Build The Preverbal Plane While It's Flying

 People let the idea of the perfect stand in the way of doing.

We are often paralyzed by overanalyzing every aspect, gaming out scenarios, or bogged down with caring what our peers think that stops us from just doing the work.

In the end, many things, especially things of difficulty, are so complex we’re never going to understand every piece or all aspects and we need to just do.

Building the preverbal plane as it flies is the best way to learn by doing.

But it requires doing.

Avoid Comfort. Seek pain... it’s how we make progress

We are designed to seek comfort. It is our biological destiny. In today's modern life this is easier than it has even been in all of human history.

I can push a button and a car arrives to pick me up for a relatively low cost in a short period of time.

I have literally all of human history's knowledge and information in my pocket at all times basically anytime during the day. I never have to be bored again. 

These are comforts.

We know this is true in the micro-level we tell ourselves the mantra... no pain no gain. Do the work. Go one more.

All of that stuff we associate with sports and competition. It's coded into your mental awareness

This is also true on the macro level. All great human progress and expansion is a result of extreme suffering. Many died settling the west and charting the oceans and achieving our quest to land a man on the moon.

No progress comes free. We must pay in blood, sweat, and tears.

The Benefit of One Pushup A Day

 One of the things I am constantly saying is to do just one pushup a day. 

The reason I phrase it this way is that anyone can do just one pushup a day. From a capacity time standpoint, no matter what your day looks like, how busy it got, how many fires you had to put out at work, how tired you are right before bed there is always time and energy to do one pushup. 

The benefit of doing one pushup a day is not physical, although that is a potential by-product. The benefit comes in habit formation. This is known as a tiny habit. Made famous by behavioral psychologist and author BJ Fogg. 

Change comes from small incremental habits or tiny changes done over long periods of time. 

Fogg talks about this concept in his book Tiny Habits. 

He reduces the concept to the simplest basic component when trying to form a new habit. 

He builds a simple formula 

B= Behavorial 

M = Motivation 

A = Ability 

P = Prompt 

If the ability to do something is hard then the motivation must be high (blue dot). Counter to this if the ability easy then the motivation can be low (red dot).  

This is why doing 1 push-up has its benefits. Doing just one push-up only takes a few seconds can be done almost anywhere, and can even be done right before you get into bed at night. The ability to do one push-up is easy therefore the motivation is low. 

This is the key to have tiny habits. The trick is to find low-ability tasks that require minimal motivation. 

Since motivation is not a reliable source for getting things done on a consistent basis you need triggers or prompts to help you engage in these tiny habits.