If you’re struggling to make a change – whether it’s at home, at work, for yourself or for others – there’s fundamentally two things you can do to get things moving in the right direction.
- Add. Do more, do it more often, do it with more heart, care more, spend more. Raise the bar.
- Subtract. Do less, strain less, involve fewer people, worry less, eliminate distractions. Lower the barrier.
There’s a time and place for both approaches. Neither is a silver bullet – each has a purpose…
But unless you chronically underinvest & expect things to be easier than they ever are, addition is rarely the right answer.
Why?
Because we win no points for making things more difficult than they need to be.
If the purpose of a process is to help us attain a specific end result, then the value of the process is determined by what it produces.
This can be a question of probability. Not all strategies are created equal: some are more likely to end in success than other.
This can be a question of magnitude. Two strategies can have equal chances of success, but if one has a potentially life-changing upside, that’s the better call.
It can even be a question of risk mitigation. Left to our own devices, we’ll typically shy away from approaches with a catastrophic downside risk… even if the rewards are great.
(Most of us won’t willingly opt in to a game of Russian Roulette.)
But whatever it’s a question of, and whatever choice we pursue, there’s a price to be paid for pursuing it.
This price is not something we want to pay. It’s something we’re required to pay in order to play.
If the cost of our chosen approach is worth incurring for the benefits it creates, then we’re happy to do it.
If the juice isn’t worth the squeeze, it’s not – so we don’t.
Here’s the thing:
We don’t just judge cost in a vacuum. But when we’re setting out to attain something big – the kind of goal that will take continuous commitment over time to achieve – we need to forget about the tantalising reward and instead focus on what we can afford to pay.
Every move we make takes a toll. Time, energy, money, opportunity cost – these are resources we expend at every fork in the road.
The more that’s required of us, the more it takes from us.
The more it takes, the less we have to at our disposal when we reach our next turning point.
Not all resources are finite. Sometimes, we’ll accrue more along the way – which is a valid consideration. But unless we can bank on it, we shouldn’t depend on this.
If our goal is to get from Point A to Point B, the best strategy is the one which allows us to do this with as little trouble as possible.
Note: if our goal is to take the scenic route, to accommodate some specific preference we have, or develop our ability to traverse trickier terrain… that’s fine. Those are all legitimate reasons to choose another path – one that might be more challenging than the easiest one available.
But in those cases, our goal isn’t just to get from Point A to Point B.
It’s to get from here to there, AND (fill in the blank here).
It’s a multi-purpose pursuit.
In that kind of scenario, we want more than just a singular, definitive outcome at the end of journey.
But where our only goal is the goal – the pot of gold waiting at the end of the rainbow – that’s worth keeping in mind.
The problem with breathless pursuit of something you care about is that you never get a chance to catch your breath…
Not unless you make time & then take time to do so.