Over-do and over-measure, then don't

In college, a friend of mine entered a body building contest.

He went from having an average body to Greek god in six months.

It was remarkable to watch him prepare.

He started with a bulk where he ate a huge surplus of calories every day and worked out daily, sometimes multiple times per day.

Then, as the contest approached, he entered a cut where he had a calorie deficit.

Throughout it all, he meticulously counted every calorie and every rep of every weight lifted.

Now, over a decade later, he maintains a six-pack but hasn’t counted a single calorie since.

How?

A pattern I’ve noticed over and over with many people who have achieved mastery of something or developed a healthy habit is that at the beginning of their journey they overdid and over-measured the thing for a short period of time and later were able to back off into a more sustainable habit.

But - and here is the key - that early phase of overdoing it gives you above average results for the rest of your life.

And the over-measuring gives you an intuitive sense of what you should be doing. In my friend’s case, how much he should be eating and how much he should be lifting.

I’m going to call this the over-do and over-measure principle. The Double O Principle for short.

Another example is from my own life. From the time I was about 15 to 25, I meticulously budgeted and tracked every penny I earned and spent.

I spent hours every single month tracking where every dollar went and how I could optimize my cashflow.

As my income rose, I realized how silly it was to be this particular. I started rounding things to the nearest dollar, then the nearest ten dollars, then the nearest hundred dollars.

And now, I could not do this exercise at all and I’d be fine. From doing this exercise for years, I have developed an intuitive sense for my budget, income, and savings. Now, I spend less than 30 minutes a month thinking about money.

By overmeasuring and overdoing it in the early part of my career, I was able to build this valuable habit and skill.

I’ve also seen this principle applied to language learning, coding, running, flying airplanes, and other skills/habits that I can’t think of right now.

The basic pattern of the Double O Principle is this:

1. Pick a habit or skill to master or goal to achieve
2. Train for it in an unsustainably obsessive way for a short period of time (~3-6 months, more or less depending on the skill in question)
3. Track your progressive meticulously
4. Once you’ve achieved your initial goal or reached a point of competence in the skill, back the training and tracking routine off to something sustainable that takes minimal time and effort to continue

So what do you want to get good at or what habit do you want to build?

Overdo it, over-measure, then don’t.