[My views are my own]
Periods of intense growth and learning are always interrupted by time on the plateau.
“Whether you like it or not, there will be plateaus, which in my experience tend to occur right before a breakthrough. Weight lifting teaches you to embrace them, or at the very least accept them. This is an important outcome, with consequences extending far beyond the gym. ‘In the land of the quick fix it may seem radical,’ writes George Leonard, a pioneer of the human potential movement in the 1960s, ‘but to learn anything significant, to make any lasting change in yourself, you must be willing to spend most of your time on the plateau, to keep practicing even when it seems you are getting nowhere.’”
The Zen of Weight Lifting, The New York Times, Nov. 22, 2019, by Brad Stulberg
The challenge with the plateau is that it’s boring — and you’re getting little to no positive reinforcement to keep you moving forward.
This makes it really easy to head off in another direction after some shiny new object.
What’s been most helpful for me has been the perspective that the plateau has always been a base building period for my next big phase of growth.
To keep pounding the stone, I create daily, measurable practices.
When I was a Wall Street research analyst covering the global media and communications industry, I didn’t want to be an ivory tower egghead. I knew too many brilliant analysts whose decades of great work was largely unknown. It was important to me to be in the arena — not just a world of ideas.
So, I developed a daily practice of making an average of 50 client interactions (emails/calls/meeting). Every single day. This was in addition to a 60-hour per week day job of researching and making investment recommendations across a massive global industry.
I tracked my average calls over weeks and months. And, I became a marketing machine.
During the dips and plateau periods of my life, this type of daily practice has kept me showing up to do the work.
I’ve learned to trick my mind by Gamifying the Grind.
And, I take real pride as my streaks extend to months and years.
Wax on. Wax off.
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