Do the thing

A few months ago, I listened to a podcast episode of The Diary of a CEO by Steven Bartlett. That specific episode was with Alex Honnold, who’s a professional climber, and a very interesting person. I first got to know of him by watching Free Solo which tells the story how Alex climbed El Capitan without any safety. I’m not a climber, but that movies was amazing to watch. I could feel my palms sweat as I was watching it. I highly recommend.

One of the special things about Alex, which was easy to see in the movie and came across vividly in the podcast is how much he loves climbing - and how by climbing day in and day out - he was able to improve on it. Regardless of multiple reasons why he could have slowed down or even stop.

“Do the thing” is a saying which Alex said repeatedly on the podcast, and I took it to heart. I can think about it from two perspectives:

First, the grind #

In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell stated the 10,000 hour rule which says something like: the key to achieving world-class expertise in any skill, is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing the correct way, for a total of around 10,000 hours. (Quote taken from Wikipedia). Whether the number should be 10,000 hours or something else - it doesn’t really matter. There’s gradation to it. It’s the grind of practicing the thing again and again, day in and day out.

Second, the enjoyment #

Probably the main contributor to Alex’s ability to practice so much is the fact that he just likes climbing. From what I understood, even when he’s calculated about how he trains, even when there are very hard things - he enjoys most of it, even the hard parts. Combining enjoyment with the grind allows to persist with ‘doing the thing’.

My take #

Years ago, when I was training in Martial Arts the sensei tried to convince the students to attend a special training camp. He said (paraphrasing from Hebrew):

You could have 1000 reasons not to do something. But all you need is a single reason to do something.
— Alon Ratzon

My take of the podcast episode is when I try and improve on something, I should try and be consistent, and things will follow through. I should trust my instincts, my desire, my self-criticism, seek help - but eventually - just keep doing the thing.