Gongol.com Archives: December 2023
December 21, 2023
It's hard to think of a human problem that isn't responsive, in at least some way, to the patient application of sustained effort. While revolutionary events do come and go, it's a fool's errand to count on being able to strike at just the right moment to ride the perfect wave to success. For most of us, most of the time, a rule identified by Michael Bloomberg tends to prevail: "Every significant advance I or my company has ever made has been evolutionary rather than revolutionary: small earned steps -- not big lucky hits." ■ The trouble for most of us is that there is such emphasis placed on the bold, sweeping gesture: It's why people commit to aggressive New Year's resolutions, signing up en masse to quit bad habits or pick up good ones, particularly by making big public commitments in front of an audience on social media. ■ Results are often (though not always) inversely proportional to the size of the steps taken. It's often better to make a very small but very sustainable change of habit than to try to chart a bold new course on January 1st. ■ Someone who commits to walking a mile every other day for their health and sticks to the plan will have stepped the equivalent of seven marathons by the end of a year. That's hardly as bold as promising to train for and run a single marathon as a resolution -- but the sustainability is the key. Most resoutions are simply too big. ■ Maybe it's the effect of an educational system that often depends upon big events like final exams that sets so many of us up for that kind of behavior. High-stakes tests that invite last-minute cramming routines might just train impressionable young minds to believe that an outcome doesn't count if it doesn't hinge on one big consequence. ■ We ought to look for ways to break that impression and give us a path to de-program ourselves, as individuals and as a culture, so that we can appreciate the leverage that comes from keeping on with small acts that don't seem as worthy of attention. Like the power of compounding interest, the results of modest but relentlessly sustained effort often don't look like much until they've reached a point where an enormous outcome looks practically inevitable in retrospect.
