Catching the Next Wave: A Gentler Approach to Growth
I’ve been in the productivity and self-improvement space for a while, both as a professional conducting research at one of the world’s largest corporations and as a constantly curious individual. Along this journey, I’ve noticed a couple of pitfalls that most productivity approaches fail to address. Now, I won’t go so far as to call much of the productivity culture toxic — it works for some. But I’ve found most of the advice you see on social media to be misleading, shallow, or lacking in the necessary context. In this article, I will walk you through some core ideas I believe productivity advice often misses.
The Challenge of Focus
When embarking on the path of productivity, we often try to bite off more than we can chew. I’ve been guilty of this countless times. I feel that it’s time to change my life, and I quickly resolve to start exercising more, meditating, eating healthy, journaling, spending more time with friends, and starting a side hustle. This resolve usually results in a frantic week of excitement, quickly followed by complete disillusion and failure. Has this ever happened to you?
Well here’s the thing: a lot of research shows that willpower is a limited resource, and in the beginning, forming new habits takes a significant amount of willpower. If we seek change in too many areas of our lives simultaneously, we quickly deplete our willpower, and our goals are left floundering.
Therefore, when setting out to change our lives, we should focus on one area at a time — and it should be the area we feel the most intrinsically called to change. Something that we deeply care about and goes beyond the myriad “shoulds” society throws our way. While you’re changing, it might not feel like anything is happening, but we must trust that we are indeed changing. And for each positive life habit we build, the next one will be incrementally easier. Change is slow and requires trust.
The Challenge of Duality
In my book, Just Roll With It, I talk about 10 different techniques for behavior change. They include concepts like goal setting, implementation intentions, the habit loop, and so on. Early in writing the book and testing my ideas on myself, I noticed something interesting: each approach to behavior change has a light and a dark side — they are inherent dualities. While they can be incredibly empowering and get you down the right path, each has unique failure points or ways to lead you astray.
For example, the concept of implementation intentions helps you start pursuing a behavior by creating an obvious cue for initiating it. You might make an intention that says, “When I get home from work, I will put on my running shoes.” Doing so can help create more automaticity in habits by creating consistent cues and timings for goal pursuit. However, what happens if you have a few weeks in a row where you have many events after work and can no longer adhere to your intended sequence? The fact that you are relying on specific cues to build behaviors can create inflexibility and lead you to drop the behavior if those cues are no longer present.
Similarly, the book talks a lot about mindfulness. Mindfulness is amazing and can help you regulate regular emotions, detach from unwanted thought patterns, and, in general, move through life in a more equanimous manner. However, in my experience, there is a fine line between becoming more aware of your emotions and thoughts and suppressing them. It’s up to you to determine where this balance lies and be aware enough of your tendencies. The goal of mindfulness is not to become an imperturbable, emotionless rock but rather a more aware, sensitive, intentional, alive human. But those two end states are often hard to distinguish as you begin moving toward mindfulness.
The behavior change literature has powerful ideas worth trying, but you must always pay attention to how they work for you and be open to adapting them as life happens. Set goals and work to achieve them, but realize that no one solution will get you where you want to go, and possibly, over-reliance on one technique can lead you astray. Even more importantly, you should always try to seek balance — follow a given technique when it makes sense and be kind and accepting when it doesn’t.
The Challenge of Medium
Most of how we relate to productivity these days is technologically mediated. We set to-do reminders, we send emails, and we use various apps that promise to help us keep track of our increasingly hectic lives. However, I see a core issue with using our phones and computers as the primary facilitators of behavior change.
Every time we open our phones, we face a portal of possibility. There is so much demanding our attention, with the capturing influence of social media algorithms and news headlines only one click away. How many times have you opened your phone to write something down, only to see a notification and get sucked down another path of activity? If you’re like me, many.
Using your phone as a medium for behavior change may work for some, but for many, it provides too many additional distractions and temptations to be real value add. Therefore, I recommend tracking behaviors, progress, and thoughts in a physical product — something where the only distraction is your own mind and its unfolding desires.
The Challenge of Resilience
The real work happens not when you’re writing down a list of everything you’re going to work on. Or even once you start tackling your goals and working towards achieving them. The real work happens when you lose that initial momentum, hit roadblocks, inevitably fall behind, and maybe even cease your pursuit altogether.
There is a lot of research about grit and resilience — of sticking with something when the going gets tough — but there isn’t a lot of research about what happens when we lose that grit or aren’t feeling particularly resilient.
To better understand resilience and what to do when you aren’t feeling particularly resilient, let’s use a metaphor: Surfing. You catch a wave of motivation and are enjoying riding the building swell. But eventually, it crashes and ends. But that isn’t the end of your surfing; you just paddle back out and put yourself in a position to catch another wave. In this sense, motivation is both passive and active — it will naturally ebb and flow just like the sea, but you must put yourself in a position to ride it when it does arise. What does that look like? It means you keep learning, doing activities you intrinsically enjoy, getting out into the world, and meeting interesting people such that when you feel like you’re ready to begin the ride again, you’re aware, engaged, and alive enough to ride it. And to not worry to much to much when you inevitably fall off a particular wave, trusting that another will arrive. Over time, you will make it to the shore.
Conclusion
And that’s it for now. If these ideas strike a chord in you, I highly recommend you check out my latest book, Just Roll With It. It tries to address all of the above challenges. It teaches you about behavior change strategies and helps you find a balanced approach to growth. It helps you pick one area of your life to focus on changing for a couple month period, ensuring you don’t bite off too much at once and have enough willpower to see it through. It’s a book, so you’ll experience tracking and building habits in a less distracting environment. And finally, it’s a gentle approach to behavior change that will support you if you’re riding a wave of motivation and will welcome you back when you eventually fall off that wave.
Learn more about Just Roll With It on our website: https://www.paradoxport.com/just-roll-with-it
And check out our upcoming Kickstarter page here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paradoxport/just-roll-with-it-0
