Repetition & Cessation

I’m not the best podcaster in the world, but I’ve produced nearly 250 episodes of one show and about 85 of another over the past four-ish years.

I’m not the best writer in the world, but I’ve published a few dozen books, penned a blog for eleven years, and engaged in a variety of other writing-focused projects over the course of the past decade.

There’s something to be said for the pursuit of mastery, but there’s also something to be said for repetition, consistency, and just showing up, over and over and over again, across a span of time.

Most ideal, of course, is engaging in intentional practice, setting goals, learning from mistakes, and nudging ourselves ever-so-much-closer to more masterful performance, daily.

But the “daily” component is important in its own right. Habit and persistence are valuable in isolation, in addition to being arguably necessary for the pursuit of higher levels of skill and achievement.

Also important, though, is the capacity to stop when warranted.

It’s valuable to be able to habitualize elements of skills you want to learn, but it’s also valuable to be able to set aside habits when they’re no longer serving you, and to know the difference between “this is difficult, so I don’t want to do it anymore” and “this is no longer useful to me and I’d like to reallocate my time and energy to something else.”

Facing frictions is part of the learning process: if everything is easy, you’re probably not growing.

There are times where those frictions simply aren’t worth the gains they might bring, though, and being able to recognize those moments for what they are, and being able to cleanly segue from one set of habits and routines to another, is an exercise in self-discipline, self-analysis, and emotional management. It’s not always psychologically simple to leave familiar patterns behind in the pursuit of other, less-developed and less-comfortable patterns, but it’s vital to growth and fulfillment.

It’s not just important to be able to run—it’s important to know how to stop, perhaps suddenly, without injuring yourself.

It’s not just important to be able to establish and maintain habits—it’s important to know when it’s time to rearrange or replace those habits, how to best do so, and how to figure out what comes next.

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