In clear moments, each of us knows what is needed to be done. The problem arises in getting it done. Why so?
Some very clear reasons that come to my mind
1. We fill our container with sand instead of stones
How we live our days is how we live our life. Everyday, the container of our day is filled with activities or tasks that are of little positive impact. Instead of devoting and prioritizing chunks of time everyday towards projects that are meaningful to us, we do something else. The detritus from someone else’s projects fills up our day. For example, time spent on checking other’s social media posts, vs. time spent on creating.
2. Our goals are magnificent, but the efforts are not
Given enough time and focused effort, almost anything that we can visualise can be achieved. We give a long enough time period, and plan for it. But consistent and focused efforts are what flip things in our favour. If we don’t push through dips in efforts or results, we get mediocre results. For eg., making a New Year’s Resolution and not lasting through January.
3. No feedback mechanism
While driving and using Google Maps, one can see where one is, how far away from the destination, how long till one reaches the destination, and constant alerts during any forks in the road. If we take a wrong turn, we are informed in real time and there is a course recalculation. For our real life projects or everyday habits, if we take a wrong turn or simply stop doing what needs to be done, there is generally no real-life feedback mechanism baked into our life for it. Bad Habits easily take autopilot from Good Habits, unless we can figure out feedback mechanisms.
4. Intuitively, we do not understand compounding
Small, continual increments can build to a lot over time. Also, the increments do not show up measurably in shorter time spans. This is especially true for personal finances and also physical strength.
Investing 500 rupees a week, week in and week out for 1000 weeks will make your input investment around 5 lakh rupees. If overall, you can get a compounded annual growth rate of 10%, your investments will have grown to 15 lakhs over 1000 weeks. Drops of 500 rupees becoming and ocean of 15 lakh rupees is not intuitive.
Physical strength is measurable in many ways; some being the number of push-ups, pull-ups, squats, that can be done at a go. If you can do 5 push-ups in a row today, and you commit to doing some push-ups everyday, it is possible to reach 50 continuous pushups in a year’s time. But reaching 50 push-ups from 5 push-ups is not intuitive.
5. Inaction
All the above four reasons, make it easier for us to not act upon things. Our distractions are entertaining and our plate is full today. Hence, even though in clear moments we can see our destination, we do not walk our talk.
We see our goal clearly, but the path is not evident.