Fair Shot Time
Today I was thinking about not blogging. I was also thinking about switching my morning exercise ‘routine’ from running to something more fun... like dancing. I was also thinking of eliminating one of my morning habits of writing down one thing I am grateful for every morning. I was thinking of stoping Yoga in the morning, and trying something else... something better.
But then I remembered, that I have totally done this before. I have essentially quit things early and tried something new. And it doesn’t really feel like quitting because I immediately focus all my energy in to doing something else. But this is essentially what happens.
1. I make a calculated decision to do something.
2. That thing eventually gets to a point where it becomes difficult and I don’t like doing it.
3. I say “should I be doing this?” or “could I be doing something better?”
4. I answer “No, Yes.” and then think of something better I should be doing.
5. I start doing that thing and (probably) abandon it early.
I am starting to realize that I do this all the time. Whether it is with Comedy interviews with Studio Q, habits I am trying to form, or books I am reading... I literally do this all the time.
When this can be good?
The tendency to quit things prematurely CAN be good in certain scenarios. What scenarios? In scenarios where I have been consistently doing something that I absolutely don’t like, and I really just don’t want to do.
BUT, this rarely happens to me. More often than not, I quit the thing before I really give it a fair shot or persevere through the initial difficult phase.
One of the easiest examples that comes to mind, is my large collection of partly read books. I start reading one, then partway through it, I decide that there is another, better book that I should be reading.
How to fix this?
Well, I think the wrong answer is deciding to finish every single thing that I start. Why? Because that can result in a lot of time do something that I may realize I don’t want to do early on.
Ex. Going to Med School and quickly realizing you hate it and don’t want to be a doctor. There is no sense continuing with years more of Med School and wasting your money.
I think the trick is giving everything a fair shot time, or-- as I will now coin it-- an FST.
A Fair Shot Time is essentially a commitment that you make to the thing (a task, habit, project, hobby etc.) before you give yourself permission to reconsider your decision to do that thing altogether.
Setting the FST is completely up to you. The reason for this is based on the assumption that, in the initial consideration phase, you will decide that you want to complete whatever task you have chosen to start. If not, why else would you be doing it? So this is a good point to give yourself the FST, because you have yet to run into the shitty periods that completing any worthwhile task will ultimately include. So you will likely give yourself more than ample time to try the task out, when considering what FST you want to set. If you are not persuaded to give yourself ample time, than you probably are not committed enough to the idea, to begin with.
Once you set the FST, it is set in stone. You cannot quit that task until you reach the FST! If you think this is a possibility, then set up some punishments for quitting prior to the FST.
When you get to the FST, you are then free to full reconsider finishing the task.
Examples of FSTs that I am going to be implementing:
Ex 1: Reading 35% of a book before deciding to stop reading it, in favour of a different book.
Ex 2: Doing a habit for 1 month, before considering whether to replace it with a different habit.
Ex 3: Doing a new hobby for 1 season (1/4 of a year), before reconsidering whether I want to continue doing it. (Got the 1 season idea from Asad!)
This blog post felt very self-helpy and wanna-be-life-coachey. But whatever... whatever works for me!
- AL