The Area Under the Curve
Two questions worth asking in your pursuit of something that matters.
Derek Sivers took 15 years to become a singer.
At the age of 14, he had bad pitch, bad tone, and was told that he wasn’t meant to be a singer.
Undeterred, at 17 he started practicing for two hours each night.
At 28 he started to like his voice, and finally at age 29, he’d done it.
**
The other day, a colleague of mine came to me with a problem.
She has been trying to help her team to understand certain procedural things that need to be done as part of their job, and they just can’t seem to do them correctly.
She told me all of the various ways she has tried to explain the procedures: in-person training, 1 on 1s, written checklists, and plenty of, “Do you have any questions or need to clarify anything?” Which was always met with, “No we’re all good, we get it.”
She and I sat together for almost two hours as she explained all the various things that she had tried, to no avail. She was looking to me for some perspective or perhaps a tactic she hadn’t thought of, and I came up with nothing.
As I write this sentence, it’s been three days since our conversation.
I think I finally have something to offer her.
It involves math, which is a shame, because I’m not very good at math.
**
Let’s start with a simple graph. Effort over time:
Now let’s imagine two scenarios.
One where effort stays steady over time:
And one where effort gradually increases over time:
Now let’s go back to our original graph, and imagine that an outcome we desire—the thing that we’re putting effort toward—exists for us at some point in the future.
For my colleague, this will be the day when most/all of her team are able to do the procedural things they need to do correctly. For Derek Sivers, this was the day when he became a singer.
You might start to see where this is going.
If our level of effort over time remains static, we may not reach the outcome we desire:
Even if that level is pretty high to begin with:
The magic happens when we slowly (because fast just isn’t realistic) increase our effort over time:
**
If there’s an outcome you’re seeking, that you’re just not finding, ask yourself two questions:
Is my level of effort slowly increasing?
Am I being patient enough?
If the answer to both is yes, then you probably need more patience.
The area under the curve will eventually catch up.
