James Barry

Everybody has those days where things are just… hard. Life is harder than usual.

Maybe you’re overwhelmed. Perhaps you’re not sleeping. Life may have just knocked you down one too many times.

This is where the bare minimum comes in. Doing the absolute smallest amount required, so you can rest and get back to normal.

You need to know what your bare minimum is first though.

If you’re a student with no responsibilities, the minimum amount you need to do is usually zero. Everything can wait.

If you’re a parent or a boss, the minimum amount is much higher. You’re responsible for kids, employees, etc. Nothing can wait.

Occasionally, I love doing the bare minimum, because doing something is better than doing nothing at all.

If you ask 10 Americans if they’ve gambled in the past year, 6 of them will say yes.

Gambling is a vice of choice for many, and for good reason. It’s designed to be addictive.

This is in part due to a concept discovered by B.F. Skinner known as a variable schedule of rewards or “variable ratio scheduling”. Skinner conducted tests in the 1950s that concluded: If you build a system which produces a positive result after a random number of responses, you condition the user to respond at a rapid and steady rate.

Skinner learned this by running tests on rats. They were kept in a cage with a lever which delivered food when pressed. When the food was provided at random intervals, the rats would press the lever madly until a reward was received.

Slot machines in casinos replicate this experiment. Gamblers sit in front of the machines for hours, feeding in coins and repeatedly pulling the lever. Slots came way before Skinner’s breakthrough. He made his discovery in 1950s, while the first slot machines had already been invented in 1891.

In gambling, you give up money in exchange for a chance at winning more money. The gamblers behavior follows this equation:

• Money * Random Chance = Random Amount of Money

For the rats, they gave up their time to pull the lever in exchange for a chance at receiving food. The rats behavior follows this equation:

• Lever Pull * Random Chance = Food (Sometimes)

The two above behavior systems mirror a similar behavior most of us engage in daily: Looking at our phones.

We give up our time, attention, and focus in exchange for a chance to get a small hit of dopamine. The dopamine may come from checking email, scrolling social media, or playing a game. Most of our daily behavior follows the below equation:

• Check Phone App * Random Chance = Dopamine (sometimes)

In all of the variable reward systems above, you can increase the response rate in two ways:

1. Lowering the amount of friction required to respond
2. Reducing the # of responses required before getting a positive result

This makes our phone the strongest variable reward systems in existence. We always have it with us. Checking our notifications is as simple as looking at the screen, and the developers of the apps control how often we get positive results. (Which they optimize to make us spend more time on their apps).

For me, I’ve fallen into this trap more times than I would like to admit.

I’ve done it in the past with social media and I do it daily by checking my work email.

If an outcome of any daily habit is random, be wary of it. It can be just as addicting as playing slots.

When I originally started writing on this blog I had one goal: Publish 52 articles in one year.

Good News: I’m still on track to hit that goal

Bad News: This blog officially has no theme. This is ok though, it’s a personal blog after all.

When I committed to writing 52 articles at the beginning of this year, I did it for one reason: To prove to myself that I could stick with a project.

For most of my adult life I had bounced around from idea to idea, never gaining much traction. These ranged from different jobs, new ventures, the next hobby, and everything else in-between. I even managed to sneak in a road-trip across the U.S. in there (would highly recommend if you ever get the chance).

The one thing I had felt I was missing during this time-period though was consistent progress towards a goal.

To tackle this nagging feeling, I created this blog. What I have learned along the way is that the progress you can make when you set yourself to a clear schedule is amazing.

Where I Fell Short

I failed to pick a concise topic. Which is fine because, again, this is just a personal blog.

When I originally started writing though, I had grand plans for be something more.

It all started when I read the book: Atomic Habits. It’s a great read that can be summed up in one lesson: You’ll accomplish great things if you just focus on making 1% improvements every day.

The book itself started out as a self-improvement blog. After reading through many of the different articles I immediately wanted to do the same thing. (I know, not very original.) This led me to pick the most obvious topic: Self-Improvement.

Turns out there were only so many articles on self-improvement that I wanted to write about.

While I could have spent more time reading and researching new topics, my heart just wasn’t in it. I still love the topic of self-improvement, but just not enough to learn about it week in and week out.

Luckily for me (and maybe for you?), I didn’t set the goal of creating a self-help blog with 52 articles. I set a goal of publishing 52-articles about whatever topic I wanted to write about.

This has taught me one thing about goal setting. Goals should be concrete enough to keep you committed, but flexible enough to keep you growing. Pursuing a goal because you said you would is great, but only if there’s a greater purpose to the goal.

What it has helped me learn

This blog has taught me one thing: Consistency is so incredibly, freaking powerful.

Doing something on a set schedule (that you control) is both one of the easiest, and one of the hardest, things to do in the world. 

For a few of my articles, I was able to write them in under a few hours (such as this one). For others, the process would drag on and I’d find myself putting the finishing touches on them at 1:30 at night.

With each article published, I moved one step closer to my goal.

The biggest thing I gained though, was the confidence that I could accomplish audacious goals

Any goal can be within your grasp. You just need to chip away at it a little bit each day (or each week). During this journey, two major quotes resonated with me.

Most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years.

– Bill Gates

Rome wasn’t build in a day, but they were laying bricks every hour.

You don’t have to do it all today. Just lay a brick.

– James Clear

The biggest difference for me was seeing firsthand with my eyes what I can do with consistency. Every time I look at the number of articles I have published, it is a point of pride.

Where will we be going from here?

To the Moon! 🚀💎👐 (Just kidding, however this pop culture reference will now be a permanent part of this blog).

I decided to tackle one of the most audacious goals I could: Learning to code.

There are so, so many reasons that I did not take this leap earlier in life. The three biggest ones are:

1. It’s incredibly hard to learn
2. The time commitment is mind-bogglingly large
3. I thought I could get by in life without learning it.

The thing I’ve realized in recent months though, is that technology is going to continue to progress forward. Being able to understand and interact with it will continue to become more important than ever.

As I start on this new adventure, I know I’m taking another turn in life and my focus. Maybe in 3-months I’ll have moved onto something new. Honestly though, I hope not.