Day 239 - The Minimum is Still Progress

June 04, 2024

In this episode, Guy Reams discusses the importance of consistent effort, even when it's minimal. He shares a personal story about his struggle with golf and how neglecting practice led to a decline in his skills. The key takeaway is that even small amounts of progress are better than none, and consistency is crucial for long-term improvement.

Key Points

Minimum progress is still progress: Even on days when you don't feel like doing something, doing the bare minimum is better than nothing at all.
Consistency is key: Repeated effort over time leads to improvement. Skipping practice sessions can cause skills to regress.
Embrace minimal days: There will be days when you can't give your best effort. Accept these days and focus on maintaining consistency.
The power of accumulation: Small, consistent efforts add up to significant progress over time.
Don't be discouraged by minimal days: Focus on the long-term benefits of consistency and celebrate even small victories.
Call to Action

Identify an area in your life where you'd like to improve.
Commit to making minimal progress every day, even on bad days.
Track your progress and celebrate your wins, no matter how small.
Additional Notes

The episode also touches on the concept of “nothing days” and how they can derail progress.
The speaker uses the example of golf, but the principles apply to any skill or habit

Episode Transcript

Guy Reams (00:00.834)
So today is day 239. The minimum is still progress. So I'm back in my hotel room late, had a bunch of business meetings today and lots of activity. And then we ended the day by playing golf until it got late. So I'm tired, but I'm doing my commitments anyway. So I've been keeping a series of commitments, including this writing thing every day.

There are some days like this evening where I really just don't want to do it. However, there is an important thought to ponder. Even when you do the bare minimum, it is significantly more progress than doing nothing. A tiered of improvement occurs through consistent and repeated effort over a long period of time. If you want to improve it, anything at all, you're going to have to perform effort repeatedly. I bring this up today because.

You know, I played golf and that experience was not great. I seem to have lost all my progress that I had gained when I was trying to improve a few years ago. A few years ago, I was practicing consistently and I got, I had gotten much better. However, I haven't played for a very long time. So today when I went to play, it was just horrible. So I'm wondering why did this happen? Well, it dawned on me.

I have not played or practiced in such a long time that I've just lost my skills. That seems very obvious. But if I would have just kept up my golf practice consistently on a regular period of time, then even those small minimal increments would have kept my skills sharp. There's just no other way. This means that as you stretch a long duration of days together of doing a consistent habit,

then there are going to be days when you just are unable to put the quality in that you normally do. Because if you do like a thousand days in a row, there's going to be a couple of days where it just, you just can't do much because life just happens. So instead, instead of doing nothing, you can do the minimum. So you can check that box and be done. Repetition and iteration is never consistent in the amount of workload you perform. There are good days and average days, average days, days,

Guy Reams (02:19.298)
just long as there are no nothing days. Nothing days are the killers. Nothing days are what end up stacking up and causing you the most harm. Nothing days become nothing weeks, which turn into nothing months and nothing years. Think for a moment of something that you wish you would have accomplished in the last five years, like maybe being better at golf. What if instead of a bunch of nothing days, you instead had a bunch of really small progress days?

You would have much more time under your belt when it was all said and done, and you would have made some solid progress. Here's what I've noticed. Incremental everyday progress produces many minimal days. However, when you string a bunch of these together, you will eventually experience great days when you accomplish a lot. I remember when I was practicing golf, I was practicing consistently many, many days, not every day in a row, but at least every week.

And there was a lot of weeks where I just a lot of days I just did the bare minimum. I went, you know, I did some practice swings. That was it bare minimum. But then there were some days when I just had a breakthrough. Suddenly things are clicking, doing well. That occurs with almost everything. When you string together a whole bunch of consistency, you end up having a real advanced forward. I have learned that the cumulative impact of accumulation.

far out exceeds any individual effort on my part. So do not feel bad when you have minimal days. Even though I feel pretty miserable right now, looking at this crumpled scorecard on my desk, if I would have embraced the minimum, then I would have not quit practicing golf. I would have had practices and been okay with having minimum days. I've learned to accept these minimum days. They're the days when I'm not that great at anything.

But at least I made some progress, even though it was very small.