Reps & Momentum: How To Solve Any Problem

For years I had dreamt of starting my own business.

I desperately wanted to escape my soul-crushing 9-5 routine that was slowly draining my potential.

Whenever I thought of the idea of pursuing my vision, I was immediately crushed by the sobering truth that I simply wasn't equipped with the skills or knowledge to create anything remotely successful.

“Ahh man, look at all these successful founders and business owners. I could never compete with them.”

“I could never hop on sales calls with people and convince them to buy my product.”

“Oh man, I could never learn coding.”

“I’m terrible at public speaking, how could I hire people to work alongside me or manage a team of people?”

There was always one step in the process that I just didn’t know how to do, and it would instantly push me into the mindset of ‘I just don’t have what it takes’.

Sigh.

Maybe I’ll think about it later on in my career.

Maybe when I’ve upskilled for a few more years. Maybe when my financial position is better and I have more savings I could survive on.

I had subconsciously adopted the mentality that I was stuck as the human I was today, with the fixed skillset that I currently possessed.

It took me years to realise that this mentality was completely wrong, and that the problem wasn’t my lack of skills, but it was actually my mentality that was operating out of scarcity which was the root cause of the problem.

I finally came to the realisation that no one is ever locked into the path they’re on right now.

You’re never actually stuck with the set of skills you have right now.

If you truly want to change the trajectory of your life; you can. You just need to implement the right systems into your life.

It took me far too long to figure this out, and I want to make it clear to you so that you don’t fall for the same mistakes I did.

Let me explain the universal solution I use any time I want to bridge the gap between any skill or experience I’m lacking.

Reps & Momentum

This was a revelation that changed everything for me.

Anything you want to achieve in life can be reached by getting enough repetitions of practice, and by maintaining enough momentum between those repetitions.

Let me give you an example.

Say you wanted to learn a skateboard trick as a kid.

Everybody wants to learn how to do a kickflip, right?

If you’ve ever stood on a skateboard and actually tried it, you’ll realise it’s much more difficult than it looks.

Your default response to that may be: “ahh man, this is way too hard. I’ll never be good enough to land one.”

It’s so easy to look at that situation and think “How on earth could I ever achieve it?”

Something I’ve learnt about human nature is that when faced with a dilemma, we are far too quick to think all hope is lost.

The reality is that you know exactly how to land a kickflip, you just don’t want to do the work necessary to achieve it.

Even if you’ve never stood on a skateboard in your life, I guarantee you that if I asked you to plan out an exact roadmap for someone to land a kickflip, you’d know exactly what to say.

It would probably include something along the lines of:

• Practice it 10,000 times.
• After each attempt you make, review what it was that you think went wrong, and don’t do that the next time.
• Learn anything you can from others who know how to land a kickflip. Watch all the YouTube tutorials, read all the Reddit forums.

If somebody who wanted to land a kickflip genuinely took the time to follow this advice, do you think they’d achieve it?

I’d like to bet that their odds are pretty darn high.

But let’s say that somebody truly followed this roadmap, and they did eventually manage to land the trick.

If they landed it once and then called it a day, would they be able to come back in 6 months' time and land it again?

No. Their skills would have gotten rusty. They would have forgotten what they were focusing on in order to make their legs move in the exact way they needed to in order for the trick to work.

This is why repetitions on their own won’t work, but through constant repetitions whilst maintaining constant momentum over a longer period of time.

Get enough reps, while repeatedly coming back to them and repeating them in the long term. That’s how you get good at anything.

Here’s the most beautiful part - this concept can be applied to ANY aspect of your life.

Once I came to this realisation, everything changed.

Creating The Perfect Incubator

Take a second to think of any skill you’re lacking in your life right now.

Any characteristic about your personality that you want to fix. Any hard or soft skill you currently consider yourself bad at.

Now, imagine somebody held a gun to your head and forced you into a situation where you had to practice that skill every single day.

Take public speaking, for example.

Let’s imagine a poor old lad named Fredrich.

Fredrich considered himself terrible at public speaking. He had a horrific phobia of speaking on stage.

Against his will, Fredrich had a gun held to his head and was told he needed to prepare a speech and go and present it in front of a crowd of 1000 people. He was asked to do this every single day.

In that situation, if Fredrich only had the choice between facing his fears and death, he probably would have prepared the speech and got up there and did it, no matter how shaky or unwilling he was.

Now obviously this situation would not have been fun – but imagine how quickly Fredrich would have desensitised to public speaking.

The first 3 or 4 days would have been his worst nightmare. But perhaps by the 5th day, he would have at least started to get a feeling for what it was going to be like, how he was going to feel, what the crowd would be like, and he’d start to get at least a little more comfortable.

After 30 days, however, Fredrich would be a different man.

After being forced up on that stage every single day for a month, he’d be a well-oiled machine.

What was the defining catalyst that enabled Fredrich to overcome his fear of public speaking? (aside from the obvious fact that he was forced against his will)

It was the incubator environment he had to face his phobia and practice, every single day.

Do not underestimate the incredible power of an environment that acts as an incubator for progressing your skills.

Think about it.

In an extreme case, any skill can be learnt. Any problem you have can be solved.

Scared of talking to pretty girls? Imagine being forced against your will to approach girls and ask for their number.

Bad at calls with potential customers for your business? What if you were forced to cold call potential customers and try and sell your product to them every single day.

Forced to try and fail at starting a business, forced to lose all the money you have and start again, etc. etc.

You get the idea.

These environments would give you no option but to step up into becoming the person you needed to in order to survive.

Jump back to reality, though, and you’ll realise that no one’s going to put a gun to your head and force you to confront your fears or push for your biggest aspirations.

In fact, no one is coming to save you at all.

In the real world, it’s all up to you to create the incubator.

And finding these environments that act as incubators to practice your skills or confront your fears aren’t always that easy.

How To Create Incubator Environments

The most effective way to master any skill or conquer any fear is to build an environment that forces you into repeated practice where you’re weakest.

Here are the 5 most essential ideas to keep in mind when creating an incubator environment:

1) Realise there’s a difference between what your human desires want, and what’s good for you in the long term.

What your natural instinct thinks is good for you now is not always going to be what is best for you in the long run.

"Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure, fabricate; it will seduce, bully, cajole. Resistance will assume any form, if that's what it takes to deceive you. It will reason with you like a lawyer or jam a nine-millimeter in your face like a stickup man. Resistance will pledge anything to get a deal, then double-cross you as soon as your back is turned. If you take Resistance at its word, you deserve everything you get. Resistance will not be reasoned with. It is always lying and always full of shit." - Steven Pressfield (The War of Art)

You must realise that the devil is working hard every single day to hurl any distraction, friction or excuse your way to separate you from the success you are capable of achieving.

We want to get home after a long day of work and lay on our bed and watch Netflix.

We want to spend our Friday and Saturday nights out with our friends.

Perhaps these aren’t always the most productive activities for our long term success.

Become aware of this.

Realise that we’re living in an age of distraction.

Those who are able to keep their focus on what genuinely matters, to filter the signal from the noise – those will be the ones who make it in the end.

"Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do—not because they like to, but because they have trained themselves to act in spite of the desire to do otherwise." - Jeff Olson (The Slight Edge)

Sometimes you’re going to just grit your teeth, and get the work done -- even if you don’t feel like it.

2) Rely On Systems, Not Motivation

Motivation is fleeting. Some days you’ll feel unstoppable. Other days, you won’t even want to start.

That’s why systems and habits are absolutely pivotal. They remove the ebbs and flows of inspiration from the equation.

When you have a clearly defined routine for exactly what you’re going to do, at exactly what time of day, it ensures that whether you feel like it or not, you know what you have to do, and the work is more likely to get done.

"Under pressure, you don't rise to the occasion, you fall to the level of your training."

When the world pulls you in every direction, these constraints will keep you grounded. They will separate those who make excuses from those who make progress.

- Define the exact set of steps you are going to work on.

- Set the exact time blocks in your day that you will work within. Guard this time like your life depends on it.

- Reduce any need for variation or decision-making that increases the friction of you being able to instantly jump into starting the task.

Demand excellence from yourself. Remember, every corner you cut is a piece of your own progress you're throwing away.

3) Create Progressive Exposure Systems

In bodybuilding, you get bigger by progressively lifting heavier and heavier weights.

The same idea should apply when learning any skill, or getting better at anything you consider yourself bad at currently.

When creating the system for your incubator, clearly define how you are going to progressively increase the difficulty of your actions, so that you’re slowly incrementing your proficiency.

Start by establishing an end goal.

What do you want yourself to look like in that domain of life by the end of this?

Now, realise that every pursuit you put your mind to has levels.

We often look at the world around us and see other people with skills or traits we desire, already operating at level 100.

We come into it, see the level they’re on, and get so overwhelmed that we lose the motivation to even start.

Realise that you aren’t expected to just jump to level 100, when you’re at level 1.

Identify your end goal.

Break it down into managable steps.

Make the first step so easy that skipping it feels ridiculous.

5 minutes of practice. One rep. A single sentence written. What matters isn’t how much you do – it’s that you do it, every single day.

Remember, reps & momentum.

Slowly increasing the difficulty every single day.

Once you’ve established a consistent routine that you know you can maintain, push forward.

Every week, increase the difficulty. Add time, add intensity, add challenge.

The key is controlled growth – finding the sweet spot that is just enough to stretch you, never enough to break you.

4) Find Accountability

As much as I hate to admit it, this is possibly the most effective step out of everything we’ve covered so far.

A system solely reliant on your individual willpower is a recipe for disaster from the get-go.

The resistance against making excuses or not completing the tasks you set out to finish is just too low.

That’s why accountability is the best cheat code.

When others have an expectation of you to perform, you’re far less likely to quit.

Find an accountability partner.

Someone on their own journey, pushing toward their own goals.

Meet weekly. Compare progress. Be blatantly truthful with each other.

Where did you fail to keep up with what you said you were going to do?

What bottlenecks are stopping you from achieving that? What were the distractions?

If you’re serious, get a coach or mentor. Someone who won’t accept your limits. Someone who will push you further than you’d push yourself.

An incubator in isolation is half as effective as one surrounded by other humans who want the best for you.

Surround yourself with people fixing the same problem, chasing the same growth.

Join a community. Build one if you have to.

Iron sharpens iron.

If you want to level up, put yourself in a room where it’s impossible not to.

5) Constantly Revisit the Bigger Picture

Inevitably, life’s chaos will always demand your attention.

Whether you’ve got strong routines and systems in place or not, it’s incredibly easy to get lost in the week-in, week-out grind.

I cannot stress how important it is to clearly write down a message to yourself on the exact reason why you set out to achieve this goal or implement this habit in the first place.

Weeks will roll by, and if you’re not intentional, you’ll find yourself falling into ‘autopilot’. Turning up each day for no other reason than because ‘this is my routine, so I’ll do it again’.

Don’t fall for this.

Plant reminders in a place you know you’ll see.

Revisit the original vision your past self created. The reason you started, the future you’re fighting for.

Keep that vision of a better life front and center.

It is also incredibly valuable to track your progress.

Make it visible. Track your streaks, keep logs of what you did every single day.

By storing up this progress, it:

• Gives you something to look back on which truly shows how hard you worked, giving you the inspiration to keep going.
• Builds a progress bar of consistency, showing the momentum you’re on and encouraging you to maintain your streak.
• It gives you a clear view of your progress - revealing patterns and exposing the gaps that need fixing.

It’s also pivotally important to do some form of weekly reflection.

Review your progress and productivity on a weekly basis. Genuinely ask yourself what worked well, what didn’t, where were your biggest bottlenecks, and what you could do to fix them.

Truly ask yourself whether you were pushing as hard as you could have, or did distractions or excuses get the better of you?

Don’t underestimate how important this step of taking a step back and zooming out actually is.

—

Anything you want to achieve in life and be achieved through enough reps and maintained momentum.

Remember:

• 10,000 repetitions at whatever you want to get good at.
• Maintain momentum over longer time periods so that your skills don’t get rusty.
• After every rep, identify what went wrong, fix it up and don’t fall for it again so that you improve over time.
• Don’t rely on motivation. Create realistic habits and systems that you can sustainably keep up for long periods of time.
• The most powerful system is an incubator environment that forces you to get practice in the areas you’re weak at.
• Don’t underestimate the power of finding other humans to hold you accountable to the goals you set out to achieve.

Don’t fall for the mindset that you’re stuck with the set of skills you have right now.

Any weakness you have right now can be turned into a strength in just six months – if you're willing to put in the work.

If you’re serious about achieving it, your top priority must be crafting an environment that makes improvement unavoidable – an incubator where you’re constantly able to practice your skills through deliberate, repeated action.

Your future is a direct reflection of the incubators you create.

Put yourself in the right environment, and success becomes inevitable.

- Cole

If you’re interested in escaping from a traditional 9-5, leveraging AI to build a future of your own, and capitalising on the digital renaissance, subscribe to my weekly newsletter.

You can also follow me on twitter @cole_mccon