Machine-translated from the Korean original. Read the original

Sticking With It

Contents

When I was a developer, I looked down on the value of consistency. I was wary of settling into the comfort of doing something steadily while not actually growing.

But once you step into other fields, the value of doing something consistently shoots up. I feel it in exercise and in playing an instrument.

In the world of exercise, there is a concept called grease the groove (GTG). 1 It means carving a groove. You grow a skill by practicing it in small doses, consistently. Say you want to increase your pull-up count: you do reps often, staying short of the point where you would fail.

It feels similar to Spaced Practice.

Things worth sticking with

That said, it's hard to stick with everything. The things you want to keep doing carry a fairly large adjustment cost at the start. There are plenty of things in life we resolve to do consistently, but introducing them successfully is not easy. Atomic Habits explains a good approach to turning something into a habit. Below is a list of things I think are worth sticking with.

Footnotes

  1. The concept was created by Pavel Tsatsouline. ↩

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