In an episode of The Ground Up Show by Matt D’Avella, he and Greg McKeon are talking about journaling. They mentioned how people would buy books and then write page long journal entries off the bat. By the second day, they don’t feel like writing as much as they previously had and put it off. By the third day, they have two days of journaling to make up for and at that point, they’ve all but given up on maintaining a journal. By doing way too much when starting off, they set their expectations for the following iterations too high.
The most obvious way to avoid doing too much is to do less when you start out if you want to ramp up at all. This sounds simple but I can guarantee that you’re likely to be enthusiastic about anything when you start, making the trap of doing too much all that easier to fall into. Another thing to consider is that progress is slow. Real progress of course, not the “do these 10 things and double your audience” type of progress.
Since we barely notice a change in the feedback we get or in the usefulness of what we do, in the case of journaling, there’s little keeping us engaged with the activity we do. This discourages us from sticking with something long enough for it to pay off and encourages us to jump ship and start something new just to see the rapid, visible growth all too much.
This is all too similar to how productivity is overrated and ensuring that we’re able to do what we want in the long-term even if it means grinding on something that appears all but useless in the present moment. For all you know, it could be fruitless but the answer to that question can’t be answered now – only later.