In Our Quick-Fix Society, Try This Magic Pill to Achieve Your Goals

Design by Reed H. Steele

The other day I came across an article outlining categories of professionalism for writers on Medium.

There wasn’t a category for me.

And, as I was reading the article, I knew there wouldn’t—and shouldn’t—be one for me. And, no, it’s not because my level of professionalism exceeds how this author categorized Medium writers.

If I belonged on the list, I would actually write.

Case-in-point, rather than writing, I just spent 20 minutes scouring Medium (i.e., procrastinating) trying to find the article so that I could accurately include those categories in this article.

Luckily, the rational part of my brain kicked in: Reed, it’s 5:30am and you’re trying to carve out dedicated time to write before the rest of your house wakes up. Stop searching for the article — you’re wasting your time—and just write.

In the spirit of writing, the article went something like this:

What follows are the number of articles published on Medium over a 12-month period:

Amateur: 300+ articles

Novice: 500+ articles

Elite: 750+ articles

Professional: 1000+ articles

In seeing those numbers, I clicked on my profile picture.

Then I clicked on Stories.

Published: 36

Drafts: 5

After 18 months on Medium, I had 36 publications.

And, without fail, after I’ve hit Publish all 36 times, over the next 72 hours I obsessively open the Medium app to check my notifications searching for that dopamine hit…

Any claps?

Any follows?

The typical result: nil.

And that’s exactly the way it should be for any of us with loosely defined goals who expect immediate results simply because we put in a tiny bit of work toward who we want to become.

As Dave Ramsey tells us, “A goal without a plan is just a dream.”

I do think I deserve a category, though. And, no, it’s not Dreamer.

Category: Fool

Definition: anyone who expects results after putting in a minimal amount of time and effort toward a goal.

“To the extent that we believe we can skip steps, avoid the process, magically gain power through political connections or easy formulas, or depend on our natural talents, we move against this grain and reverse our natural powers…It is the height of stupidity to believe that in the course of your short life, your few decades of consciousness, you can somehow rewire the configurations of your brain through technology and wishful thinking, overcoming the effect of six million years of development. To go against the grain might bring temporary distraction, but time will mercilessly expose your weakness and impatience.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

As someone who loves chasing after goals and helping others chase after goals, I, too, fall prey to the quick-fix society that we live in.

I’ve fallen guilty to it many times.

I hit an emotional bottom and, in a fit of drive and motivation after making sense of the swirling thoughts in my head, I scheme out a loosely defined and unrealistic plan for an ambitious goal:

This will make everything better! I tell myself.

The following day, I intensely hunker down on a task related to the goal.

I do it again the next day.

I do it for a week.

Sometimes, I make it a full two weeks.

At some point within a two week period, though, I watch my good intentioned goals float out to the sea of my life’s collection of unfulfilled goals.

And, over the years, I’ve watched it happen time and time again to so many other people.

Growing up in a quick-fix society, I think we’ve all been led to believe that change will come to us immediately.

There is a pill to fix anything that ails us.

There is a diet that will lead to a perfect body.

There is a 7-minute workout that will ensure fitness.

There is an app that will instantly organize our lives.

Throughout our lives, we’ve been sold an enticing idea that we can skip the drudgery of work and take a shortcut to success—a shortcut to a desired state.

And when this idea spills over to our life’s goals, the sea of unfulfilled goals gets bigger and bigger throughout our lives and we find ourselves repeatedly standing on the shore pummeled by waves of shame and regret.

And in these moments of emotional torment, the cycle starts again: we set another loosely defined goal, put in a tiny bit of work, and then fool ourselves into thinking that we should get the results that true professionals get who actually dedicate consistent time and effort to their craft.

The Cure for Foolery

A daily dose of deliberate practice as prescribed by your desired level of professionalism.

Despite repeatedly trying to shortcut the system, in my 41 years of life I keep coming to the same conclusion about the one thing that we can do to create lasting change: dedicate systematic, purposeful, and regular practice to the things we are striving for most in life.

On a daily basis, we must remind ourselves of the clearly defined goal that we are striving toward.

On a daily basis, we must come back to the plan that we have laid out for ourselves so that we keep making progress toward that goal.

And on a daily basis, we must focus our attention toward the minute details—specific goals within the larger goal—that surround the change that we are trying to achieve.

When we do this, we lose ourselves in the process.

When we lose ourselves in the process, our focus turns away from the outcome and toward our craft that we are trying to perfect.

And, in doing so, deliberate practice becomes a magic pill because the outcome eventually takes care of itself.

Cheers to dose #37