If you have never read Atomic Habits, by James Clear, then you’re missing out! It’s a great way to begin the new year.

Persistence

When I was boy, I would wake up every morning at 4:30am and drive to the country to move sprinkler lines in the hay and potato fields of southeastern Idaho. It paid well, but it was really hard work. Every morning I woke up to my Mom’s hot oatmeal. To this day, I’m still unsure how early she rose just to fix me breakfast. Before we left, we would read the quotes she printed and hung above the kitchen cabinets. One in particular has become my guiding beacon in life:

That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Control your surroundings

About 20 years ago, I wanted to broaden my network. Coincidentally, because my daughter needed massive medical care, I also needed to get swallowed up into a large organization’s health care policy. I new business, and although my entrepreneurial spirit was screaming at me to not make a move, I got a job so that the other, high priority of caring for my family, was satisfied.

As a financial advisor, the world was my oyster. I could coach and teach anyone, but I needed to be more deliberate and focused. I needed to hone in on what I really wanted. I needed to intentionally make decisions on who I wanted in my network, which meant I needed to set some parameters. Setting certain income and network boundaries narrowed my potential audience to the people I wanted to get to know. The easy part was over. Actually getting an “in” and really exploring the relationships was the hard part. It took a lot of daily effort, but I eventually succeeded – developing the most profitable portfolio for the regional financial organization. It was comprised of unicorn C-level executives and wildly successful entrepreneurs.

What do the most successful people do that others don’t?

They can handle the boredom! We think that successful people have some bottomless reserve of passion, talent, or other genius, but really successful people actually have the same lack of motivation as the rest of us. But the difference is they push through the boredom and are consistently persistent.

James Clear, in his masterful book Atomic Habits, described this concept beautifully in his Goldilocks Principle. Here are a few key take-aways from Jame’s book to help you push through monotony and use consistency as a powerful weapon to crush your goals this year:

Applying consistency – to get to the top, we need to self evaluate what to do in the lulls.

  • Mastery requires practice, but the more we practice, the more boring and routine it becomes. Once the beginner gains have been made and we learn what to expect, our interest starts to fade.
  • We get bored with habits because the outcomes stop delighting us. The outcomes become expected. As our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty. Perhaps this is why we get caught into a never-ending cycle of jumping from one thing to the next with diets, exercise, businesses, etc. When we experience even a slight dip in motivation, we begin seeking a new strategy, even if the old one was still working.

Finding the sweet spot – Put yourself in positions that will lead to success.

  • Tasks must be at least 4% beyond your current ability.
  • Working on challenges with “just manageable” difficulty…something on the perimeter of your ability is crucial for maintaining motivation.
  • Regularly search for challenges that push you to the edge while continuing to make enough progress to stay motivated.
  • Behaviors need to stay novel in order to stay attractive and satisfying.
  • Boredom is the greatest villain on the quest of self-improvement. The greatest threat to success is not failure…it’s boredom.
  • One of the keys to reaching a flow state is that “you get immediate feedback about how you are doing at each step.”
  • Regardless of how it is measured, the human brain needs some way to visualize our progress if we are to maintain motivation. We need to be able to see our wins.