Want to totally change your life in just one day with one little tip? Too bad, because that’s not how it works.
Once in a while a small thing does totally change our lives. Someone happens to say something to us at just the right time and it impacts us forever. Other times we gradually make a change but we point to one moment as the moment it “happened”.
It’s great that these things do happen sometimes and there’s nothing wrong with trying to spark them, but at the same time it’s important to recognize that most lasting powerful change comes from slow and persistent work on hard things.
I’m naturally not a very hard worker. So I tried different quick fixes to become a harder worker, but I’d always regress back to procrastinating and not working very hard.
Then I spent a few years focusing on hard work. I didn’t try to become a hard worker overnight, I just tried to slowly become better. I built routines, read books, measured my performance, etc. It took two or three years, but eventually I became a hard worker.
When I look at any of the things I’m most proud of achieving, they all took a really long time. The way you generate the illusion of progress is by making some small change that will vanish after a short amount of time. The way you make real progress is by chipping away at things that are important to you, one small piece at a time.
The real danger is that if you always look for quick fixes, you spend your whole life taking one step forward and then one step back. You start to panic because you haven’t made much progress, so you search again for another quick fix. It’s a vicious cycle.
Unless the long route is certainly going to be too long to reach an important deadline, it’s almost certainly best to take it. It’s frustrating at first, but it’s usually the way you actually lock in the results. Don’t learn to program in 7 days, learn in a year. Don’t lose twenty pounds in twenty days, lose it in six months. Look for shortcuts and efficient ways to operate, but don’t skip the hard work when it needs to be done.
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Photo is some cool bark from the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. I really like the fragrance garden there.
Sorry this post is so late this week. Didn’t feel like writing and was visiting friends and family.
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