The Plateau of Latent Potential
How To Use it To Skyrocket Your Results

I'd assume you're an ambitious young man, I mean if you weren't you wouldn't be reading this right now, you would be playing video games, probably trading with a villager or slaying a dragon or something.

And by definition, ambitious means 'wanting better/wanting success'.

So you want progress, great.

Where most get discouraged though is here,

Imagine this scenario,

You're disciplined, you're working hard everyday, you're eating clean (sometimes), you're fixing your sleep, you're reading, you're doing all of the good stuff,

But you just don't see progress. What do you do?

This is where most people get stuck, they're like,

'Okay, I'm working hard, I'm doing the right things, where is my reward?'

Naturally you'd want a reward for your hard work and you just don't seem to get it, what's wrong?

I know what's wrong as I went through it, and now I never get down when I don't see results.

This is how I did it;

The Plateau of Latent Potential

This is the image that explains why success takes time,

First and foremost you need to make sure you're doing the right things,

Sorted?

Alright, let's move on.

Next up, the graph,

This is the plateau of latent potential, I first saw it in the book Atomic Habits and it has changed my viewpoint when it comes to being impatient with desired results.

This graph explains why we have delayed results.

We expect results to be constant, always flowing, you do one thing right and you get rewarded straight away, that would be nice, but we live in real life with a different set of rules.

Results/progress, call it what you want doesn't come linearly (straight line), it comes in a curve, I like to call it a 'BOOM'.

The Valley of Disappointment

Expectation vs Reality, (where most people are left disappointed).

This is the area in which your desired results and the results you're getting don't match, people quit because of this.

They say, 'This is useless, I deserve more, I'm working way too hard to only get this'

Stay strong, you'll get out of there, it just takes time.

The problem is that (almost) nobody has patience nowadays

Why Not Linearly?

That's a great question, and I get you, it only makes sense for progress to be a straight diagonal line upwards.

But..

This is why habits don’t show results immediately,

Life is like an exam, it is constantly testing us, if we get rewarded for every single small action we do right after we do it we'll be motivated to do more and consistency wouldn't be a problem because we'd have that immediate reward to look forward to.

Life is set up in a way that we are not rewarded immediately for the good things we do (that's why we call it delayed gratification), there is a delay, it is a 'loading time' between what we do and the reward to get for it

(It's kinda like that image of the 2 miners and the one that quits right before hitting the gold, a lot, and I mean, a lot of people quit at the same point as that miner.

The work with no reward is too much for them that the just throw everything in the trash, but you, stay strong and understand that eventually your work will be rewarded, but it may take a long time).

Life has that delay before we get rewarded so it filters all of the weak people who give up before getting rewarded.

That's where most people stop.

So after a certain point only strong minded people will remain because it will have gone so far that a lot of the people who started would have stopped, and then, only some of the strong-minded will achieve their goals.

Just think about it,

You're nothing special if you keep working when things are going well, everyone does that,

But not many people keep working when things aren't going well i.e; getting no results,

You just have to know that you're taking the right actions and stay strong enough for long enough that you eventually reap the rewards.

If you do the right things for a long enough period of time life will reward you.

Life tests us to see if we're strong and deserving enough for the reward we desire, it kills our spirit by delaying the arrival date of the reward, but if we stay persistent (which most people don't) we'll eventually be rewarded

Stay persistent, keep putting in consistent effort, prove to life that you deserve the reward and you will get it,

Psssst,

I'm gonna tell you a secret,

It usually takes 2 months to get rewarded for the actions you take today,

That's the golden amount of time I found that it takes.

It's literally working for your future self, cause he'll experience all of the benefits of your work.

So do him a favor, and make his life easier than it is right now for you.

The Overnight Success Myth

This is why progress feels slow before a breakthrough;

The 'overnight success' is a myth, It doesn't exist,

Success doesn't happen overnight,

It's an illusion that results come instantly,

It looks like it came overnight because of the build-up, 

No-one sees the build-up, just you,

Doing sooo much and not seeing results,

Then the BOOM, that boom is what makes it look like it came immediately,

It happens all at once,

Think about it,

People only see the results and the success you have, but they don't see the months and years it took you to get it.

Just keep working, hoping and believing that your time will come.

It will eventually.

The Compound Effect

All the progress comes at once because it is what we call The Compound Effect,

The Compound Effect is basically when things start off small in the beginning then explode (the boom) as they get bigger,

Compounding isn't linear, meaning it's not a straight line,

Think of a snowball, it will start small, but as it rolls down the mountain it will gain speed and size quickly,

And it's the same with your progress towards your goals,

Imagine, all your hard work is waiting and loading to finally show, then one fine day, it does,

Just as the snowball takes out an innocent kid at the bottom of the mountain,

It's exponential growth, it's the compound effect,

Your results come out all at once leaving you feeling happy that your hard work was worth it after all.