Category / behavior change

by Nathan Coumbe

Role-playing games vs. doing hard things

I like role-playing video games. In fact, they’re one of only two types of video games I like to play (the other being strategy games).

In only an hour or so, with the only effort required being time and learning a few button combinations, you can take a character from a complete newbie to a superpowered, super-skilled demigod who can conquer the world.

It’s quite satisfying.

You can watch this character of yours grow, develop new skills, conquer increasingly difficult challenges, and know for certain you’ll reach the apex if you just put in enough time.

This could not be more different from the real world.

Learning new, meaningful skills requires a massive amount of time along with physical and mental energy you may or may not have, especially if you’re working all day or raising a family (or both).

You could spend years mastering something rather than a few hours in a game. And there’s never any guarantee that what you learn will pay off—or that you even can master it.

So you spend your time playing the game rather than doing the hard thing in real life. And each time you make that choice, it gets harder to make the opposite choice next time.

Doing hard things in real life is a muscle that must be exercised regularly, lest it atrophy.

by Nathan Coumbe

“People like us do healthy things like this”

According to Seth Godin, the definition of culture is, “People like us do things like this.”

Any sort of “culture” you want to be part of has things people like them do, so all you have to do to join that culture is do those things too.

Want to be a writer? What do writers do regularly that makes them successful? Copy those behaviors, and you’ll be a writer, too.

Have you always wanted to be a politically engaged, active, contributing citizen? What do those sorts of people do daily, and can you build a relationship with them?

I was thinking about this in the context of health this morning, and I thought it could be a really helpful way to develop healthier (and sustainable) practices in your life.

What do the healthy people you know do on a regular basis? Answering that question is a really good way to become people like us in this context (i.e., people who are healthy).

Some of those things are pretty basic:

  • They move often and a lot, in ways they enjoy
  • They eat more whole foods in moderate amounts
  • They sleep well
  • They have ways to manage their stress

The hard part, of course, is actually developing these practices. But one key to becoming a “person like this” is to get involved with those types of people. They will naturally rub off on you.

Culture and community might be a game-changer.

by Nathan Coumbe

Perfectionism hinders progress

We all have a tendency to strive for perfection. But it’s often a trap that keeps us from reaping any rewards at all.

Case in point:

I used to write morning pages each day to clear my mental clutter and get ideas flowing for the day. And, like their creator, Julia Cameron prescribed, I did them longhand on 8.5″ x 11″ sheets of paper first thing upon waking.

But doing it this way took me nearly an hour each morning. Not a problem when I was laid off and unemployed, but quite difficult on a regular, full day when I also needed to cook breakfast, help my wife get ready for work at 5 am, and squeeze in a workout.

That was hard enough, but life made it harder.

After I left my two-week ICU stay in 2020 and went home to recover from COVID-19, I found myself dealing with horrible inflammatory issues all throughout my body, including my hands and wrists. This made it difficult, if not impossible, to do much writing by hand.

So I stopped writing morning pages. And as a result, I lost all the benefits of that wonderful mental decluttering each morning and the ease with which new ideas flowed.

I tried here and there to dive back into morning pages—the right way, by hand—for years, but never managed more than a few days before I quit. Frustration, or pain, stopped me from continuing.

But in the back of my mind, I always knew there was a simple solution to this: just type your morning pages out on your computer! Rather than mangle my hands or suffer through a slow hour of writing I didn’t have, I could just type them.

But I resisted, because it wasn’t the right way to do morning pages. Julia was very explicit.

I let perfection prevent me from doing anything at all, when something, however imperfect, would have been better than nothing. By refusing to do them any way other than “perfectly,” I was missing out on 100% of the benefits of the process itself.

Doing no morning pages guaranteed that I got 0% of the benefits of morning pages—no mental declutter and no new ideas to work with during the day.

Doing anything, however imperfectly, had to be better than nothing, right? 25% better? 50%?

In fact, it would have been infinitely better! Because a 1% benefit is infinitely better than a 0% benefit.

Interestingly, I found that writing out my pages by typing them up on my computer not only let me do them on days when time was limited and with no physical pain, but I still got all the benefits that I received when writing them by hand.

I delayed doing a less-than-perfect version of something and missed out on all the benefits of that something rather than doing a “good enough” version of it and getting at least some of the benefits.

We’re all guilty of this.

We do it with our health: if we can’t do the extreme workout perfectly, we just don’t do anything at all. But going for a 15-minute walk is literally infinitely better than vegging out on the couch.

If we can’t stick to our meal plan perfectly (and no one ever can), we say “f–k it,” and eat an entire 18″ pizza. But eating 3 slices of pizza with a little salad is infinitely better than binge eating out of frustration.

We do it with our hobbies: if we can’t set aside two hours to practice our guitar, we let it languish on the stand in the corner. But spending 15 minutes learning a small section of a song is infinitely better than doing nothing.

This all-or-nothing mindset is all too common and the enemy of progress in everything we do. We’re trained in school to live by an A+ mindset: how far away am I from 100%?

But we’d be so much better off if we reversed it and asked, “how far away from 0% am I, and what decision would let me move a notch or two higher?”

I use this tactic all the time with my coaching clients when trying to make behavior changes stick, and it works wonders.

The next time you find yourself battling perfectionism, stop and take a breath. Then ask yourself, “What is 0% on this thing I’m trying to do?” Then figure out what a tiny notch higher on that scale is for you and do that.

Those little points, day after day, add up.

by Nathan Coumbe

Let regret guide you

Don’t let it paralyze you.

If you failed to do something through inaction, hesitation, or indecision, remember the feeling of regret it left in your gut.

Not to punish yourself or

Another opportunity of some kind will come your way, and you’ll feel hesitant or indecisive again. But if you remember the regret you felt the last time, you’ll realize how much better you’ll feel this time if you act.

Use it to make better decisions in the future.

by Nathan Coumbe

Start from 0, not 100

Thanks to our school systems, our parents, and our bosses, we tend to default to a “100” mindset. We look at everything we should or have done from this framing: “how far from 100 am I?”

How far from perfect is my effort or my attempt?

It’s incredibly unhealthy and unhelpful for making progress or creating change.

So you didn’t attend the protests yesterday? What have you done instead?

Maybe you’ve written tons of letters, made dozens of phone calls to your representatives, and encouraged others to do the same. That’s more than most, so you can comfortably give yourself at least a 75/100.

You didn’t eat perfectly cooked meals that align with your macros to the thousandth decimal place or get in your intensive, tactical workout to help you look like Thor?

Who cares? Did you eat some vegetables? Did you go for a walk or do yoga? You did a lot more than nothing.

Instead of looking at everything starting from 100, why not consider how far away you are from 0?

It’s not just incrementally better, it’s infinitely better!

Doing something, however small or seemingly insignificant, is uncalculably better than doing nothing at all.

by Nathan Coumbe

It’s not the tool, it’s the system

Or lack thereof.

You don’t need a better tool. You need a better system. Or you need a clearer outcome.

You think the next new software will solve your work overload. But the reality is that only good workflows that you design for yourself can do that. Software can’t help until you have that down.

You think that the next workout program or supplement will finally help you get a “ripped” body. However, neither of those matters if you don’t have a clear vision for what you actually want, or you can’t execute the boring and simple habits consistently over a long period.

It’s rarely the lack of the right tool that’s the problem anymore. Most of the time, it’s a lack of appropriate systems.