Sustainable Progress Feels Mundane

With the right systems in place, progress will feel mundane. It is important to learn to be okay with that feeling.

There is a scene in the show Rick and Morty, found in the infamous Pickle Rick episode, in which a therapist unpacks the reasons Rick changes himself into a pickle. One of the major takeaways is that Rick would rather turn himself into a pickle than do the work of repairing and maintaining the relationships with his family. She explains that the thing about repairing, maintaining, and cleaning is that it’s not an adventure, it’s just work, and some people are okay with waking up every day and doing work, and some people are not. At this point in the series, Rick is the latter.

This mindset isn’t limited to Rick. Many, if not all of us, are missing that innate contentment with the humdrum of the daily grind. And this discontent extends into every facet of our lives: from work, to entertainment, to hobbies, and everything else. Psychologists sometimes call this novelty-seeking behavior. We crave, and even require, new and exciting things to keep us feeling alive. The problem is that this mindset will sabotage the things that you want to genuinely build in your life.

Consider the amateur movie-maker who bought a great camera and a collection of lenses and is eager to get shooting, but then procrastinates on the work of creating a production schedule, drafting a script, and hiring actors. Or consider the gardener who built multiple raised beds with specially selected soil, formulated for the exact plants selected, who then dreads waking up each morning to water them before the afternoon sun cooks them to a crisp.

The problem these people have is that if either one of them stops at the drudgery of preparing to shoot a movie or watering the plants each and every day, nothing will ever be produced. Their knowledge may prove useful one day, and they may have even really enjoyed the process of learning and setting up their new hobby. But they will never have anything to show, really show, for all of their hard work. No movie. No vegetables or fruit.

Looking at these two examples, though, the opposite can also be true. By persisting in the boring parts, these people are nearly guaranteed to produce something. It may not be amazing, and it may fail before it is finished, but there will be something to show for their work that goes beyond spending all the time and money to learn and prepare for it.

The importance of investing the time and pushing through the mundane applies to anything on which we want to make progress. A sign of a sustainable system is that keeping it going is kind of boring. The system will be filled with incremental, boring, repetitive, or time-consuming tasks that are easy enough to accomplish but fail to inspire or really motivate. It may even create a small sense of anticipatory dread as the mundane task creeps up the todo list.

But these are the tasks that can build empires.

Of course, it is important to develop a system that will help you reach your goals in the first place. And building the tolerance to and persevering through the boring is hard. Most of us need a structure, and often another person, to help us design the system we need and to keep showing up for the boring parts. A good life coach can help you identify and clarify your goals and construct a system in your life to help you achieve them, while also keeping you accountable to your goals and the mundane tasks you must accomplish to achieve them.