How To Improve Your Results By “Mastering The Middle”

The middle is where dreams and productivity go to die…

Photo by Luke van Zyl on Unsplash

“I accumulated small but consistent habits that ultimately led to results that were unimaginable when I started” — James Clear

I love starting things—new habits, new journals, new TV series, and learning new topics. The newness feels fresh, exciting, and full of promise. These same feelings are why so many people have New Year’s Resolutions. The possibilities feel limitless at that moment when we tell ourselves we’re going to achieve something finally.

We pick up a bit of momentum at first. Then our flame flickers. The flickering flame gets dimmer and dimmer before it dies. Soon, we find ourselves at the start of another timeframe — a new week, a new month, a new year — trying to get things going again.

I’ve found that almost all of my failures happen in the middle. I get a bit of momentum, then things get a bit shaky, or life happens. I put things on the back burner for an hour, and then I lose the day. One day turns into another, which turns into a week. Then one week becomes two before I just let it go.

Making any progress in our goals lies on the other side of sustaining momentum, mainly through that middle period. If you watch any sport, games are won or lost in the boring middle periods. The teams that control this time can hold their leads or comb back in the end.

In our daily lives, the middle period is when we are most vulnerable to failure:

• In the middle of the day, we get sleepy and lose our will to work. (Sometimes it’s a big lunch. Sometimes it’s something more.)
• In the middle of the week, we lose our drive. We look forward to Friday to relax and have fun on the weekends, losing valuable productivity time on Wednesday and Thursday.
• In the middle of the month, we realize we’re nowhere near our monthly targets. At the first of next month, we’ll crush it!
• By mid-year, we’ve already forgotten our New Year’s Resolutions.

If you have a goal with a specific timeline, your focus should be on mastering the…