You Got To Price Things In
The rule of thirds. When you’re are doing anything hard, you feel good a third of the time, okay a third of the time, and crappy a third of the time. Price that in.
Everything you want is on the other side of “worse first.”
Late in 2022, I decided to make a big jump and try CrossFit. I had always lifted and ran but I wanted a new challenge and boy, I did not know what was about to come. I thought it would be a seamless transition where my transfer between my fitness pursuits would be flawless. I was in good aerobic shape, was strong for my body weight, and had the muscular endurance to succeed. Or at least that is what I thought.
Whenever we start something, the growth we initially experience is quite nice. Once you get the basics down, you feel like a natural. You wonder why didn’t I do this earlier? The initial growth is addicting. Until one day, you hit a plateau. You expect to grow your skill at the same rate forever before you realize that growth is not linear. A month or two into CrossFit this was me. I expected to pick it up so easily, but once I could no longer muscle everything and I actually had to use skills and technique, my growth came to a screeching halt. Skills and technique take time to build. It is something you slowly chip away at each day. You aren’t just born with it.
You hit a plateau and at this point, things are going to get worse first before they get better. I had to do drill after drill trying to help myself. I never expected this to happen. But on the other side of focusing on my skills and lifts was me slowly but surely helping to push myself through the plateau. And part of the reason why it got worse is because I priced none of the slow, dreadful grind in. I thought it would be a seamless transition. You have to price things in to make things happen or else you will never be happy. I always think of Jimmy Carr’s definition of happiness,
“Happiness is expectations exceeded.”
We live our lives relative to our expectations. It is much easier to start something new when we price in growing pains as part of our expectations. If not, it is bound to hit a miserable wall at some point or be nearly impossible to start something that seems so daunting.
I always think of New Year's Resolutions and how the addition and subtraction of something from our lives initially makes it seem worse. We deleted sweets from our diets and now we have late-night cravings that are hard to ignore. We added the gym to our schedule every weeknight so now we have less time to relax. We quit drinking, but the deep desire to crack open a cold one after a long day at work is hard to resist. It comes with the expectation that it should be easy; we believe it is a minimal change in life that can make a world of difference. How hard could it really be? And the reason why it initially seems worse is because we did not expect it to be this hard. We expected it to be somewhat easy.
Except it is never that way. You have to price in that the cravings are going to be intense, time is going to be limited before you settle into a gym routine, and a beer is going to be calling your name. Things are going to get worse first before they get better. Resolutions are hard to do and that is why people do them year after year. They are hard to maintain and change is never easy. If they were easy, resolutions would never be a thing again. It is uncomfortable, but it comes with the expectation of it being comfortable. That is where we go wrong.
Look at the stock market. There is no barrier to entry in trading the market. Fund a Robinhood account with how little or how much money you desire. You don’t need a dollar to your name to open an account. However, the cost of trading the stock market is not free no matter how much they try to get you with their zero-commission trades. You can’t just open up an account and start making millions there is a cost to education. The cost lies in the money you lose while trying to figure out what works for you and how the market works as a whole.
So many people think all it takes to change their lives is to fund a Robinhood account. Before you know it, they are getting margin called and don’t know what to do. No one expects to be terrible at something right when we start. We all would like to believe that we have some sort of natural talent that could help us succeed and help us be better than the average beginner.
If only it was that way but we can’t be natural at everything we do. We can’t only have good days and we can’t have everything go our way. I try to think of the advice Alexi Pappas, a national record holder and Greek Olympic Athlete, was given by her coach. The rule of thirds on a tough day while she was training for the 2016 Olympics,
“When you’re chasing a dream or doing anything hard, you are meant to feel good a third of the time, okay a third of the time, and crappy a third of the time. And if the ratio is roughly in that range, you’re doing fine. So today was the crappy day along your dream chasing.”
It turns out we don’t need all of our days to be great either. When we price in those crappy and okay days, good things can happen. It works for Alexi; she set a national record in the 2016 Olympics. Growth is not linear and sometimes, setbacks or pain can be the indication of progress happening. Alexi might be sore when running and feels as if it is a “crappy” day because the body doesn’t feel right but in reality, it is just the muscle growing. Discomfort can oftentimes indicate progress. You still show up on these days.
Psychiatrist Phil Stutz calls this a “Reverse Indicator.”
“Painful emotions often have a positive value. Instead of indicating failure, they often actually indicate progress. We’ve all experienced the physical version of this in the gym—your muscles hurt during a workout, but you give that pain a positive value because it’s making you stronger.”
Things are going to get worse first. Anything new you start is bound to have growing pains. It is normal but it is also important to realize this. Anything we try to do is building that “muscle” within us. With my CrossFit endeavor, I was trying to both build my muscles and improve my physical fitness but I was also trying to improve my “CrossFit muscle” something I had never done before. There was the pain of being a beginner but everything I did at the beginning was helping that “muscle” grow.
Even with my writing, when I first began I really had no idea what I was doing. Sure, I knew how to write but I didn’t know how to make multiple ideas come to life, format a piece so it was pleasing to a reader, and properly concisely convey an idea. So my writing process at the beginning was like pulling teeth, the process was painful. It took time and boredom to sit with things and try to get them to work but all that strengthened my “writing muscle”. The boredom and time were just making me stronger with the more energy and effort I poured into it. Even two-thirds of the time when I had bad or crappy days, learning CrossFit or trying to write, those days were helping me. Once I priced those in, the rest was history.
And most of the time you should price in that you have nothing to lose. A caveat may apply here related to investing when actual money is on the line, but when things get worse first that is usually just the cost of education. It is not always expecting things to be terrible and pricing them that way. That seems to be a really good way to be unhappy for the rest of your life because you don’t expect anything from yourself when you absolutely should. It is not a way to “hack” yourself into happiness.
Instead, I have found when starting something new, assume you are at rock bottom because most likely that is where you are. With CrossFit, if I couldn’t learn it, I would still wake up and move my body the next day, it would just be in a different way. Nothing was going to happen to me if I learned it wasn’t for me. And funny enough, it turned out it wasn’t but here I am still moving the body with running and lifting. Or with writing, starting a medium for you to write is about one of the lowest-risk things you can do. You can’t go any lower than here. If you fail, so be it. You lost nothing.
This is what Bruce Springsteen likes to call playing mental jiu-jitsu. In 1972, Bruce Springsteen auditioned for the record producer John Hammond. Hammond had signed icons like Bob Dylan and Aretha Franklin. He spoke about the audition,
“I would’ve been in a state of complete panic except on the way up in the elevator, I performed a little mental jiu-jitsu on myself. I thought, ‘I’ve got nothing, so I’ve got nothing to lose…If nothing happens, I’m going to walk out of here the same person as when I walked in.’”
With this mindset, Springsteen didn’t panic instead, he walked into the audition feeling confident. The audition would be the start of Springsteen going on to record with Hammond and Columbia Records for the next fifty years.
Bruce Springsteen priced things in. His livelihood wasn’t tied to the audition so he truly had nothing to lose. His expectations of himself were to perform well but if he didn’t land the deal it would not be life-shattering. He didn’t expect a deal.
By not expecting a deal, he was realistic with himself because the deal lived in the hands of another human and who knows if one human would like his work or not. There is truly no way of knowing. Rather, he saw it all as positive asymmetric risk. His life could only get better from here, a realistic expectation. If not, his life won’t change and he will just go back to the drawing board and move forward from there.
He expected much of himself but didn’t live and die by his expectations. There is always a risk. A risk that things might not work out. A risk that today might just not be your day. I have found it important to price those things in because those times are bound to occur. And if they do, who cares? Remember the rule of thirds, 33% of the time we are going to have bad days. When those bad days happen, you get up the next day and move forward. You just keep moving, you just keep showing up. You never stop trying. It reminds me of the first rule from Pixar on storytelling.
“You admire a character for trying more than for their success.”
Admiration is not to be chased but there is a lot of admiration in just trying. But with trying there are sure to be times when we fail, when we mess up, and when we may make a fool of ourselves. Price those things in. Thinking you will always succeed is one way to lose. That’s one way to be unrealistic with your expectations and end up unhappy. Price in the growing pains because things are going to get worse first. But the beauty of it is everything you want is on the other side of worse first.
Appreciate you reading.
-Scantron
Thank you for this. Literally at the stage where I just have to price not succeeding in.
It can only go up from here.