{"id":795,"date":"2008-07-10T10:00:45","date_gmt":"2008-07-10T17:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/10\/building-your-persistence-levels\/"},"modified":"2018-04-03T08:27:02","modified_gmt":"2018-04-03T15:27:02","slug":"building-your-persistence-levels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/10\/building-your-persistence-levels\/","title":{"rendered":"Building Your Persistence Levels"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, I wrote about discovering your persistence levels<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Commitment, I argued, isn\u2019t the same as motivation.\u00c2\u00a0 While motivation is the push to seek rewards and results, persistence is the ability to continue even when those rewards and results don\u2019t appear.<\/p>\n

Persistence is important along with motivation because most goals have vacuums.\u00c2\u00a0 Vacuums where you get zero positive feedback or encouragement towards a goal.\u00c2\u00a0 Even if you have motivation, if you lack persistence, you won\u2019t be able to make it through the largest of these vacuums.<\/p>\n

Since persistence isn\u2019t the same as motivation, I think it is built up in a fundamentally different way.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u2019s a different mental ability, and needs different training.\u00c2\u00a0 Doing the bench press won\u2019t make you run faster, and running a marathon won\u2019t give you large biceps.\u00c2\u00a0 Building the mental asset of persistence takes a different approach.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong> Approaching \u201cForever\u201d<\/h2>\n

In yesterday\u2019s article, I discussed how the ultimate level of persistence is when you are willing to continue forever towards a goal, even if you never get any results.\u00c2\u00a0 This demonstrates the difference between motivation and persistence.\u00c2\u00a0 Motivation fails if you foresee the possibility of never reaching your goal.\u00c2\u00a0 Why bother trying if you\u2019ll never get there?<\/p>\n

When you completely remove positive feedback, you\u2019re left with only two sources of momentum to push you forward.\u00c2\u00a0 The first is the intrinsic value you draw from the activity.\u00c2\u00a0 If you\u2019re passionate about something, it is far easier to persist, even if the results don\u2019t come.\u00c2\u00a0 I doubt Nelson Mandela could have become president of South Africa if he decided arbitrarily that after 20 years of prison, he\u2019d just stop caring about removing the apartheid.<\/p>\n

The only other source of drive is regret from the alternative.\u00c2\u00a0 Even you don\u2019t receive feedback, the pain you\u2019d feel from not reaching your goal is less than the pain of giving up and wondering whether you would have made it.\u00c2\u00a0 To quote Helen Keller, \u201cLife is either a daring adventure or nothing.\u201d\u00c2\u00a0 If you have a similar attitude, that regret over lost possibilities might keep you focused in the complete lack of feedback.<\/p>\n

These two drives are what I\u2019d collectively call persistence.\u00c2\u00a0 The drive that comes from intrinsically enjoying the path towards an end, and the drive that comes from feeling that you\u2019re doing the best option available, even if you don\u2019t make it.<\/p>\n

Motivation can is fueled with positive reinforcement.\u00c2\u00a0 If I have a successful month with my business, that is incredibly motivating for me to continue going.\u00c2\u00a0 However, if I stagnate for a few months, or even start to recede, my motivation will drop considerably.\u00c2\u00a0 That\u2019s when I need to rely on those twin back-up drives called persistence.<\/p>\n

Building Persistence<\/h2>\n

Enough talk about what persistence is, how do you build it?\u00c2\u00a0 Part of persistence is just improving your self-discipline.\u00c2\u00a0 Increasing the level of what you can resist mentally and emotionally before you collapse.\u00c2\u00a0 While self-discipline is important in the short-term, I don\u2019t think it is as critical for goals that last years and decades.<\/p>\n

Instead, I think the way to improve persistence is to enhance the two forces that make it up.\u00c2\u00a0 Either by increasing your intrinsic enjoyment of the pursuit, or increasing your resolution that giving up is unbearable.<\/p>\n

Finding Intrinsic Enjoyment<\/h2>\n

The first step to this is easy, don\u2019t work on goals you can\u2019t enjoy.\u00c2\u00a0 Don\u2019t start a business if you don\u2019t like the customers.\u00c2\u00a0 Don\u2019t start a training regimen if you hate the gym.\u00c2\u00a0 Don\u2019t enter a faculty if you don\u2019t like the subject.<\/p>\n

The second step is to find ways to enjoy the work, regardless of the feedback.\u00c2\u00a0 In many ways, this can be as simple as becoming aware of what you\u2019re doing.\u00c2\u00a0 It can be easy to become so obsessed with feedback (i.e. motivated) that you completely lose sight of what you\u2019re doing in the current moment.<\/p>\n

If I had a bad month at the gym, where my strength levels declined, that might start to cloud out the fact that I actually like going to the gym.\u00c2\u00a0 The same is true of learning, running this business or my social life.<\/p>\n

The solution is to switch your focus back on the tasks and let the results fade out of your thinking.\u00c2\u00a0 Get back to focusing on what you\u2019re actually doing, and enjoying it, instead of obsessing about the numbers.\u00c2\u00a0 Focusing on numbers can be important for results, but that\u2019s only when you\u2019re actively making a new plan.\u00c2\u00a0 When you\u2019re actually working, it\u2019s usually better to focus on the work and forget the outcomes.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/strong>Avoiding the Alternative<\/h2>\n

The alternate way to boost your persistence is to accept that the alternative, to you, is less desirable.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u2019ve written previously, that my goal is to run an online-based business full-time.\u00c2\u00a0 Only recently have I started to approach that goal.\u00c2\u00a0 In the past, there were many months when I completely lacked positive feedback that I was going in the right direction.<\/p>\n

During that motivational crisis, the thing that helped me persist was that I knew struggling at this goal was better than the alternative of giving up.\u00c2\u00a0 I knew that I would always be driven towards the goal, so it was better to work towards and fail, than it was to sit back and wonder if I would have succeeded.<\/p>\n

This approach may not sound too inspirational, but it works.\u00c2\u00a0 When you\u2019re facing a dry-spell of motivation, it can be hard to summon up the optimism to believe things will get better soon.\u00c2\u00a0 But you can always compare the alternatives of giving up entirely with continuing through adversity.<\/p>\n

I started this discussion yesterday, by referencing an article Cal Newport wrote<\/a> about the danger of starting without commitment.\u00c2\u00a0 Since most worthwhile goals will have large gaps without feedback, it\u2019s absolutely essential that your engines are running on more than just enthusiasm.\u00c2\u00a0 Persistence is the back-up fuel that can get you through the vacuums.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, I wrote about discovering your persistence levels.\u00c2\u00a0 Commitment, I argued, isn\u2019t the same as motivation.\u00c2\u00a0 While motivation is the push to seek rewards and results, persistence is the ability to continue even when those rewards and results don\u2019t appear. Persistence is important along with motivation because most goals have vacuums.\u00c2\u00a0 Vacuums where you get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[9,4,680],"tags":[26,25,133,134,135,136,38],"class_list":{"0":"post-795","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-courage","7":"category-goal-setting","8":"category-nc-productivity","9":"tag-goals","10":"tag-motivation","11":"tag-persistence","12":"tag-persistence-value","13":"tag-persistence-vs-motivation","14":"tag-pessimism","15":"tag-productivity","16":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBuilding Your Persistence Levels - Scott H Young<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/10\/building-your-persistence-levels\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Building Your Persistence Levels - Scott H Young\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Yesterday, I wrote about discovering your persistence levels.\u00c2\u00a0 Commitment, I argued, isn\u2019t the same as motivation.\u00c2\u00a0 While motivation is the push to seek rewards and results, persistence is the ability to continue even when those rewards and results don\u2019t appear. 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