The Secret to Success: Be Boring

“I don’t like setting goals, because I’m afraid of how bad I’ll feel about myself if I don’t achieve them.”

Have you ever felt this way? The desire to feel the edge of growth and expansion, tempered by the fear of not getting to your end goal?

Every week at Lumealta we have an accomplishments journal to fill out. A space to celebrate what happened that week. Rather than sharing ONLY accomplishments that are tied to outcome, I enogucarge everyone to share accomplishments tied to PROCESS.

Rather than celebrating a 10 pound weight loss (outcome)…celebrate tracking your calories consistently for the past 7 days (process).

Outcomes are exciting and fun to celebrate, but the only reason they exist is because the boring tasks were prioritized and executed consistently over time.

Projects succeed because each person on the team woke up, opened their computer, clicked into all their platforms and logins, grabbed a ticket or task, took a sip of coffee and started working. Line by line, problem by problem, code review by code review, test by test.

Success is ordinary and mundane.
To be successful you have to learn to love being boring.

Celebrate the ordinary

I wish we celebrated more of those ordinary, boring moments:

• The slack message to clarify requirements - saving hours of work.

• The meeting, that everyone wanted to skip but helped craft an important process change to make the deadline.

• The hard conversation that brought truth and perspective to a situation that would have created an issue down the line.

These are the moments where we win or lose.

Success is found in the work we avoid. It’s found in the simple consistency. It’s found in paying attention when we want to mentally check out. It’s found in daily actions that are easy to do, but also easy not to do.

It’s not enough to be boring

One thing to note about being boring, it’s not something you can do on occasion. Small simple actions find their power in consistency over time.

Only doing them when we feel like it, or when the outcome looks promising, will not produce the consistency needed to see the cumulative effect of these actions.

• Working out from time to time will do nothing for your body.
  Working out every day for 2-3 years will completely change your body.

• Eating in a calorie deficit every couple days will not change your body composition.
  Eating in a calorie deficit every day for 2-3 months will result in significant fat loss.

• Investing once in a while when you have a little extra money will not build significant wealth.
  Investing consistently, when the market is up, when the market is down, when you have surplus and when times are lean, will build a portfolio you can be proud of.

• Meeting a friend for coffee once every few years will not build a strong relationship.
  Meeting up weekly for several years will give you a friend you can count on.

It’s about consistency. It’s about finding satisfaction in the process that keeps us in the game long enough to win.

Sometimes being boring is hard

These small, success building steps are easy to do, but they are also easy not to.

Here are a few ways to reduce resistance for those of us who want to be boring:

• Set a time in the day for your boring tasks, actually block it off in your calendar and set a reminder.

• Do the difficult thing first, when you are fresh and fatigue from the day hasn’t set in. If journaling is always something you skip - do it first.

• Get your materials together ahead of time: lay out the gym clothes the night before, have a journal and pen in the same spot, cook a batch of health meals for the entire week on the weekend.

• Get someone else to do the thing with you, so you have added accountability.

• Remove your phone or other distractions.

• Work in a location that has no other pulls on your attention if you really need to focus. (I like to do my writing in a coffee shop, because there is no dog to walk, no dishes to put away or laundry to switch from the washer to the dryer)

• Hack your dopamine receptors by giving yourself a hit of satisfaction when you complete the task: tell a friend and receive their encouragement, check off the task on an app (we like the app Streaks, but there are many out there), Let yourself go for a walk after a particularly difficult and high focus task.

The more we can make these tedious tasks easy, non-negotiable, and habitual, the more of our desired outcomes we will get to celebrate.

Take action

What is one boring, simple step that is apart of the PROCESS (not outcome) you want to increase your consistency and focus on? Comment below and commit to being boring, it won’t be long before we will be celebrating your success.