This is one of the core reasons why it is so hard to build habits that last.
People make a few small changes, fail to see a tangible result, and decide to
stop. You think, “I’ve been running every day for a month, so why can’t I
see any change in my body?” Once this kind of thinking takes over, it’s easy
to let good habits fall by the wayside. But in order to make a meaningful
difference, habits need to persist long enough to break through this plateau
—what I call the
Plateau of Latent Potential.
If you find yourself struggling to build a good habit or break a bad one,
it is not because you have lost your ability to improve. It is often because
you have not yet crossed the Plateau of Latent Potential. Complaining about
not achieving success despite working hard is like complaining about an ice
cube not melting when you heated it from twenty-five to thirty-one degrees.
Your work was not wasted; it is just being stored. All the action happens at
thirty-two degrees.
When you finally break through the Plateau of Latent Potential, people
will call it an overnight success. The outside world only sees the most
dramatic event rather than all that preceded it. But you know that it’s the
work you did long ago—when it seemed that you weren’t making any
progress—that makes the jump today possible.
It is the human equivalent of geological pressure. Two tectonic plates
can grind against one another for millions of years, the tension slowly
building all the while. Then, one day, they rub each other once again, in the
same fashion they have for ages, but this time the tension is too great. An
earthquake erupts. Change can take years—before it happens all at once.
Mastery requires patience. The San Antonio Spurs, one of the most
successful teams in NBA history, have a quote from social reformer Jacob
Riis hanging in their locker room: “When nothing seems to help, I go and
look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times
without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow
it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it—but all
that had gone before.”
