Gradually, then suddenly.
Persistence in the face of imperceptible changes, often motivated by a sense of direction or trend or even right and wrong, is the foundation of an immensely impactful result.
These minor, recurring positive changes over a period leading a compounding effect and creates a tremendous difference for naive eyes after a while.
I will tell three personal stories about my naive persistence and its unusual, disproportionate benefits in my life. Then I will share the lessons I drew from my personal experience into my professional experience. Things everyone can learn and replicate.
The first story is about reading and its many benefits.
When I was a kid in school, I started reading newspapers, encouraged by my grandfather, who used to read ‘English’ newspapers while my parents used to read newspapers in my mother tongue ‘Odia.’
My reading habit started in the 1996/1997 period, some 25 years ago. Initially, I couldn’t understand most of the words written in the newspaper nor get any context. I had started from the sports column only and gradually covered the whole newspaper. I persisted with the reading newspaper throughout my high school, graduation, jobs and my startup. Every day I have read a newspaper for every day 25 years.
Would you be surprised if I told you that I didn't have to prepare for GMAT and scored top one percentile of the world? I do better than most of my peers in any examination where the language ‘English’ is tested. I feel very naturally confident about many topics because I have accumulated information about it over long years. I graduated to reading fiction and non-fiction, finally leading to my short story getting listed a national level finalist in a competitoin organized by Amazon India and ‘The Hindu’ newspaper.
Suddenly, one fine day you realise you are excellent at something. It had become a habit for you, but the revelation came from outside.
The next story is about a friendship and genuine connections with my batch mates and school friends. This story might resonate with many people.
I lived in the beautiful city of Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, for four years to complete my engineering graduation. I lived in our university hostel for four years along with my batch mates, seniors and juniors. The academic rigour was relatively less, and as a young adult, I was not very bothered about studies once I made it into the coveted engineering university.
I spent most of the time talking with hundreds of folks in the canteen, hostel lawn, and our hostel rooms. We played a variety of sports. We partied a lot and consciously built friendships with folks we loved or liked without any motivation of networking, access to information or people and other motivation that come up when you start bonding later in life.
I have received help and have helped numerous students (batch mates, senior or junior), made bonds, and built emotional support through communal interactions over four years.
Will it surprise you that for the next 10 years, I never stayed in a hotel when I am visiting any of the big Indian cities. It would be considered a crime if I visited a city and stayed in a hotel and not in a friend’s place. Finally, when most of my friends got married that this trend with staying with friends reduced but it still persists.
The same holds true for my school friends, the bond is even more stronger since we grew up together.
I call my friends to get internships, refer job interviews and get numerous kinds of help in usual and unusual circumstances.
The network effect of your friendship is difficult to measure when you build a friendship since you wouldn’t be aware of the same at that stage. But the time spent making human connections with perceivably no immediate returns has immense long-term returns.
Suddenly, you realise that you know people who know ‘people’.
The last story is about an exercise, or rather a sport I learned late but did well.
I learned swimming in my late twenties in a sports complex training pool with kids one-third my age. I spent a month learning the basics of breathing and freestyle strokes. When I went to the ‘real’ 50-metre pool, I could not stand on my feet and breathe like in the training pool when I was tired or gulped some water through my nostrils or something like that was terrifying. For the first week, I saw no changes in the distance I covered and minor improvement in my swimming comfort level. I could hardly cover 50 meters, swimming in the first lane, which had steel bars that I would often hold while I swam from one end to the other to complete my 50 metres.
Few folks from my training batch moved to the Olympic size pool, but they became irregular within a week. They were better than me and considered that they didn’t need to be regular now that they knew swimming.
I went in for swimming every day, and in about three months, I was swimming 900–1000 metres every day in about 35–40 mins. I watched Speedo videos, spoke with coaches and improved my speed considerably. I loved swimming and was now good at it.
Yet, there were many days when compared to previous days; I did poorly. I could see that difference in my diet and sleep impacted my ability to swim the next day. I persisted, and I optimised, and when I could, I measured my progress.
I played cricket after many years in a university stadium. I used to play decently but had not practised for three years. If there were one, I became the highest scorer and would have been the man of the match. Deep down, I knew it was due to swimming. My fitness level, rhythmic breathing sessions, and hand-eye coordination improved, leading to unexpected gains in another domain.
Lastly, this experience taught starting late is not an issue. Starting and persisting is the key.
Oh! I am far better than so many folks just because I persisted.
Yet, there have been areas in which I have been inconsistent and have not persisted, and as I introspect, I have a list of things that I would like to persist for the next decade. It is going to be a long run, but surely it would be fun.
I have a very simple message for all of you who have spent a couple of minutes reading my article. It will apply to both personal and professional environments.
- Think of a couple of things that you have always wanted to do.
- List down those things, and write the basic requirements needed to get started and continue with the things — time, resources etc.
- Add one more column, how deeply do you still aspire to do that and when you are able to do that, how would you feel? Instead, how strongly will you feel?
- Just think of what habits should I cultivate to reach the goal.
- Then forget about the goal, throw it back into the far side of your brain and focus on the habit.
One step at a time, one breath at a time and you would have walked and lived and seen the world.
The same is true about products and startups. Undivided attention to the problems of customers, necessary and positive changes overall a long period of time suddenly makes the product or startup snowball into a phenomenon. Once a crucial stage is crossed referral, branding, perception and word of mouth bring in hordes of users and buyers and everything else along with it. When it rains, it pours.
