watch for these 3 early warning signals.
by bill reeb
based on experiences in my own life and decades working as a coach and consultant to very successful business executives and owners, getting more out of your life often comes down to how quickly you recognize and respond to the early warning signs like losing momentum, suffering from diminishing returns on your efforts, or experiencing the disconnect between what you are thinking and what you want to do.
more: let go of what you think you know | roadblocks from people with good intentions | 3 ways to get ‘unstuck’
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overachievers get stuck regularly. for us, this is simply life in action.
the question isn’t whether this will happen to you, but rather, “is it happening to you right now?” and if the answer is “yes,” that is not a big deal. but what can easily become a big deal is remaining stuck. my experience with overachievers is that we have a problem being idle, so we are going to expend our energy doing something. the problem is that “something” we do often resembles our being hamsters on a wheel – running hard to nowhere – rather than using our energy to achieve what is really important to us. so when you get stuck, which you will, you need to see early on the techniques or concepts you can apply to get yourself off the hamster wheel and back on course to your objectives.
at the center of this positive transformation will be your willingness to let go of what you think you know, which might be a priority or weight of a belief or value as compared to another or an unrealistic expectation or something. the more diligently and relentlessly you hold on to everything you are currently thinking and doing, the more likely you are to get stuck and stay stuck because you are not looking for answers, you are merely looking for validation.
early warning signals of getting stuck
as my martial arts master, john, and i discussed the idea of getting or being stuck, we identified several common early warning signals that are often a precursor to feeling unsuccessful in what you are trying to achieve or unhappy about your progress or priorities. these were the most common:
- losing momentum (slowing progress: when doing the work, committing the effort and achieving progress are no longer in congruence with each other). just the idea (the way you think) that you might be losing momentum is often enough to trigger dissatisfaction.
- diminishing returns (negligible progress: when an indirect relationship starts to exist between doing the work and achieving progress, or said another way, the work disproportionately increases in relationship to progress achieved). extended effort against diminishing gain is enough to trigger dissatisfaction.
- functional disconnect (no progress: when desire is in direct conflict with your priorities – an idea, belief, value – making it difficult or impossible to do the work until the disconnect is resolved). your inability to move because of the conflict between what you are thinking and what you want or plan to do will create huge dissatisfaction.
each of these is remedied through replanning, reprioritizing or reaffirming, but if not addressed, will eventually lead to the same result: getting stuck or being stuck. as you might surmise, there is a severity difference between the early warning signals with each leading to dissatisfaction.
the highest level of severity occurs when you are experiencing a functional disconnect because you most likely will be very dissatisfied and stuck. if you are suffering from diminishing returns, though less severe because you are still likely to be making small incremental progress, the time and resources required to sustain additional progress are probably way out of balance. this imbalance typically is the source of a great deal of frustration and, unaddressed, will eventually lead to being stuck. losing momentum, though the least severe of the three, is a warning letting you know that with enough time and lack of attention, progress will continue to slow until it comes to a halt.
if you start getting stuck, because the early warning signals are independent of each other, you might be required to address only one of them to help you get back on track to achieving your goal. however, you can also cycle through all three of them if the obstacle you are trying to overcome has multiple levels or is complex enough. as well, know that the first time you are alerted by an early warning signal that it is likely to be a light knock on your door that you are starting to get stuck. however, the longer you ignore it, the louder it will be and the more painful it will be to respond to and resolve.
in my upcoming story about managing my weight, all three early warning signals of stuckness are encountered as my obstacles evolve and i have to escalate my response to address each of them.
the most common scenario is what i refer to as “losing momentum.” i think of this as the “i found my objective harder than i thought it would be” perspective. the bad news is that this viewpoint gets in our way of success and happiness often. the good news is that you can call upon plenty of techniques to help you start regaining momentum as soon as you realize you are losing it.
for example, several years ago i decided that i needed to lose 20 pounds in order to minimize my constant lower back pain and be healthier. my approach for this was simple – limit my beer intake (which wasn’t much in the first place) to facilitate this change. within about 15 days, i was about halfway there (10 of the 20 pounds gone). so, i got excited and celebrated my loss by having dinner and drinks with some friends. after dinner, when i got back home relaxing from the evening, knowing how well my weight loss objective was going, i decided to have a little ice cream (of which i polished off the remainder of the carton). lo and behold, the next morning, the scale showed 5 pounds higher than my last weigh-in. frustrated by my lack of self-control, i rededicated myself to staying with my plan. within a week, and no alcohol, i was back to being halfway to my goal. but surprisingly, i found that i was ready to again “treat myself” for my diligence. yes, in this example, i was mentally ready, and physically motivated, to bring my weight loss momentum to a halt again and again. i needed some help to keep me focused and avoid the same relapse i had just experienced. calling upon a simple technique or two and reaffirming my goal was all i needed to get me back on track and regaining my momentum again.
because weight loss is a very complex undertaking, this example allows me to share how techniques might work in the short term, but because new hurdles emerge and new levels of performance are required, you may have to repeatedly escalate your actions to continue to make progress. this brings me to a second scenario of getting stuck; one i call “diminishing returns,” whether it happens at a developmental, psychological, physiological level, or all of them combined. you know you are experiencing diminishing returns when you realize even the slightest progress is requiring more and more resources (time, effort, skill, focus and so forth) to sustain.
using the weight loss example, after about a month, i had dropped 15 of the 20 pounds i set as my goal. i was able to lose this weight by simply cutting out my beer consumption and maintaining that focus for about six weeks rather than sabotaging myself every week or two. the problem was that this cut alone had plateaued in its effectiveness and was not going to get me where i wanted to be.
a good sign that this early warning signal will start affecting your level of satisfaction is when you determine that doing more of what you have been doing (being tenacious and persistent) won’t likely change the outcome. in this case, i couldn’t drink less alcohol because i wasn’t drinking any, and it didn’t matter how long i denied myself because that denial was no longer having any effect. diminishing returns can be like treading water – while you are likely working hard on your objective, your efforts result in negligible or marginal progress or gain.
finally is my third scenario which i describe as “functional disconnect.” with this early warning signal, unlike losing momentum or diminishing returns, most people who are experiencing it are already at a dead stop (or stuck). in this situation, you have uncovered a disconnect between what you are thinking and your desire. the disconnect might be in the plan, tactics or expectations. if you want to allow yourself to achieve the success or happiness you are looking for, you will have to resolve this disconnect.
staying with my weight-loss scenario, after cutting my alcohol consumption to zero, i also added a change in diet – more fish, less meat – and added salad to most dinners. at first, i hated the idea of eating salad but i realized that i needed to give a higher priority to my desire of losing weight than i was giving to eating the junk food i loved. it was this reprioritizing (or reweighting) of what was important to me that allowed me to holistically change in my eating habits so that i could move beyond the 15-pound weight loss wall and achieve the 20-pound loss objective i had set for myself. as a matter of fact, i lost even a little more – something overachievers love to do is beat a goal.
once i beat my goal, i would find myself allowing my desire for junk food to creep in and gain priority almost subconsciously. i would then gain a few pounds, realize what was happening, then lose it again.
as a little insight, i still have a problem with my weight fluctuating (far less than five years ago and in a smaller range variance). i can give you a bunch of juicy rationalizations about the difficulty of maintaining my weight when i travel as much as i do, but that is all they are – rationalizations. when i am home, i maintain my weight or lose the pounds i might have gained on the road. when i am on the road, the longer i am on the road, the more weight i gain. i know exactly what the functional disconnect is. i need to accept the fact that i have to follow the same habits on the road as i do when i am home. but i clearly choose not to, so that says that i have two desires regarding the same issue (to maintain my weight when i am home, and treat myself to comfort food when i am on the road for being away from my family).
balancing my two desires regarding eating and weight loss is only marginally working. the day will come soon enough when i have to finally address this dr. jekyll and mr. hyde situation. i share the example, however, to show that though i do help others improve their performance, i am still also a student and one who is a work in process. however, i have used my process successfully in so many aspects of my life to reach new levels of sustained achievement, balance in my life, and focus on what is important. therefore, i am confident that i can provide those same benefits to you.
whether you have lost momentum, are suffering from diminishing returns or are trapped by a functional disconnect, by determining where you are, where you want to go and by considering the process and taking action, you can quickly refocus and start making positive progress again. understand that, at times, it is probable that you will misdiagnose where you are, or overlook what is really causing you to get stuck in the first place. if you try a technique and it fails, reassess your situation. then try several techniques or apply the process to see what additional insight those actions provide. before long, the diagnosis stage will become easier for you, your assessment as to what will likely work will become more accurate and your recovery time to getting you back on track much shorter.
why do we get stuck?
we get stuck for two simple reasons. we feel either (1) unsuccessful or (2) unhappy about our progress or priorities. while these feelings can be triggered by losing momentum, diminishing returns or functional disconnect, once you become dissatisfied with how well you are progressing or with your current priorities, you start down the road to getting stuck or being stuck.
what should ‘getting unstuck’ or ‘being stuck’ mean to you?
to address this question, i want to turn to positive and negative connotations: “achieve more success than expected” and “achieve results through an excessive, unreasonable or unwarranted effort.”
overachievers typically don’t have a problem putting in the time and effort to perform at a superior level. rather, my experience is that they tend to run out of time to address what is important to them because of the excessive effort they are targeting to one or a very few initiatives.
this almost single-mindedness, maybe even obsessive compulsiveness, can easily allow them to lose sight of balance as well. by overcommitting to one objective, such as success with some initiative at work, they might find themselves ignoring their families, health or something else they deem important. once the overachievers realize the error of their ways, they then put that super-focus on some other aspect of their lives only to find a new imbalance (over-focusing on one objective while sacrificing another) wreaking havoc somewhere else.
if you are one of the overachievers i have been referring to, what i believe “getting unstuck” will mean to you, based on what it has meant to me and the many clients i work with, is that you will be more efficient and effective in how you focus your time and balance your priorities. staying unstuck is about learning to work better, not about learning to work more to achieve the objectives you have in mind.