We're fundamentally lazy creatures.
I was thinking about my kids and sports.
So much of parenting is telling your kids to do stuff that sucks.
We view this as a binary trade: Do nothing or do the uncomfortable thing.
Yet it's all about tradeoffs: play video games or do your homework, for example. Even laying in bed is an activity that has some relative utility against other options.
Procrastination, avoidance, impulsiveness, recklessness, perfectionism, and ADHD are highly interrelated. They share causes and manifestations, especially this: We naturally choose easy over hard.
I don't pretend this is a novel truth. Yet knowing doesn't shield us. We still do 'it' all the time, i.e. choose the wrong thing.
This has big implications for mastery.
When we practice, we have a choice about (1) how much we practice, (2) what we practice, and (3) (often ignored) how we practice.
We are likely to choose the easy route for ALL THREE of these dimensions. But ambitious people will double-screw themselves by being overly ambitious:
- How much: "I'll work twice as many hours as the other guy."
- What: "I'll practice the hardest skills."
- How: "I'll bring 110% intensity."
But this is overwhelming. You will give up quickly. This has New-Years-Resolution energy. And we know how those end for most people.
A better strategy—as laid out in the Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers [1] and Robert Greene's Mastery—is to challenge yourself just enough to be uncomfortable.
This "stretches" the brain, and you can get little wins quickly and frequently (read: dopamine and/or serotonin hits).
We as adults—and importantly our kids—intimidate ourselves from our own growth.
So the next time you want to encourage little Billy to practice his soccer skills or Suzy to do a new dance move, then don't model too much ambition.
It shouldn't be a walk in the park.
But it doesn't need to be hard.
Meh is good.
Practice meh.
[1] This was the book that popularized the "10,000-hour rule," which isn't really a rule but whatever. K. Anders Ericsson is the researcher on whom Gladwell based critical portions of Outliers. See the former's book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise.