Happy New Year! This is my first blog post in a while. I’ve been working on a book for the last 6 months and it has taken up my writing time. I’m finishing it up and wanted to get back to something I genuinely enjoy, posting weekly to my blog. I’m sorry that it’s been a while. My inspiration was the new year. I come across many people who are inspired to make a change, but once they get started, lose their motivation, and fall off track. I wanted to share a strategy for staying motivated that may help many of you. I learned this tactic from James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits. I used it personally two years ago when I started practicing meditation. I went from meditating 2 minutes a day to my current 20 minutes a day. I use a headset (Muse) to track it and monitor how long I can stay within a calm state. I’m currently on a streak of 59 days straight without missing a day and have meditated 10,988 minutes over the last 2 years. I have made meditation a habit.
In 1955, Disneyland had just opened in Anaheim, California. This was before they had child labor laws. A ten-year old boy went to the park looking for a job. He was able to get a job selling guidebooks for $.50 each.
He eventually got a position working in the magic shop, where he started to learn magic tricks. He started practicing jokes and would try out routines on visitors to the store. He quickly picked up that it wasn’t magic he enjoyed, it was performing. He decided to shift to comedy from magic. He started performing in small clubs as a teenager. He worked the Los Angeles area. His routine was short and rarely lasted more than 5 minutes. One night he performed to an empty room.
He improved. His timing got better. By high school, he had a solid five-minute act, and a few years later, it expanded to a 10-minute act. Soon, he was performing weekly for twenty minutes.
He spent another decade practicing and experimenting. Constantly tweaking things, adjusting, and making the act better. He got a job as a television writer and eventually landed an appearance on a talk show. By the mid-1970s, he had worked his way into being a regular guest on the Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live.
Eventually, after fifteen years of work, the young man rose to fame. He toured sixty cities in sixty-three days. Then seventy-two cities in eighty days. He sold 45,000 tickets for his three-day show in New York at Madison Square Garden. He had grown into one of the most recognized comedians of his time. His name is Steve Martin.
How was Martin able to stick with his habit of working on jokes? How did he stay motivated, specifically in the early stages? The human brain loves a challenge, but only if it is within an optimal zone of difficulty. The example James Clear uses to make the point is playing tennis. You want to get better at tennis and accept you will have to practice more. If you play against a four-year old, you’ll get bored. It’s too easy. Playing a highly skilled player, like Serena Williams, will crush your motivation because it’s too hard. Play against someone who is more your equal. That’s a challenge of manageable difficulty. It’s within your reach. They call this the Goldilocks Rule.
The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right.
Do you want to clean up your eating? Don’t change everything. Simply commit to eat two fistfuls of vegetables every night with dinner. Do you want to increase your activity? Add one additional workout per week. Not too hard, not too easy. Just right.
I’ll see you at the studio.