I’ve always been a golfer. I started as a young tike and would join my dad on his rounds.
He made a rule that I could hit my ball but only if I hit before he got to it.
Each time we went out it became a game. I ran, ran, ran to my ball. Hit it, ran ran ran to my ball.
Over time, I developed a love for the game.
During my summers in college, that turned into playing 4-5 times per week and walking 18 holes after working for 8 hours at my summer job.
As I got into the real world, it wasn’t feasible to continue. As I played less, my interest waned. Some of it was having other things to do, but another part of it was not being as good.
It’s unrealistic to maintain your skill level when you only play once a week versus 4-5, and I knew this. But despite the knowledge, it was still discouraging.
Because of a lack of attention, my skills stagnated. I wasn’t focused on improving or playing, so naturally, I got a little worse and a little worse.
You don’t notice it at first. At first, you just think you played a bad round. Then you think your swing is off. Then it seems not all the components are lining up.
But after a year or two of being worse, you have to realize you are worse.
In the same way that my golf skills stagnated and then declined, the same thing can happen personally and professionally.
I’m not going to walk you through this in this newsletter, because I wrote 2 pieces of content on this that will do that for you.
First, I wrote a thread on 10 signs that show you’re stagnating. You can read it here.
Those signs are:
- You’re afraid
- You’re bored
- You’re distracted
- You seek comfort
- You procrastinate
- You’re burned out
- You’re overloaded
- Conflict with your boss
- Haven’t learned anything new
- No accomplishments in > 6 months
In my latest podcast, I talked about 8 strategies to stave off the stagnation. You can listen here.
I’d love to know what you think, so give it a listen and reply to this email with your takeaways.
I hope that this content and the other content like it is helpful. I write about this stuff because these frameworks help me self-assess and the goal is they do the same for you.