Make building your mind a habit.
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Make building your mind a habit.
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You must live on the edge of comfort.
There's a technical term for walking that fine line: progressive overload.
This is the most important concept in self-improvement.
You were introduced to it in the gym:
This same principle must be applied to all other aspects of life or you will stagnate. And, in life, stagnation is death.
You can extend the same thinking to anything.
This is nothing new – this is simply how one practices and gets better.
But, there's a massive difference between those that know what to do and those that do.
There are a few principles of overloading properly.
This is the one most people get right.
Effort is the amount of growth one forces over a practice session.
It's the time and focus you spend practicing guitar chord changes.
It's volume and intensity in the gym.
This one is ostensibly simple: the more you put in, the more you get out.
But that's not the case when looking at a time scale larger than one practice session.
Over multiple practice sessions, you progress.
The real problem is when you start thinking about how you progress your practice along with your skill.
That is progressive overload.
Effort is just one variable that must be changed in this process.
The problem with effort, however, is that it itself is a skill that needs to be developed via progressive overload.
When you started at the gym, for example, you probably didn't go to failure.
You didn't start doing drop sets or anything like that until a while into your lifting career.
You had to build your ability to consistently endure immense pain.
It's for this reason you must push as hard as you can during physical activity.
That's how you increase the amount of effort you can put into anything even if it has nothing to do with physical pain.
Suppose you want to get better at writing.
Let's set the scene.
You've slept 9 hours.
Yesterday, you ate the most nutritious meal imaginable (which includes steak and garlic, of course).
As soon as you step out for your 7:00 AM walk, you're instantly hit with the cold morning air.
Just cold enough for goosebumps, yet not freezing enough for pain.
Perfect for thinking.
You get back to begin writing – your practice is 30 minutes in the morning.
Using the creativity the birds gave you on your walk, you come up with your best ideas yet.
The quality of your writing is incredible.
Now, compare that with this case:
Of course, the quality of writing you're going to produce will be drastically worse!
It doesn't mean you got worse at writing, but it means you probably won't get better as a result of today's practice session.
To progressively overload properly, you have to control as many variables as possible.
You have to ensure that the only reason your performance changed is because you got better.
Then, you know what target you're capable of hitting to improve to the best of your ability.
You can't get better at writing, for example, by practicing writing at a first-grade level.
You need to write as well as you can, and produce your best ideas to train your brain into getting even better.
This works with everything.
When lifting, you won't gain muscle unless you go close to failure.
In social settings, you won't become more charismatic unless you're in uncomfortable interactions.
You get the point.
A lack of consistency during and around practice sessions will mask the amount of effort you need to improve.
This is why you need good form in the gym.
It's replicable.
Consistency allows you to compare practice sessions and is a prerequisite to the next principle, measurement.
Tell me if this is familiar:
This is what happens when you don't measure skill over time.
You burn out.
Progressive overload only works when you measure performance.
You cannot "feel" like you worked harder.
Your brain's primary purpose is self-preservation:
If it doesn't see that extra bit of muscle, that writing ability, or your ability to solve integrals as linked to your survival, it won't signal to improve those things over a long period of time.
Let's use the gym as an analogy here, as that's where the concept of progressive overload started.
You might do 15-30 different exercises per week.
In each of those exercises, you may do 1-5 sets.
There is no way you'll remember the reps, intensity, and form of all those movements.
And that matters greatly.
For example, suppose last week you did 12 reps on bench, then 10 reps of tricep pushdowns.
This week, you do 10 reps on bench, then 12 reps on tricep pushdowns (with the same weight).
Did you really progress?
How do you know your triceps weren't just less fatigued from bench because you didn't go as hard as last week?
If you didn't measure, you might not have realized that you've lost 2 reps on bench!
You can then look at that and see if you need to fix something in your diet, sleep, intensity, or volume.
In general, measurement is needed to maintain consistency over a long time and tell you if you need to tweak variables like effort.
The motivational benefit of seeing your numbers improve in all areas is life-changing.
Without measurement, that's how you end up spinning your wheels and not progressing.
Measurement is not something you want to over-complicate.
Use your phone's Notes app.
Use a Google Doc.
Write in a plain text file.
As long as you apply consistency, for each practice session you don't need to write a lot (because the reps last week look the same as this week).
This is what I do for the gym, in Notes:
Oct 3
Bench
Machine shoulder press
The '>' thing is to indicate drop-sets.
You'll develop your own notation depending on how you practice.
Notice how simple it is, but since I'm consistent with my form I know exactly what 5 or 10 reps looks like, so I don't need to write more.
The key is this: write just enough to know next time exactly what you did.
Then, progressive overload is just a matter of execution.
Deloading is when you perform a long period of training (like a week) with extremely lowered effort.
This is the one that everyone seems to forget.
People can't understand how this principle can exist when the principle of effort also exists.
This is what may be holding you back.
Remember the thing about your body being a "self-preservation" machine?
Well, your body is going to adapt to practice.
At some point, there will be no effort high enough that forces you to improve, because that effort is business as usual.
Not only will you not improve, you'll probably get worse as fatigue builds up and motivation drops.
Before this happens, you need to deload.
Take a few days to a week practicing so little that it's funny.
You don't want to skip practice completely (as that will throw you out of a groove).
Practice just for half or even a quarter of the time you usually do.
Nothing intense. Be lazy.
After a few days to a week of this, and you'll come back better.
You will be completely rested, yet restlessly motivated to improve.
That's everything I wanted to cover.
See you next week.
Lawrence Qupty