One idea, one quote, one question.
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The Idea
I asked Robert Herjavec on the podcast how you build confidence, and his first answer was honest: “I think winning is the best way to build confidence.” That doesn’t help much if you haven’t won anything yet. So he described what he did before he had any wins. He got tired of living the way he was living and started putting himself out there. In his words, “I sucked and I sucked a little less.”
A lot of people put off starting something until they feel more confident, and that feeling rarely shows up on its own. Robert’s answer gives you a lower bar to clear. You don’t need a good result yet. You need to get a little better over time.
Harvard’s Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer studied nearly 12,000 daily diary entries from 238 professionals and found that of everything that lifted people’s mood and motivation on a given day, the most important was making progress on meaningful work, even small progress. The catch is that small progress is easy to miss, and one bad day can make it feel like none happened at all.
Say you’ve moved to a new city and you’re trying to make friends. You go to a run club. The first time is awkward and the second is a little better. The third time is worse than both, and that’s the night it’s easiest to quit. After each attempt, write one line: what went a little better, or if nothing did, what you’d try differently next time. A bad night still gives you something to write down, and after a month you’ll have a record that shows the trend instead of just the last attempt.
Quote
“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, translated by W. D. Ross
Question
What would you start this week if all you had to do was get a little better over time?
Listen
Robert Herjavec on Success Story. Robert built and sold cybersecurity companies before becoming one of the investors on Shark Tank. Around the 30-minute mark, he talks through how he built confidence before he had anything to point to.
Read
The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer. The full story behind the diary study, including a short end-of-day review the authors recommend for tracking progress while it’s still small.
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Scott