Regular Action Creates Outliers
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I was on a training call earlier today and when someone said ‘I’m a maths guy’ as an excuse for the slightly geeky thing he was saying, I have to say I got interested.
Because I’m a maths guy, too, and I can see that that’s why I see some things differently to others.
It comes out in the language I use: the ways that I see things slightly differently to those people who haven’t put themselves through that particular mental obstacle course. (If you’re a maths person too, hi! If not, of course, you’re a something else person: your unique viewpoint comes from YOUR story.)
But the reason I tell talk about being a maths guy here is that I’m aware it’s at the centre of something I’ve been thinking about over the last few months:
Regular action compounds.
Ever since I saw what 12 minutes of writing a week had done for me - 80,000 words in three years, one timer or train journey at a time - I have been interested in what small, repeated action does for us.
When How to Keep Going When You Want to Give Up was coming out I became obsessed with the Tortoise and the Hare: how have we forgotten, as a society, the impact of slow, steady work on things?
Why don’t we all harness that power more?
Why are we obsessed with stories about unsustainable hare-like leadership practices?
Why do we all burn ourselves out trying to be hares all the time?
It’s not possible.
And remember: the hare lost the race.
And small, regular, tortoise action can transform your life forever.
One tiny, slow step at a time.
Here’s what I’ve been thinking about recently, though: the person who sees their mum more than anyone else they know sees their mum on a regular basis.
The person who plays the guitar more than anyone else they know plays the guitar on a regular basis.
The person who works out more than anyone else they know has a regular practice of going to the gym.
It’s quite possible I’m someone who writes more than anyone else they know. At the very least, I’m pretty sure I PUBLISH my writing more than anyone else they know.
And yes, some of that comes in book-like sprints.
Some of it is epic long-read articles.
But almost all my writing is written 12 minutes a week.
Regular action compounds.
As I wrote that sentence, I suddenly realised that… I’m no longer a maths guy. Because I’m actually not using compound in the right way here there’s no literal compound interest on what we write - although the change that regular action creates in us might well compound like interest (but that’ll have to be an exploration for another day 😂)
What I really mean is: regular action adds up MUCH faster than you think it would.
Like compound interest does.
Regular action is what creates outliers.
(There’s a maths term that actually works!)
The blogger Tim Urban shared this simultaneously funny, tragic and inspiring blog many years ago which changed how I saw my life, and brought into focus for me the power of regular action.
As he says, of all the time most of us will spend with our parents in our lives, the vast proportion is in the past, because most of us lived with them for 16+ years in childhood.
The vast majority of me playing football has been in the past because I did it so much as a child.
I did it most school days. For years.
I now play once a week and it feels like a triumph.
But if I keep playing once a week for the next five years, then I’ll be one of the people who plays more football than almost anyone I know.
It can feel overwhelming when we slip into comparison.
I used to do that with writing.
But the truth is, most people don’t stick to their practices.
If you want to do that:
Make it manageable.
And remember: the best time to plant an apple tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.
You may never catch up with the people who have been doing whatever it is you wish you had been doing more of.
But if you don’t start you never will.
And in my experience, if you choose something, stick to it and keep going over a long period (and you CAN do that, because you brush your teeth)…
If you do that, then in a few years, you might well be the person who does that thing more than anyone else they know.
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.