Just Because There are No Shortcuts Doesn’t Mean It Must be Painful
Unfortunately, for the things you want most out of life, there are no shortcuts. It’s simply a fact that things you want most require a significant investment of time and effort over months, years and sometimes decades. While this may be a sobering fact to accept, there is a consolation prize. Just because there are no shortcuts doesn’t mean it must be painful.
Indeed, you can run a marathon the day after Thanksgiving after being a couch potato for 11 months or you can slowly work to get better each day for 11 months and run it Thanksgiving morning the next year. In other words, just because there is no shortcut for running a marathon doesn’t mean you can’t prepare to run it when you are at your best and learn how to run it efficiently.
In fact, that’s the point. When there are no shortcuts, the next best thing is preparation and efficiency. Moreover, I know for a fact two techniques in particular that will help you both prepare and execute any process to pursue what you want out of life more efficiently.
1) MVC
The first technique is a minimum viable change or MVC. An MVC is a change that slightly pushes you out of your comfort zone. For example, if you can only do 5 pull-ups right now the MVC may involve using a pull-up assist band. You would do your normal 5 pull-ups, then strap on the pull-up assist band and do as many more as you can to burnout. This is a small change that won’t take much effort if you are already doing pull-ups on a regular basis. Pull-up assist bands don’t cost much money and they are easy to use. This is why it’s a perfect candidate for an MVC.
Once the MVC becomes part of your process, it then leads to the second technique.
2) Progression
The second technique is a progression. A progression is the process of gradually doing more as you pursue progress towards a goal. So, continuing with the pull-up example from the MVC, the first step in the progression is to increase from doing 5pull-ups without assistance to 6. You will still use the pull-up assist band MVC to do a burn out set once you reach your unassisted max, but you will also use the progression to periodically increase your unassisted max goal.
Unquestionably, using these two techniques in tandem creates the momentum you need to continuously make process towards a goal. Over time your MVC will change and the size of each step in your progression will fluctuate up and down as well. However, the basic concept stays the same anytime you need to prepare and execute any process more efficiently.