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All That Effort for…Nothing?

If you’re anything like me, you’re ridiculously good looking and incredibly successful at everything you do.

Oh sorry! My and Derek Zoolander’s morning incantation somehow made its way into this post! (His may include something along the lines of finally being able to turn left).

If you’re actually anything like me, you start a project with lots of energy and then as life gets in the way you end up stopping. Even if you were 90% done, you end up stopping.

Why is that? Why do we fizzle out on a task when we’re so close to completing it?

This post will delve into this issue and the role our brain plays.

I purposefully avoided a click-baity title this week (as opposed to last week’s Why Doctors Make Terrible Professional Coaches). If you’re disappointed, then I have a surprise in store for you at the end.

Hit Me Dopamine, One More Time

I want to explore another way our smart brains are dumb. As you know, our brains crave hits of dopamine, our so-called “reward” hormone.

Dopamine is the cornerstone of the brain’s reward pathway, which directly connects to other parts of the brain involved with both behavior and memory. We feel pleasure as dopamine is released.

The brain then tries to create neural connections between the behavior and our memory of pleasure. This is the brain’s way of trying to ensure that we will repeat this pleasurable behavior.

Positively Elegant Reinforcement

The more we repeat the behavior, the more dopamine is released, the more we experience pleasure, and the more ingrained that behavior becomes.

Positive reinforcement is why we so easily, and often without thinking, turn on the television, get on social media, or open a bag of our favorite salty snack.

Unfortunately, if we engage in an activity which is not pleasurable, then dopamine does not get released. In fact, our brains activate the punishment pathway to disincentivize such behavior.

Our Brains Don’t Care About the Journey

Think of a goal you want to accomplish. Chances are it’s not as simple as doing one thing and then basking in your glory. Instead, it likely consists of numerous smaller steps, the completion of which inch us ever closer towards the goal.

Unfortunately, we are wired to focus on the end-goal only and not the tedium involved in getting there.

Achieving that end-goal will activate the reward system—we get our dopamine fix, and all is good. However, the slow and steady march of progress does not.

Our brains are not offering that positive reinforcement along the way. This is why it’s so easy to stop, lose focus, and give up.

Your Failure Is Thinking You Failed

We might complete 80% of the work towards accomplishing a goal and still not achieve it. And our brains will tell us that we failed. We feel shame and guilt for the small portion we have not done, and no sense of accomplishment for the work we have done.

This “all-or-nothing” thinking is a very common cognitive distortion that our brains facilitate.

Unless we can hit a homerun every time, there’s no point even going to bat. Singles and doubles don’t matter, even if they help us score runs.

Challenge Accepted!

I want to challenge you to 1) reflect and see if this is something you do, and, if so, to 2) learn to recognize small wins along the way.

Since you are science-inclined, I offer two nerdy analogies to help illustrate that incremental success is vastly important and should be celebrated—the first mine and the second a bestselling author’s.

I Swear, If You Say, “It’s Not About the Destination, It’s About the Journey…”

We all know that enzymes drive biochemical reactions in our bodies. A substrate binds the enzyme, the enzyme catalyzes a reaction, and, voila, a new product is created.

These reactions can take place without the enzyme, but this occurs much more rarely as it requires a higher activation energy to achieve. The enzyme serves as a catalyst and lowers the activation energy, favoring the conversion of the substrate to the product.

Nothing happens until the enzyme lowers that activation energy enough to facilitate the reaction. But even if the enzyme fails to fully catalyze the reaction, it has lowered the barrier to conversion, which still makes it easier for the reaction to happen “spontaneously.”

(You try finding an enzyme related GIF).

Do not discount the importance of making progress even if you don’t hit your target. And even if your brain’s messaging tells you otherwise.

The Name’s Clear, James Clear

James Clear authored the book Atomic Habits in which he shows readers how to build good habits and dismantle bad ones. He’s like a secret agent habit spy!

Clear offers a more accessible, less nerdy example of the important of progress: looking at the energy it takes to melt an ice cube in a room that is below freezing (say 25°F) by raising the temperature of the room.

At each step, the temperature goes up 1°F, all the way up to 31°F. The temperature has been raised six degrees but the ice cube remains intact because we have not crossed the threshold of 32°F. One more degree and the ice cube will start melting.

So does that mean if we only get to 31°F, we have failed and wasted that energy? Was it all for naught?

My Ma Says I Have Real Potential!

Clear doesn’t think so. He contends that that work (energy) inputted is stored as potential, and has incrementally moved you closer to the goal.

Each degree above 25°F is equivalently important to the overall goal of melting the ice cube, even if we only see the result going from 31°F to 32°F.

The effort you put into an endeavor matters. All the small accomplishments along the way matter. Clear talks about the power that even 1% gains aggregated over time can have.

Recognize That It Takes Steps to Go Miles

So force yourself to pause and celebrate all the small wins along the way. Feed your discipline engine the dopamine fuel it needs to keep going! Harness the power of your innate reward circuitry to help you progress…and feel good doing it!

Become the enzyme for your goals. Catalyze away!

I hope this post shed some light on another way our brains’ wiring can sabotage our efforts. After understanding how our brains work, we can adapt our processes to capitalize on the wiring to help drive our success and happiness.

As promised: if I worked for Buzzfeed, this post would have been titled something like “This One Amazeballs Brain Hack Will Supercharge Your Productivity 4eva!”

What do you think? Comment below with your thoughts.

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