The best piece of career/relationship/life advice I've ever received
Today's essay shares what might be the most useful (and therefore most important) piece of advice I've ever received. It's a principle that can be applied in almost any domain of life, with rather profoundly positive effects in my experience.
I heard it first from Peter Cook, and I know he heard it through his meditation teacher Manyu; I don't know Manyu so I couldn't say where he heard it. A google search (I've been meaning to switch my default search engine to DuckDuckGo but I haven't done it yet) shows it to be an idea which exists in many places and many contexts, so I think we can attribute the idea to anon.
("Anon", by the way, is what clever, wise and articulate women were called before history decided to keep track of their names).
The maxim is simple: 99% is difficult, 100% is easy.
Consider your life at this moment, and try to think about what you're finding most difficult. What is providing the most friction? The most tension? The most stress? The most conflict?
Are you 100% committed to completing those projects, solving these problems, growing this relationship, building that career? I'd suggest some careful introspection will soon lead you to the conclusion that you're possibly not. You've got some nagging doubts. Some distractions. You're paying a little attention to the voices in your head saying "the grass might be greener..."
I find this especially fascinating because in most cases I think reductionist thought-processes are fairly unhelpful; I don't usually think it's a wise move to consider a rich spectrum of possibility through a binary lens, and yet... my experience of this advice has been that 99% commitment might as well be the zero to 100% commitment's one. Despite the fact that the spectrum of commitment ranges from extreme ambivalence right through to unwavering certainty, in practice you might as well think of it in a binary fashion; you're either totally committed, or you're not.
Why is 100% commitment easier? Let's take a lifestyle shift like dieting as an example. The 99% committed person might say "I'm going to cut down on sugary foods" (let's call him Jack), the 100% committed person says "I'm not eating anything with processed sugar" (let's call her Jill).
Now, Jack and Jill head out for lunch with friends (this hypothetical takes place either outside of 2020 or outside of Melbourne, one assumes!), and a mutual friend suggests a stop at the local ice cream parlour.
"Not for me thanks", Jill replies without a moment's thought.
Jack, on the other hand, is now salivating at the thought of ice cream, but pained by the idea that this would be the fifth time in three days he succumbed to temptation, but maaaaybe it would be okay just this once, but what would his wife think if he knew he was caving, and now there's a whole meta-narrative arising in his head about how he's not such a good person and his impulse control is terrible and maybe his life sucks because he deserves it, and... you get the picture.
99% commitment is really hard.
Jill's 100% commitment, by contrast, is much easier. She doesn't even have to think about it. She simply doesn't eat processed sugar.
Mathematically I think the equation is simple. Every time your commitment is tested, it simply multiplies. 0.99 x 0.99 = 98%. It seems to me that as your commitment wavers, it reduces, and does so exponentially. 0.98 x 0.98 = 96%. 0.96 x 0.96 = 92%. The more times a wavering commitment is tested, the worse it gets.
Happily, of course, 1.0 x 1.0 = 100%. It doesn't matter how often total commitment is tested, it remains resolute.
Once you're resolved to 100% commitment, your life changes. You say 'no' to a lot more things, for one. All those hobbies and projects which seem kinda attractive are struck from the list. That frees up lots of time. The things you are committed to doing tend to get done much faster, which means you make more visible progress, which your brain receives as nourishing positive feedback. For most people this leads to more energy overall, which feeds back into the system and even more of your commitments come to life. It's a wonderful self-sustaining positive feedback loop.
If there's a downside, I guess it's that there are many good things we could or should do, but won't if we have to wait for 100% commitment. A perfect example of that in my case is diet.
If you know me in person, you'll know I'm a pretty skinny man, blessed with an appetite that'll allow me to go 24 hours without food easily (turns out I was intermittent fasting long before it was cool), and a metabolism that seems to think that storing fat is a waste of time. As a result, even though I'm now 41, my body has never required me to watch what I eat in order to look basically how I want to, which means I've never managed to build up the motivation to generate 100% commitment to improving my diet... (I'm a sugar-fiend, which is no doubt why the hypothetical above sprung to mind).
I used to drink lots of Coke. Like, waaaaay too much. Three cans a day, sometimes four. The knowledge of what that consumption was likely doing to my body was nagging on me. But, because I'm fit and healthy and my body looks alright, and I genuinely like drinking Coke, I was having trouble developing 100% commitment to quit drinking it. Knowing that 99% commitment isn't enough, I decided to look for a smaller change I could be 100% committed to.
"Don't drink Coke at home" was the winning strategy. I don't buy Coke at the supermarket, I don't keep it at home. I'm 100% committed to that, and you know what? It's easy! My Coke consumption dropped by probably 80%, and it takes basically no mental effort to maintain it at that. (Lockdown has meant it's dropped by at least half again, I'd say).
If you've got areas of life that are causing anxiety, anguish, resistance, and friction, consider whether you're 100% committed to solving them. If you're not at 100%, just let it go and find whatever it is that truly lights you up. It's a life changing principle.
Photo by Michael Fink