How Do I Continue To Do Something That I Started and Loved?

Nik Books, Habits, Inspiration, Motivation, Quora

You don’t lose interest. You lose discipline. Without discipline, you’ll never overcome this problem.

When you start something new, it’s fun, easy, you make lots of progress and can brag about it to your friends.

But when that’s what you draw your motivation from, you’re bound to quit the second it gets hard. It’s what happens after…

  • you learned all the basic HTML commands in 2 days
  • you watched every piano tutorial video
  • your Mom stops telling you your blog posts are awesome
  • your friends don’t like every one of your Instagram pics any longer

…that separates professionals from amateurs.

They show up every day.

  • Regardless of how fun the work is on a Wednesday.
  • Regardless of whether today’s task is easy or hard.
  • Regardless of what kind of fan mail is in their inbox: praise or criticism.
  • Regardless of whether they “feel like it” that day or not.

This is how you overcome what Seth Godin calls The Dip. It’s the phase where you have to put in more and more effort, without getting anywhere. The tunnel you have to make it through to go from average to world-class.

Don’t confuse interest with discipline. You either love something, or you don’t. Nobody likes everything about their field. There will always be fun days and days that are shit.

Just pick something and turn pro.

I’ll see you on the other side.

Nik

Niklas Göke writes for dreamers, doers, and unbroken optimists. A self-taught writer with more than a decade of experience, Nik has published over 2,000 articles. His work has attracted tens of millions of readers and been featured in places like Business Insider, CNBC, Lifehacker, and many others. Nik has self-published 2 books thus far, most recently 2-Minute Pep Talks. Outside of his day job and daily blog, Nik loves reading, video games, and pizza, which he eats plenty a slice of in Munich, Germany, where he resides.