My new TAP for the year is—When I fail: try twice more. Then stop.
I’m persistent but unfortunately I don’t know when to quit. I fall a foul of that saying “the definition of insanity is to try the same thing over and over again and expect different results”. Need a pitch for a client? Instead of one good one I’ll quota fill with 10 bad ones. Trying to answer a research question for a essay—if I don’t find it in five minutes, guess I’m losing my whole evening on a Google Books/Scholar rabbit hole finding ancillary answers.
By allowing myself only two more tries but no more, that should mean that I get three failures instead of burnout-1 failures. It should mean I’ll be, per the saying, less insane.
Three is an arbitrary number, it could easily be 4 or 5, but if I had to post-rationalize it then it would be: if you fail three consecutive times, then your chance of success was lower than 33.3% which means you need a better tactic or approach.
Three is a good balance between repetition without causing burnout, it also is low investment, which means that it encourages me to try again, and quickly.
Of course this approach only works if there is a postmortem. Try twice more, stop, then analyze what happened.
I can’t say I’m proud of the fact that I need such a simple rule. But if it works, then I shouldn’t feel ashamed for improving my behavior because of it.
I do this at the end of basketball workouts. I give myself three chances to hit two free throws in a row, running sprints in between. If I shoot a third pair and don’t make both, I force myself to be done. (Stopping was initially wayy tougher for me than continuing to sprint/shoot)
Thank you for sharing that, it is interesting to see how others have arrived at similar ideas. Do you find yourself in a rhythm or momentum when sprinting and shooting?
not as much momentum as writing, painting, or coding, where progress cumulates. but then again, i get this idea at the end of workouts (make 2) which does gain mental force the more I miss.
My new TAP for the year is—When I fail: try twice more. Then stop.
I’m persistent but unfortunately I don’t know when to quit. I fall a foul of that saying “the definition of insanity is to try the same thing over and over again and expect different results”. Need a pitch for a client? Instead of one good one I’ll quota fill with 10 bad ones. Trying to answer a research question for a essay—if I don’t find it in five minutes, guess I’m losing my whole evening on a Google Books/Scholar rabbit hole finding ancillary answers.
By allowing myself only two more tries but no more, that should mean that I get three failures instead of burnout-1 failures. It should mean I’ll be, per the saying, less insane.
Three is an arbitrary number, it could easily be 4 or 5, but if I had to post-rationalize it then it would be: if you fail three consecutive times, then your chance of success was lower than 33.3% which means you need a better tactic or approach.
Three is a good balance between repetition without causing burnout, it also is low investment, which means that it encourages me to try again, and quickly.
Of course this approach only works if there is a postmortem. Try twice more, stop, then analyze what happened.
I can’t say I’m proud of the fact that I need such a simple rule. But if it works, then I shouldn’t feel ashamed for improving my behavior because of it.
I do this at the end of basketball workouts. I give myself three chances to hit two free throws in a row, running sprints in between. If I shoot a third pair and don’t make both, I force myself to be done. (Stopping was initially wayy tougher for me than continuing to sprint/shoot)
Thank you for sharing that, it is interesting to see how others have arrived at similar ideas. Do you find yourself in a rhythm or momentum when sprinting and shooting?
not as much momentum as writing, painting, or coding, where progress cumulates. but then again, i get this idea at the end of workouts (make 2) which does gain mental force the more I miss.