Don't break the chain: The power of grinding

I’m not sure why, but you just decided to become a gnome sculptor.

Yep, you woke one morning saying - I’ve never done arts or crafts in my life, but I now have a calling to do this.

Alright, so how to make it a reality?

There are many necessary elements to new skill acquisition, but one of the foundational pillars is consistency.

Tony Hawk didn’t become a global skating innovator by showing up the skate park every week or two. He was grinding (euphemistically and literally) every day of the week.

John Carmack didn’t pioneer 3d game development without working for years, learning, iterating, honing his craft.

So how do you get consistency?

In short, by establishing momentum, and one proven way to do that is following the “don’t break the chain” philosophy.

Put up a big year planner on your wall (or use a digital equivalent), make time in your daily schedule then tick every day you put effort in towards your gnome crafting.

After struggling through the tough early days you’ll see start to see that chain of ticks grow, and then a few wonderful things begin to happen:

1. Your strong human loss aversion will kick in, and you’ll want to protect that chain from being taken from you. Even on days you’re sick or tired, you’ll at least paint some gnome noses just to keep the streak going…
2. You’ll start to see the growing chain as a reward in itself, the tick filled in each night giving you that dopamine hit and as we talked about before, reinforcing your routine.
3. If you’re following a good learning path, your skill level will cross the barrier where practice moves from painful to somewhat pleasurable, reinforcing the desire to keep going.

Isn’t that cool?

So to summarize - consistency is a requirement for mastery, and one easy way to improve consistency is simply “not break the chain”.

Now go out and be the best gnome crafter the world has ever gnome known! (sorry, I had to)