Improvement requires behaviors to remain novel in order to maintain engangement
Improvement requires a delicate balance. You need to regularly search for challenges that push you to your edge while continuing to make enough progress to stay motivated. Behaviors need to remain novel in order for them to stay attractive and satisfying. Without variety, we get bored. And boredom is perhaps the greatest villain on the quest for self-improvement.
People often talk about getting âamped upâ to work on their goals. Whether itâs business or sports or art, you hear people say things like, âIt all comes down to passion.â Or, âYou have to really want it.â As a result, many of us get depressed when we lose focus or motivation because we think that successful people have some bottomless reserve of passion. But really successful people feel the same lack of motivation as everyone else. The difference is that they still find a way to show up despite the feelings of boredom.
Mastery requires practice. But the more you practice something, 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. Letting one day slip doesnât feel like much. Things are going well. Itâs easy to rationalize taking a day off because youâre in a good place. The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. The outcome becomes expected. And as our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty.
Perhaps this is why we get caught up in a never-ending cycle, jumping from one workout to the next, one diet to the next, etc. As soon as we experience the slightest dip in motivation, we begin seeking a new strategyâeven if the old one was still working. As Machiavelli noted, âMen desire novelty to such an extent that those who are doing well wish for a change as much as those who are doing badly.â Perhaps this is why many of the most habit-forming products are those that provide variable rewards.
The sweet spot of desire occurs at a 50/50 split between success and failure. Half of the time you get what you want. Half of the time you donât. You need just enough âwinningâ to experience satisfaction and just enough âwantingâ to experience desire. This is one of the benefits of following the Goldilocks Rule. If youâre already interested in a habit, working on challenges of just manageable difficulty is a good way to keep things interesting.
References
- Clear, James. (2018). Atomic Habits Chapter 19. The Goldilocks Rule How to Stay Motivated in Life and Work (Location 2907). New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
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