I’ve recently been confronted with this lesson again, so I figured I’d share it in hopes that it would help someone else. It’s easy (for me, anyway) to fall into the trap of thinking that if I’m having some sort of problem, the root cause of the problem is that I’m missing some bit of knowledge, and thus the answer is to learn more. And, it’s easy to fall into the trap that there must be just one simple trick that you’re missing. Lots of advertising, especially on social media, is aimed at perpetuating this illusion:
- Learn this one simple trick and your weight loss will be effortless!
- Watch your back pain melt away with this one simple exercise!
- Ace your next interview with this one simple body language hack!
I see a lot of people who seem to believe that the secret to “getting better” is just to learn more. The alluring idea here is that if we just learn that one more thing, we’ll be cured and all our problems (or at least that one problem) will disappear. However, one of the profound truths that I’ve learned is that what I know doesn’t matter nearly as much as what I do (and how I do it; more on this later).
This has often been a hard one for me to remember, but it’s super important. I saw a great quote a while back on Instagram that encapsulated this perfectly. Someone (I don’t remember who) said:
Knowing about meditation and expecting to be peaceful is like knowing about crunches and expecting to have great abs.
Nobody would seriously expect to have great abs just because they know that crunches exist. (I know, I know: people do sorta do this by buying exercise equipment or gym memberships and then not actually using them. That’s another story for another time.) The fact is that if I want the great abs, I need to do the hard work of the crunches.
There’s a recurring story that goes around the writing community that is also relevant here. Periodically, non-writers will try to approach some established writer with their idea, and it often sounds like this:
“I’ve got this great idea for a story, but I know I don’t have the writing skill to actually write the story. But, it’s a great idea, and it would be perfect for you! How about if you write it, and then we can split the profit!”
Ignore for the moment the fact that the great idea usually isn’t as great as the person thinks it is. The major problem with this is that for writers, ideas are cheap. Everyone who’s seriously making a career out of any sort of creative endeavor has more ideas than they can possibly execute in their lifetime. What matters is not the idea, but the execution of the idea—i.e., it’s not the knowledge that matters, but the doing.
If I want to be successful, the primary thing that matters is not what ideas I have, or what strategies I know about, or what my background is. It matters what I do from here. Now, of course, it also matters how I do it. If I want to get in shape, the form and consistency of my exercise routine matters a lot. If I want to build better relationships, the tone and authenticity of my communication matters a lot. If I want to learn something, the consistency of my study routine matters a lot, as does my mental and physical state while I’m studying.
There’s this misconception that what it takes to be successful is genius-level inspiration or brilliance. Instead, what often works is just an average level of inspiration paired with above average consistency and tenacity.1 Along the same lines, I once overheard my PhD advisor say something like, “People think that getting a PhD means that you’ve got rocket-scientist levels of intelligence. That’s not it at all. What a PhD really means is that you’re too stubborn to quit.”
And, of course, the grit research bears this out. The trend is that more advanced degrees indicate higher levels of grit. And, what is grit? Passionate and persistent effort in the pursuit of some long-term meaningful goal.
If you’ve got some challenge or problem in your life, particularly if it’s one that has come and gone, this might be immediately applicable to your situation. Instead of asking yourself “What do I need to learn?”, try asking yourself “What do I already know that I’m not currently doing?” You might find that line of thinking gives you better results.
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- James Clear (author of Atomic Habits) said it this way: “Sometimes all you need for exceptional results is average effort repeated for an above-average amount of time.” ↩