Trust the Process: Reaching Escape Velocity
When you first start exercising, it all sucks. Deciding what type of exercise to do sucks. Deciding where to do it and how often to do it sucks. Deciding what type of clothes to wear sucks. The exercise itself really sucks and then feeling tired or sore the next day also sucks.
I call this period “The Slog”. Nothing is easy. It all feels like work and you’re not seeing results fast enough, if at all.
To paraphrase one of the greatest movies of all time, I have an in-depth theory about The Slog but I’ll boil it down for you:
Fuck The Slog.
Rod Tidwell, one of history’s most profound philosopher/athletes standing next to a disgraced fighter pilot.
But if you can stick with it long enough, magic starts to happen. Things that used to take conscious thought or require decisions become automatic. Instead of dreading your weekend weight-lifting session, you occasionally catch yourself day-dreaming about your next workout.
If you can make it to this point, you’ve reached the onset of “The Virtuous Cycle”.
As you continue to get better at exercising, it becomes more fun. As it becomes more fun, it’s easier to motivate yourself to exercise more, which makes you better at it, which makes it more fun…and before you know it, you’re off to the races.
This phenomenon applies to all areas of your life. Improvement can be painfully slow or non-existent at the beginning but if you stick with it, eventually things start to get easier. And they continue to get easier. And then they get easier even faster.
This process contributes to what can seem cosmically unfair: The people who don’t need any help have it the easiest.
Once you’re in reasonably good shape, it’s fun to go to the gym and push your fitness to new heights.
Once you have money to invest, it’s fun to keep an eye on it and watch it grow.
Once your customers start recommending you to their friends, it’s much easier to find new customers.
The truth is that it’s a hell of a lot easier to maintain a Virtuous Cycle than to make it through The Slog. This is because of a universal truth about human beings: we like what we are good at.
What’s something you know deep down you should do but for whatever reason, you don’t? These four answers should cover 99%+ of the population:
I should exercise regularly
I should eat better
I should get more sleep
I should save more money
Now imagine what it would be like if this habit was second nature for you.
Really try to envision an alternate reality where whatever you picked was one of your favorite things to do. Anytime someone brings it up in conversation, you can barely contain your excitement. Your spouse/significant other reminds you on the way to every dinner party that most people don’t love to spend their Saturday evenings talking about_____________.
This alternate reality is actually entirely possible. We’ve all met people for which it is the case. You know what these (potentially exquisitely obnoxious) people have in common? They are really good at what they love to talk about. And the main reason they are really good is because they tapped into The Virtuous Cycle after suffering through The Slog.
Another difficult truth to confront is that the time and energy required to make it through The Slog varies wildly from person to person. Many factors determine how long and how shitty your particular Slog will be, including your personality, your relationships, your income, hell, even your left-handedness can make your Slog more of a pain in the ass. The Slog will jump at every opportunity to prolong its life.
So, what to do with this information?
First of all, if you’ve already made it through, be on the lookout for others who are knee-deep or up to their neck in it.
Offer to help them win the fight that you’ve already won. Share the stories, tactics, tip, tricks, support communities and tips that helped you. Be encouraging.
I lift weights with my son every Saturday morning at our local YMCA. The early morning weekend crew is a fit bunch. Some attack the squat rack, a dozen or so head straight for the pool, while others put in mile after mile on the treadmills and ellipticals. But of all the regulars we see each week, the most impressive is the guy who parks it on the arm bike. We walk past him on the way to the free-weights and walk back past him on our way down to the lobby. He has a lot of work to do and right now the arm bike is his only option. But the guy is fully committed to making it through The Slog. You can see it in his eyes. And so I reward him with the introvert’s go-to move since time immemorial: eye-contact and a silent nod. I think he gets the message: I see you putting in the work and I think it’s fucking awesome.
Either that or he thinks I’m a reeeeal creeper. But it’s a risk I’m willing to take.
Secondly, measure your success based on process, not outcomes.
Outcome goals can be dangerous for two reasons:
You probably have no idea how close or how far you are to actually reaching the target outcome and so you set the bar too low or too high. If you set a goal that is easily achievable and then reach it with little time and effort, your ego will start soothing you with stories about your virtues and innate awesomeness. If you set a goal that would take years of dedicated work to meet, it can be terribly discouraging when you’re only a fraction of the way there after six months.
Once you reach your goal, your motivation may vanish. If your vision of reaching the goal itself was the main force driving you forward, you are running on fuel that burns hot but will desert you when you need it the most.
Set goals that quantify whether you are taking the type of action required to get the results that you want.
Set a goal to exercise 3 days/week, not lose 100 pounds.
Set a goal to save a fixed % of every paycheck, not get out of credit card debt.
Set a goal to make at least 10 sales calls/day, not beat your quota by 5%.
This is how you attack The Slog in a thoughtful way. And as much as it sucks I’m here to tell you from personal experience that it’s worth it.
I’m not asking you to trust me (although if we know each other in real life, that’s exactly what I’m asking you to do – TRUST ME), I’m just asking you to trust the process.
Trust that once you break through this invisible plateau, it will start to get easier.
Trust that even though you aren’t seeing results in the beginning, your work isn’t being wasted, it’s being stored. Nothing visible happens to an ice cube when you heat it from 25 degrees to 31 degrees but that work is critical to deliver the results that one more degree brings (credit to James Clear for one of my favorite metaphors of all time).
Put in enough work to get through The Slog in one important area of your life. Decide right now that you’re going to make it through, whether it takes two weeks or six months. Reach the inflection point where things that were once dreadful become delightful (or at least tolerable).
Once you do this, it gets really fucking exciting. When you have first-hand evidence of how powerful breaking through The Slog and tapping into the Virtuous Cycle can be in one area of your life, you will have all the motivation you need to attack another area.
My theory is that those people in life who seem to have it all together where it really matters have tapped into the power of this momentum-building process and made it through The Slog multiple times over. It’s a theory because I wouldn’t put myself in that category yet. But having tasted the magic of the Virtuous Cycle, I know that I’ll get there.