With repetition to bring retention
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, no wait wrong story, let me try again, a long time ago when I was involved in a project to turn a household name from an organisation that was losing over £500m a year into one turning an operating profit of over £500m in less that 5 years there was a leader in the business who had “Passion and Pace” as his go to phrase for everything we did in that organisation, I can not remember his name or his face or anything else about him, but this one phrase has stayed with me to this day.
This particular person may or may not have been brilliant at his job, he may not have come up with the phrase at all, he may have borrowed it from somewhere else but using it so repetitively and so effectively that I still remember it and use it today was at least a stroke of luck if not genius.
This brings me on to a conversation that happened even further into the past with a sales colleague of mine during a training session. The CEO was in the room and made a statement that I am sure was a simple throw away line that gets used so often, “Practice Makes Perfect” quick as flash my colleague Nial said “actually practice makes permanent not perfect” if I remember correctly this turned out to be something his dad who had been a Concorde Captain used a lot.
It’s a really interesting point though, if you use enough repetition you will get retention, like the fact I remember and still use the phrase “Passion and Pace” but repetition on its own is unlikely to bring improvement, as Nial said, do something enough and you will make how you do it permanent this means if you are really bad at how you are doing it now then do that a lot and you will make being bad pretty much a permanent.
This is why it is so hard to change a habit, it is hard wired into your brain because you have done it so often in a certain way that it has become your permanent way of doing it, you just try and change a habit by force of will alone and you will find out how difficult it is to change.
James Clear in his book Atomic Habits points out that: –
Your life today is essentially the sum of your habits. How in shape or out of shape you are? A result of your habits. How happy or unhappy you are? A result of your habits. How successful or unsuccessful you are? A result of your habits.
What you repeatedly do (i.e. what you spend time thinking about and doing each day) ultimately forms the person you are, the things you believe, and the personality that you portray.
So, everything that is holding you back from that next level whether its procrastination or productivity starts with better habits, which is essentially relearning how to do things.
This is where I can help, all of my clients, in fact most of the people who have ever worked with me will tell you what I do is force them to think differently, and if you want different results (better ones I am hoping) you need to think different, act different and be different.
Start thinking differently today.
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