How to Reach Your Full Potential

My greatest fear in life is not reaching my full potential. So, how do we get there?

The most effective way is by building and consistently executing small habits. Over time, these habits lead to results that may seem unimaginable when you first start.

Changes that seem small and insignificant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re committed to sticking with them over the years. We all face setbacks but in the long run, the quality of our lives often hinges on the quality of our habits.

Habits are the Compound Interest of Self-Improvement

We often overestimate the importance of a single defining moment or believe that we need to make a BIG change to reach our goals. Conversely, we tend to underestimate the value of making small, sometimes boring improvements daily. Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action.

Improving by just 1% might not seem particularly noteworthy—in fact, it may not even be noticeable at first. However, as illustrated by the graph from Atomic Habits below, these small improvements can compound over time, leading to significant impact on results.

Current Trajectory > Current Results

The slow pace of transformation can make it easy for us to let a bad habit slide or to give up on habits we're trying to establish. However, it's important to reframe your thinking: it doesn't matter how successful or unsuccessful you are right now. What truly matters is whether your habits are putting you on the path toward success. Your current trajectory should be of far greater concern than your current results.

Breakthrough Moments

Breakthrough moments are often the result of many previous actions, each building up the potential needed to unleash a major change. Your results are a lagging measure of your habits.

Habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance. This is true of any compounding process: the most powerful results are delayed. This delay is one of the core reasons why building lasting habits is so challenging—and why it's easy to let good habits fall by the wayside. Mastery takes patience.

To succeed, habits must persist long enough to break through what James Clear calls the "Plateau of Latent Potential."

The Problem with Goals

Prevailing wisdom claims that the best way to achieve what we want in life is to set specific, actionable goals. However, there are a number of problems with solely focusing on goals:

1.Winners and Losers Have the Same Goals

• All Olympians have the goal of winning a gold medal. But only one competitor can win it.

• The goal isn’t what makes you successful. It’s the system of habits you implement that propels you there.

2. Achieving a Goal is Only a Momentary Change

• We think we need to change our results, but the results are not the problem.

• What we really need to change are the systems that cause those results.

3. Goals Restrict Your Happiness

• With a goals first mentality, you’re continually putting happiness off until you reach a milestone.

• Creates an ‘either or’ problem where you either achieve your goal and are successful or you fail and you are a disappointment.

4. Goals are at Odds with Long-Term Progress

• The purpose of goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game.

• This is why so many people gain all of their weight back after they hit their weight loss goal.

5. Goals Lead to the Outcome Bias

• Outcome Bias is a fallacy where we judge the quality of a decision solely based on the outcome.

  • Bad process can lead to good results. Good process can lead to bad results.

• By focusing on the process rather than the result, you can make more informed decisions and improve over time, even if outcomes aren't always favorable.

When it comes to achieving success, it’s essential to shift your focus from goals and results to the overall system and process you’ve established. By building and executing an impeccable system, you'll find that The Score Takes Care of Itself.

Additional Resources

• Readings

  • Atomic Habits - James Clear

  • The Score Takes Care of Itself - Bill Walsh

  • Thinking in Bets - Annie Duke