Why You’ll Never Achieve Your Goals — The Progress Paradox
Don’t fall prey to this subtle cognitive bias
Hello beautiful readers 👋
Here’s your weekly injection of Steroids For Your Brain 🧠
Why You’ll Never Achieve Your Goals - The Progress Paradox ✍️
As an executive coach, the most common cognitive bias I find in founders/CEOs is the deep-rooted belief that progress should be linear.
“If I keep working hard, my results should keep increasing”
Tick these boxes ✅ Get this result 🐶
It’s a belief we pick up early on at school and then in the corporate world, but as soon as you step into real life, or try to do something interesting, the tick-box linear progression model totally breaks down…
And if you’re not expecting it, you’re f*cked.
You’ll think it’s all over, no point continuing, just quit now…when actually an even bigger success is waiting just round the curve.
Real life is non-linear.
Whether you’re starting a business or learning the piano, understanding non-linear progress is the only way to stay motivated through difficult real-life challenges.
👉 The full article (6 min read): The Progress Paradox
Something To Make You Think 🤔
What’s the one question you wish you had the answer to?
My co-founder (Olivier Rothersfield VI) asked me this question yesterday.
At first, I thought it was just one of those silly, superficially “deep” questions that don’t mean anything.
But actually, it made me reflect on what knowledge was missing between me and my goals/vision.
I arrived at a very business-specific question:
What don’t I know about the university market that could undermine or 10x our current business plan?
I realised I was being arrogant about our market positioning and business model, without really understanding the university game at all. Need to do more research!
Hit reply with your answer! 👇
Extremely Interesting Fact 🤓
Polar bears are black.
Seriously, polar bears actually have black skin, here’s a closeup:
The black skin helps them absorb as much heat from the sun as possible.
So how come they look so white and pasty? (Hint: it’s NOT white fur)
Turns out, black isn’t a very good colour for arctic camouflage.
But white fur would just deflect all sunlight, and our dear polar bear would freeze to death…
So polar bear fur is actually hollow and made of transparent keratin. The fur has no colour, it just picks up the white light from the Sun, creating the illusion of furry white polar bears!
A Small Favour 🙏
Steroids For Your Brain 🧠 has been growing rapidly over the last few weeks but I’d love to reach a wider audience.
I spend 5-10 hours writing/researching/sketching each Thursday edition…so if you’re enjoying the content and would like to say thank you, please forward this newsletter to a few like-minded friends.
And I’ll owe you a small favour in return 😉
Feel free to ask!
Andrew ✌️❤️