Breaking Through Plateaus in Self-Improvement |
The goal of this post is simple: to practically change how you think about and respond to performance plateaus. Many people probably feel like they already know everything they want to about plateaus. After all, plateaus are everywhere and encountered by nearly everyone. There are weight loss plateaus, for example.1-2 Fitness, strength, and athletic plateaus. 3 And, more broadly, plateaus in every endeavor in which people seek to keep improving (e.g., learning, building a business, advancing a skill).4
Like the mythical troll under the bridge, plateaus seem to take mischievous delight in stealing our progress, draining our motivation, and leaving us feeling stuck and frustrated.
Responding to plateaus is about strategy, not brute force. It turns out that not all plateaus are the same. They have distinct causes and require specific responses to navigate. Just as a master carpenter must become dexterous in their use of different crafting tools, mastering performance plateaus entails the skillful use of different behavioral strategies.
Here are the three most common causes of performance plateaus and how to most productively respond to each.
Type 1 plateau
What is it? A type 1 plateau occurs when our current behaviors are no longer sufficient to stimulate additional progress. For example, a type 1 plateau is often the cause when a diet stops producing weight loss, a training program stops producing strength gains, or a practice routine stops producing improvements in learning a foreign language or playing a musical instrument..
What to do? Think like a martial artist in training. In martial arts, the methods taking you from a beginner-level white belt to a junior-level yellow belt must evolve for you to reach higher belt levels. You can't just keep doing the same things. Type 1 plateaus require us to modify our current