The Plateau of Latent Potential

How many of you have quit habits because you saw no progress? It might be learning a new programming language, going to the gym, or just a hobby. We begin with so much excitement, ready to revamp yourself into something new, something extraordinary. It goes to plan for a few days or a week, and then progress slowly stops being visible. It’s as if you’re making no progress at all, and that phase, that point in time, is what I would call the tipping point – that is the point from which few people persist and most people don’t. This phenomenon is described by Author James Clear in his bestselling book Atomic Habits as the Plateau of Latent Potential. Let me make it simple for you. When you start learning something, or start a habit, you are most likely to see progress in the first few days because you are going from a state of no knowledge or practice to daily gain of knowledge or daily practice which is why you are able to see progress. After a few days, you are merely repeating or building on, so you start to see less and less progress. Many people misinterpret this as their inability to improve, but what you’re going through is the Valley of Disappointment. Let’s take a graph. Normally, we assume when we start a habit, the benefit grows in a linear manner, but the reality is progress is exponential (type 2^x graph on google to see what it looks like). It starts slow, and gains momentum later on. The moment you cross the valley of disappointment, you will visibly see a lot of progress but we quit before we pass that point, which is why we have useless party tricks rather than beneficial life skills. Let me give you a final example. When you melt ice, do you expect it to melt when you’ve heated it from -7C to -1C? You’ve clearly put in efforts, but the progress is not visible until you heat to 0C, the melting point of ice. After that point, it’s all turning to liquid fast. So, keep persisting and you will see progress.

Patience is a virtue; perseverance is a necessity.