244. Beat 99% of Other People Doing This

Most people tap out when the work gets boring, not when it gets hard. That’s the opening. In this Mindset Café episode, we unpack how to outlast boredom long enough to compound results: the “bored vs. hard” distinction, the wealth equation of volume over time, crossing the boredom threshold, frictionless routines, input scoreboards, streak mechanics, batching and templates, environment design, anti-quitting contracts, the J-curve of delayed payoffs, and the identity shift that makes finishing boring reps your default. If you want outsized outcomes, master monotony and scale it.

Chapters

• 0:21 Welcome Back & Core Thesis
• 0:58 Choosing Boring Over Quitting
• 2:13 Effort, Seasons, And Human Nature
• 4:58 Identity: I Show Up
• 6:15 Boredom vs Hard: The Drop-Off
• 8:24 Plateaus, New Goals, Next Peaks
• 11:16 Skill Stacking And Getting Uncomfortable
• 15:04 Track Boredom, Expand Your Circle
• 17:24 The Anti-Quitting Contract
• 19:30 Level Up Your Circle & Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:21

So listen to this episode and welcome back to the Mindset Cafe podcast. It's your boy Devin. And this episode is going to talk about essentially how do you beat 99% of people right now, right? You can beat most people at anything if you just don't quit. When it gets boring, right? So I wanna I want to dive into this a little bit because the bar is set so low right now, and you can beat 99% of people at anything if you just don't quit. If you don't get up, give up, if you get up again after you get knocked down or an obstacle gets put in your place, and even more importantly, when it gets boring. So the the first thing is I want you to realize that I'm saying boring and not hard, right? Not giving up when it gets boring, not hard, because that's where success is made. It's by doing boring things for an extended period of time in more volume, more reps than any sane person would find reasonable, right? The world belongs to those who keep fighting after realizing winning won't be fast, it won't be easy or even guaranteed. In saying that, I have a little poster next to me. Um, and it says winning isn't for everyone, because it's not. Success isn't for everyone. And that's because most people at any sign of adversity, any sign of resistance or friction, that's when they're like, that's where I draw the line in the sand. But anything worth value is going to take effort, it is going to take time, it might take money, it might take, you know, you just showing up on the days you don't feel like it and doing the boring tasks. The tasks that it just feels like you're doing them, you know, full effort, but it's just, you know, you're trying to stay awake because it's that boring. It's no one ever told you and promised you that it was going to be fun. No one ever said this journey is going to be like going to Disneyland. This journey to your goal is going to be a walk in the park. You're going to love every day of it. No one ever said that. No one ever promised you that. And if they did, they're lying to you. Because your goal is going to take so much effort that you don't even know you're going to have to put in yet. It's going to take the effort mentally, physically, maybe even emotionally. And some of that effort is just doing the mundane, doing the boring things, but they're important things. Some things build skills, some things are progressions leading you up to that next step. You will beat most people just by outlasting that boredom because everyone sees that shiny new thing, or you know, they see the grass is always greener over on the other side. I was having a talk with my new barber. I know if you guys listened to the last episode, had a conversation with our previous barber, but new barber, and the conversation essentially was the fact of you know, I asked him how things were going, and he was like, Oh, they're a little bit slow right now, you know, but it's it's it's normal, right? And I was like, Of course, I I completely get it. There's seasons at the gym, there's seasons in business, 100%. I was like, Isn't it funny how right now you're probably wishing it was a little busier, right? And he looked at me and he said, Yeah, it'd be nice if it was a little bit busier. And I was like, But isn't it funny once it is super busy? Because there's gonna be those slam months, you know, we got Halloween coming up, we got Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's. The next couple months are gonna be slammed, I guarantee. He's like, Yeah, he gets really busy during those times. And I was like, Well, luckily I got my locked-in appointment, but I was like, Isn't it funny during those times that all of a sudden we're like, man, I just wish there was a slow day. I wish there was a day I could just breathe. And he laughed and he he's like, Yeah, honestly, I didn't really think about that. He's like, When it's busy, we want it to be slow. When it's slow, we want it to be busy, and that's the nature of us. That's the nature of humans. And so even though it's slow and it might be boring right now, you showing up with the effort, showing up with the work ethic, like we talked about in the previous episode, showing up with the attitude like we talked about in the last episode, those are the things that separate the people that achieve success and don't achieve success. Because no one told you it was going to happen tomorrow. No one said it's gonna take a year. No one said your journey is will happen after this many days. So you need to think about tomorrow, maybe it, it may not be it, but I'm going to achieve my goal, and that is undeniable. It's not a matter of if I'm gonna achieve it, it's just when I'm gonna achieve it. So I'm gonna keep showing up. Exciting, boring, happy, sad, doesn't matter. I show up. That's who I am. And if you can have that mantra and have that identity ingrained in yourself of this is who I am, I show up. If I said I'm gonna do something, I show up. If I'm going to do something, I do it 100% and I show up. I'm present when I do things. There's a difference between almost like the mental capacity or the the effort versus something that's hard and something that's boring. Sometimes boring is hard. Don't get me wrong. Hard people will will see it and they'll see the the difficulty and they'll want to achieve it. And just like you know, you're playing a new video game and you want to beat the next level, you'll keep trying because it's it's hard. But the moment that hard turns to boring, that's where people are like, you know what? I've tried this too many times, I'm bored of trying trying. I keep having to do the same part, you know, I have to keep you know prepping my meals. It's like this is getting boring. I hate, you know, I I'm getting bored of going to the gym every single day. It's like why those are the things that you know you need to do to achieve what you want to achieve. No one said you're gonna have fun doing it. Do you want to achieve it or not? I mean, that's a question you have to ask yourself. But think about this. If you've always been that person that had a goal, did it until it got boring, or until until you felt bored with it, and you're like, oh, look, you know, there's a new thing. Let's try that. And then you go, you go, you go, all of a sudden it gets boring, and you're like, oh, I need to find something new. This is boring now. Switch. How far do you get on each of those things? Probably not very far. You have to stick with it long enough to actually allow the skills, the talent, the whatever it may be to rise to you, or you for you to rise to it, essentially. It compounds. And again, that compounding doesn't happen evenly. It doesn't happen every single day. It happens collectively over days, weeks, months, years. But no one told you this was going to be fun. If you're in it for fun, it's not gonna last very long. Fun fades. Excitement fades. Think about when you, you know, when you first started dating, you know, or you know, when you first got married, you were all excited, you know, to tell everyone this is my new boyfriend, this is my new girlfriend, right? You know, I'm in a relationship now. You just got engaged. You're all excited to show off the ring or you know, tell everyone I have a fiance, or we just got engaged. But then that slowly fades. And then all of a sudden you get married and you're like, oh wow, you know, this is my wife, and you know, all of a sudden there's that new excitement. But again, that aspect fades. There's like a honeymoon phase to essentially everything that we do in life. And if all of a sudden the honeymoon phase ends, and you're like, there's now I need to switch things because I need to get that those that that endorphin rush, that you know, all of a sudden that excitement again. This is boring. How far are you gonna get on anything? Think about if that's how you treated your relationships. The honeymoon phase ends, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, new relationship. That's how you have to treat your your goals. Your goals are a relationship. What you put in is what you get out. What you put in is what you get out. And just because you're putting in 100% of effort doesn't mean that it's gonna happen at the same speed as someone else. You have to think it's volume over time. Your volume and my volume might be different, and that's okay. No one said it's one path, follow this path, everyone wins on this path. It's you start here, I start here, and we figure it out. You might go right, I might go left. I might have to come back left, and you might have to go right. You figure it out as you go, you adjust as you go, but you show up regardless. There is a almost a boredom like threshold that sinks in, and I think it is around that honeymoon phase, or maybe a little bit after, when all of a sudden something new comes around, and it may not even be the excitement, to be honest. It might be all of a sudden you feel like you hit a plateau. Whether it's working out, whether it's um at your job, whether it's you know at a skill that you've been trying, you feel like you hit a wall, and all of a sudden you start to get bored because you can't get around that wall, you can't get around that hurdle. That's where you find the new path around the hurdle to continue on the path to achieving what you want to achieve. It's not finding a new path to go find and do something else, it's find the way around the obstacle so you can keep going forward. You have to realize that like when you're when you start to get bored, maybe it's because you've already achieved everything you can achieve at that one level, at the one spot that you've you know, like you hit your goal, and you haven't set a new goal yet. Because that can happen too. You can get bored by not setting new goals. And you know, people tell me all the time with business, they're like, you know, when are you gonna stop? Like, what what is your goal? Well, this is my next goal, but then there's gonna be a goal after that, and a goal after that, and a goal after that. Because the once you reach the the the peak of the mountain, you have to look for the next peak. It doesn't stop once you get there, you can always achieve more. Remember the mantra that we've talked about multiple times. Your goal is to get one percent better every day. That's not every day until you reach X, that's every single day of your life. Your goal is to get one percent better in an area of your life. If that's the case, that statement is infinite. Life in your life, you're looking at things on an infinite scale, not a finite scale. So make sure that when you do hit friction or you do hit boredom, that it's like, okay, well, am I hitting a plateau? Is it, you know, do I need to try to see what else I can do achieve? Like, for example, let's say you I don't know, play the guitar. You learned your favorite couple songs, you learned chords, you learned how to, you know, do a little solo. Cool. Have you learned you know how to the slide technique? Have you learned how to finger pick? Have you learned how to, you know, do these other skills that are within the skill to make you a better guitarist? Let's say you're a personal trainer, you're getting bored of personal training, which one, I don't see how you could. Like, if that's you got to realize what your reason why was for even starting becoming a personal trainer, but let's say you get bored of becoming a personal trainer, right? Is it are you bored of being a personal trainer or are you bored of the workouts that you can design because you haven't found that next level? If you only do Olympic style, you know, lifts, like traditional bodybuilding lifts, like maybe study some kettlebells. It's a whole set of movement patterns out there that you don't even know about. You master that, you're a kettlebell expert, right? And bodybuilding expert. Cool. What about powerlifting? What about slam balls, medicine ball workouts, stability workouts? What about there's a whole there's always something else that can be learned that can elevate you on your path to that next peak. But you have to have the willingness to learn, you have to have the willingness to get uncomfortable. I'm sure you've heard the phrase get comfortable being uncomfortable, because that uncomfortable stage is where growth is happening. It's hard, good. That means you're growing. So if I want you to almost take a take a note of what are you doing in your life that's that's achieved on the path to achieve your goal that you are feeling bored in, right? Take a note throughout the day. All of a sudden you get bored, take a little mental note, or take a note in your phone. You know, this is starting to get boring. What else? Then you can start to brainstorm or use chat GBT, uh, chat GBT and be like, hey, how can I get better at this? What's the next level to this? I'm starting to get bored playing the guitar. This is what I know. How do I level up from there? It's it's that simple. But you need to take the steps to actually do it and actually get better. Check off, create a you know, get a calendar and check off all the days that you pushed yourself a little bit further than your norm. Create like a boredom streak calendar. Every time you felt bored, you pushed a little bit further. You try to do something new, take yourself out of your comfort zone, give your little self a little star in your calendar if that's what you need to do. But if you're if you can't seem to get over your boredness, or you feel like you plateaued, maybe it is your circle a little bit. Is everyone that you hang out with on a daily basis complacent? You don't need to you know leave the circle, but maybe expand your circle, you know, get outside your comfort zone and go meet some new people that are on the path that you're trying to get to. For example, even here at Strive 11, you know, there's the regular workouts, but then twice a year we have the elite challenges. Right? And with those, there's extra workouts, there's extra things that come with it, but that takes someone that is getting comfortable outside their comfort comfort zone. You weren't tracking your macros before, guess what? Now you are. You weren't meal prepping before, now you are. You weren't weighing in all the time, checking those kind of things and looking at your body composition, now we are. So it's up to you to actually take those steps, but with yourself, almost create like an anti-quitting contract. I will not quit ever. Right? I will not quit until I'm able to do X. Once I do X, then I you know I can let myself off the hook if I still don't like it. This is almost like a rule that my parents had. I was I'm the firstborn, I got three boys, and I've told other people on podcasts that they asked, you know, how growing up was and how I was being the oldest, and and how I got into personal training and everything, and I tie it all back to essentially playing sports. Um, and what I mean by that is, and how I'm tying this back to not quitting was my parents instilled something into me as a young kid that I was pretty much their their test dummy on all the sports. You know, I did fencing, I did tennis, I did, you know, you name it. And I didn't like all of them. But once I signed up for the season, I could not quit. I had to show up, I had to go to practice, I had to do the tournaments or whatever the case may be. And at the end of the season, if I didn't want to do next season, that was fine. But I had to finish. There was no quitting mid-season, quitting after one practice. There was none of that. So create an anti-quitting contract with yourself until you finish that season. If you're still not feeling it after that season, okay, maybe it's time to adjust your path. But just because you're bored right now doesn't mean that you get to quit. Set the end goal, achieve the end goal. Don't quit until you hit that end goal. Find the adjustments, find the resources that you need to to achieve the goal. And if you're still unhappy after you hit your first goal, okay, let's set a different goal. Let's change trajectory. So hopefully, with this, you guys are repositioning your boredom, your complacency, your you know, feeling like you're in a rut. And look for that next thing. Look for the thing you can add to whatever you're doing, whatever your goal is, and maybe set that new goal. But more importantly, find a friend who's stuck and send them this episode. Because just like we were talking about, maybe it's your circle. Well, if you can help your circle level up and get out of their complacency, get out of their rut, and they start leveling up, in turn, you're gonna be in a circle with people that are trying to level up, and you're gonna end up leveling up too. Because if you're around five millionaires, you're gonna be the sixth. It's how the world works. So help your friends level up, send them, send them this episode, send them whatever your favorite episode was, and help them level up as well. But I appreciate you guys, I love you guys, and if you guys ever need anything, send me a DM on the Mindset Cafe podcast on Instagram, or you can send one to my Instagram. I'm always here, happy to help any way I can, guys. See you guys on the next one.