guru James Clear calls the Valley of Disappointment. We have an expectation that Time + Effort = Consistent Results. But that almost never happens in any context of life. Check out the image below:
Most of us expect the steady march of progress. And then if we don’t get that, we bail, telling ourselves a story about how it’s not working or that our effort is pointless. We need to remember that getting poor results at the beginning is normal. Progress is more like a curve - lots of work with little payoff initially, but then a turn happens and progress compounds more quickly.
Your lack of progress doesn’t mean anything about you or your character. It only means you need to keep working, keep learning, and keep improving. And the best way to do that is to create predictable patterns in your life that prioritize what is most important to you. If you don’t know when and where in your schedule a habit will take place, it's likely you’re not doing it. This goes for your budget, exercise, laundry, date nights, reading, etc.
How often have you set a goal for yourself but didn’t follow through? Is that because you’re “not good at following through” or is it simply because you haven’t learned how to prioritize high-leverage behaviors that help you make progress? James Clear has a great quote about this:
“We don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems.”
You might think that this level of systems thinking takes all of the fun and spontaneity out of life, making life overly mechanistic, but James Clear says that’s not true. And I agree. Those who are “good at following through” have learned that willpower alone is a difficult way to make progress, so they automate their lives where what’s important is linked to a predictable pattern. It turns out that people who are “good at following through” actually think less about their habits, because they’re not reliant on memory or willpower to complete the task - it already has a place, time, and is tied to a helpful system.
So, if you are feeling discouraged because you are not making progress in an area that is important to you, take heart. You’re not weird or broken, you’re human. Keep working, keep being consistent, and find ways to automate habits that you want to improve.
If you want more help with this, you can find James Clear’s book Atomic Habits at atomichabits.com. It’s an excellent resource that you will want to come back to multiple times.
Here’s to breaking through the Valley of Disappointment!
Happy to be in your corner,
Tom
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