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Sustain Success

Improving Systems and Habits

Using systems and habits to improve your life is a proven method to succeed. It requires seeing the work as a system and then adjusting your thoughts and behaviors to be able to take advantage of your opportunities in life.

Sustain Success

Scott Miker

Most people want be successful. They want the awards, accolades, money, rewards, etc. for doing a job well-done. They envision what it will be like when they achieve their goal.

When we envision success, many people miss the long journey towards success. They envision a quick win. Or they keep the hard work in the background and focus solely on what it will feel like to win.

This leads many to rely on willpower to push through the tough parts. They expect to have the toughness to do what is needed, regardless of how difficult.

There is a concept called the Hot Cold Empathy Gap. It explains that when we are thinking about a challenge we are in a cold state. When we are facing the challenge we are in a hot state. The difference between the two states is extreme.

Being in a cold state, we underestimate the difficulty. We assume we will have enough willpower to push through. We feel motivated and expect that motivation to continue and even grow over time.

Being in a hot state is different. We are facing the challenge. We don’t have motivation. Our willpower seems to vanish. The personal resolve we expected is gone and we are left in a weaker state trying to tackle the problem.

When we succeed, we have to be able to sustain that initial success. We have to learn how to keep winning. We have to know that this brief win will be followed by more challenge.

If we expect willpower to always rise up in the hardest times, we will be disappointed. Willpower tends to vanish quickly. It might rise up and give us a bit of a boost in resisting something that is bad for us, but doesn’t last long enough to quell the urge.

In The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller, the author says, “Willpower is like a fast-twitch muscle that gets tired and needs rest. It’s incredibly powerful, but it has no endurance.”

Combined with the Hot Cold Empathy Gap we can see that we are at a disadvantage. We expect our will to show up and push us towards the finish line. Instead, when things get tough, it shrinks away from challenge.

To sustain success, we have to be able to push beyond the fast-twitch of willpower. We have to be able to avoid certain elements over the long term. We have to be able to stick with uncomfortable, but necessary, trials and tribulations.

We have to understand our limitations. We have to plan for these moments.

The systems and habits approach to improvement focuses on using the limited willpower to start the process of building a habit. Over time it becomes ingrained and automatic. That will help us in the Hot moments when our willpower disappears. We can rely on habit instead.

Willpower is still needed. But we use it as it was designed. As an initial push towards something. We give the illusion of growing our willpower muscle by using more habit and routine. Others assume we have an unlimited reserve of willpower that is at our beck and call. But really we have simply built the right systems and habits in our lives so we don’t have to rely on willpower to push us towards success. That is how you sustain success.