My 2-Year Grit Rule To Push Through
I treat my endeavours like Leo Dicaprio treats his girlfriends, they seem to get old real quick, so I find a new one every few months.
I love shiny things. I can’t get enough of them... SQUIRREL!
I have the worst combination of personality traits:
- Shiny object syndrome
- and FOMO
This has led me to try and subsequently drop at least a hundred different skills over the last 20 years.
Everything from drawing, guitar, VFX, photography, web design, programming, running… You name it, I’ve probably tried it at one point.
Which has left me with a little bit of skill to do stuff but not enough to really be proficient.
But things changed for me after I read ‘Grit’ by Angela Ducksworth.
One thing Angela talks about is how she raises her kids.
Kids (just like me) have a tendency to drop things pretty quickly, so Angela set some rules for her kids to pick up new hobbies.
They can choose to do whatever they want, but they have to stick with it for at least two years.
This was such a simple yet effective guideline, if you think about it.
From my perspective, it serves two very important purposes:
- After 2 years, you’ve had enough experience with it that you can make an informed decision as to whether you enjoy it or not and/or want to continue.
- You have to be very intentional with what you choose to pursue. Because you’ll be doing it for the next 2 years. So you better pick carefully.
Ever since I started doing this, it has helped to reduce my shiny object syndrome. I still get excited by new things “oooohhh ChatGPT Prompt Engineer sounds amazing!”. But I now assess the new shiny thing against what I’m currently working on.
What does my current ‘In Progress’ column of my internal Kanban board look like?
Give it an honest go before you quit
The thing about most skills that I try to pick up, is that I always tend to quit before I start making any real progress.
As Josh Kaufman talks about in his TED talk, you can learn anything in 20 hours. That’s exactly what I do; I learn the fundamentals in those 20 hours, and then my momentum drops to zero.
As soon as I start to hit that point of friction, my interest starts to dwindle, and I’m on the lookout for the next shiny thing.
At the start, everything is new and exciting. Getting started is easy because you have all the novel energy coursing through you.
You’re seeing new things for the first time, and the prospect of turning this skill into a full-time gig sounds amazing!
But then you start to hit a wall once you get past the basics. You have to start drilling the really boring stuff—the stuff that they don’t put on the front of the cereal box.
Your energy slowly starts to drain, and you look for reasons not to do it anymore. You start googling common problems and question whether it's right for you or not.
Your continual googling lets your confirmation bias run wild.
Then, after a month of getting through the first steps, you decide it's not for you and move on to the next thing.
You stand at the bottom of the first hill, and instead of putting your head down and pushing through, you turn around and head back home.
Little do you know that if you had been able to grit your teeth and make it through the first obstacle, it gets a little easier and more enjoyable as you gain more and more reps and get more proficient.
Enough time to experience the highs and lows
With any new skill, there are highs and lows as part of the learning experience.
You start learning guitar and ride the high of learning ‘Wonderwall’ and playing it for your friends for the first time around a campfire.
Then you realize that in order to improve you need to practice scales, learn music theory, and train your ears… BLEH!
But if you stick it out for long enough, eventually you get past these “boring” humps in the road and you get back to doing the good stuff.
Not many people realize that learning scales leads to you being able to improvise and perform solos. Learning music theory and training your ears enables you to learn songs by ear, i.e., all the fun stuff of being able to play the guitar.
But you gave up before it started to get good!
With time, effort, and repetition, come the skills to do the REALLY fun stuff. The kind of stuff that you see other intermediate people do and think they’re experts, but really they just pushed past the humps that you decided were too hard to climb.
The struggles are how you learn
Most people see learning as a very linear progression. Time + Learning = Mastery, right?
But in reality, it’s the struggles. The tear your hair out ‘wtf’ is this?! Kind of moments that really help you build your skills.
Ask any decent software engineer how they got good at what they do — you won’t hear anyone say “I studied the textbooks thoroughly, then became an amazing programmer”.
Nope!
They’ll tell you that you need to try and build something, hit roadblocks, search for ways to fix it, flip your table a few times, figure it out, have an ‘a-ha!’ moment, and then keep doing that for years until you’re really good at it.
No one tells you that everyone learning hits roadblocks, and it’s these obstacles that build your skills.
The sad thing is that many people hit this friction point and feel like they’re not talented or smart enough to be a programmer or a guitarist. In reality, they just need to put their head down and work through the tough problems.
The ‘rep’ rule
While I love the concept of giving something enough time.
I had to adjust it for my own personality. I have a tendency to drop in and out of skills that I’m learning, sometimes to the point that I’m starting all over again.
So 2 years may pass and I’ve only really put in 2 or 3 months worth of effort into it.
Bit of a loophole on the 2-year rule for the serial procrastinators out there.
Instead, I set myself rep goals.
For instance, I’m determined to give this writing thing a proper go.
I’ve thought about being a writer and retiring as a writer for the longest time.
If I don’t give it an honest go, then I know I’ll regret it for now and forever — and to me, the pain of regret is worse than the pain of pushing through to my goal.
My goal is to publish 100 articles by the end of 2023.
A goal that leaves no room for ambiguity or interpretation. It’s 100 articles or nada.
My procrastination reared it’s ugly head right after I had just got started. After my 4th article, life started to get in the way again and I fell off the wagon.
Now I REALLY need to hustle to try and hit this 100 goal.
Final thoughts
Whether you’re learning a new skill or starting a new job, make sure that you give it enough time to ride the highs and lows and marinade a little bit.
TL;DR
- Combat shiny objects and FOMO with time boxing e.g. 2 years
- Starting is easy when you have the novelty factor
- Running into walls and pushing through them is how you learn
- If you’re a serial procrastinator try setting ‘repetition’ goals instead of time goals
You could potentially be missing out on a great opportunity by giving up too soon.
When you start to hit your first roadblock, instead of taking your foot off the gas, try giving it 110% instead.
Bust through that barrier and you might find greener pastures on the other side
I’m on my own journey to bust through the friction point and get the reps in with my grit rule. The first few articles were easy!
My goal is to get 100 posts out by the end of 2023.
This is article 9 of 100.
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