Today marks three weeks into the New Year.
By this time, more than half the people that started the New Year by making one or more resolutions have already given up on following through on them. Three more weeks later, that number will fall to less than half of what is left now.
The three week period is like the half-life for people quitting their resolutions.
But, it isn't just resolutions that people quit. We also quit reading articles that we start before we finish them. We quit reading books that we start before we finish them. We quit watching TV shows, we quit listening to podcast episodes, we even quit listening to songs midway.
Each of these has a different half life. And these half lives are decreasing every year.
With abundance of choice comes a reduction in patience. The more choice we have for doing something, the less patient we are with the choice we do make.
We quit reading an article after the first paragraph or two if they fail to catch our attention. Because, it is constantly on the back of our minds that we can be spending this time on a better choice.
But, patience is what is needed to form habits and to learn new things.
We naturally find something unfamiliar as boring or unattractive if we evaluate it right at the moment we start engaging with it. Because we have several other familiar things that we can be engaging with for a guaranteed return of a known level of satisfaction.
So, we evaluate early and we quit early.
As a result, we drastically reduce the chances of forming new habits and learning new things. This is arguably why we tend to learn lesser and lesser new things as we grow older.
If you want to learn more and form new habits, increase your patience, raise the half life.
Don't quit after three weeks. Give it another three weeks. And then another.
By this time, more than half the people that started the New Year by making one or more resolutions have already given up on following through on them. Three more weeks later, that number will fall to less than half of what is left now.
The three week period is like the half-life for people quitting their resolutions.
But, it isn't just resolutions that people quit. We also quit reading articles that we start before we finish them. We quit reading books that we start before we finish them. We quit watching TV shows, we quit listening to podcast episodes, we even quit listening to songs midway.
Each of these has a different half life. And these half lives are decreasing every year.
With abundance of choice comes a reduction in patience. The more choice we have for doing something, the less patient we are with the choice we do make.
We quit reading an article after the first paragraph or two if they fail to catch our attention. Because, it is constantly on the back of our minds that we can be spending this time on a better choice.
But, patience is what is needed to form habits and to learn new things.
We naturally find something unfamiliar as boring or unattractive if we evaluate it right at the moment we start engaging with it. Because we have several other familiar things that we can be engaging with for a guaranteed return of a known level of satisfaction.
So, we evaluate early and we quit early.
As a result, we drastically reduce the chances of forming new habits and learning new things. This is arguably why we tend to learn lesser and lesser new things as we grow older.
If you want to learn more and form new habits, increase your patience, raise the half life.
Don't quit after three weeks. Give it another three weeks. And then another.
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