The freedom of lowering your expectations: A guide to consistent underachievement

 

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”

- James Clear

Consistent underachievement can help us reduce perfectionism, which holds us back from starting things and makes us very hard on ourselves. If there’s something you want to do, then starting small is great, and starting small today is amazing. Consistent underachievement can help us get out of our own way and begin doing the things we’ve always wanted to do, without all the huge self-imposed expectations.

Years ago, when I first read the phrase “consistently underachieve,” I hated it. The thought of specifically setting out to do a crappy job felt like it went against every fibre of my being — I was utterly in the grasp of perfectionism back then. But it was a seed, planted in my overwhelmed and under-rested brain, and it grew and grew until I had to take notice of it.

The idea is that rather than making a massive life change, which you’ll struggle to maintain (for example, doing an hour of meditation every day), commit to a tiny change (five minutes of meditation every day) and do that consistently. Don’t focus on the achievement; focus on the consistency and build on it as it becomes part of your daily life.

For so many years, I wanted to be a person who did yoga, meditated, flossed my teeth, and walked every day. I would set myself these massive goals of giving up smoking, drinking, and eating pies, plus doing an hour of yoga and an hour of meditation every day. And flossing and walking daily, of course. All in one week! Inevitably, I failed, which would then set off a round of beating myself up for being useless, which dovetailed with my insecurity, making me very judgemental and mean about people who were doing those things. It was a terrible cycle.

My lack of self-worth meant that I couldn’t countenance making incremental improvements; it was all or nothing. Blissful yogic enlightenment was the goal, and anything less than that was pathetic. At the time, I was self-employed and working very long days, on a treadmill of external approval and self-hatred. Fun times.

But this idea of a different way of doing things inveigled its way into my life. I don’t have to do a 300-hour yoga teacher training course and then run a super successful yoga business—I can just roll out my mat for five minutes a day! I don’t have to meditate for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening—I can sit quietly with a coffee before breakfast and stare at the trees! What a revelation and a relief. I can just be interested in things and do them fairly crappily but enjoy myself—there are no points being handed out and nobody cares! Liberty!

Consistently underachieving things built trust in myself, which became self-respect, which became self-approval. This knocked me off the shitty treadmill, and slowly, over years, I lightened up on myself and consistently underachieved all the things I wanted. I built the habit, then I built ON the habit.

For those of you who have read Atomic Habits by James Clear, this probably sounds very familiar. I’ve not read the book, but it sounds like it’s a really awesome take on this idea and has systems and processes to implement in your life if you like that kind of thing (I do).

If this sounds like something you’d like to try, the great news is you need nothing to get started today. If you want to do yoga, you don’t even need a mat - just roll out a towel and search for a 5 minute beginner’s yoga class on YouTube. If you want to do meditation just sit literally anywhere and count your breaths for 2 minutes, and then do it again tomorrow. If you want to do something that requires a piece of kit you don’t have, then spend five minutes each day researching and figuring out how you can buy or borrow it. If you want to start exercising you can go for a 5 minute walk, or do arm curls with tins of beans - whatever it is, there will be the smallest thing you can do towards it. Tell yourself you can do it for five minutes and just start. And then do it again tomorrow. And the next day.

Eventually you’ll build the habit, and naturally you’ll end up spend longer doing it - but don’t push yourself too fast, and if you skip a day it’s cool. If you skip two days that’s ok, but try not to go more than that or you’ll lose momentum. You can spare five minutes, right?

And remember, self-improvement isn’t something we do because we are currently awful people, it’s honouring ourselves and the things we are interested in. We don’t have to be perfect to be amazing, we are already amazing and we can also make positive changes - both things can be true at once.

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I publish guided meditations on the awesome Insight Timer site, and a good one to consistently underachieve with is called Relaxation - Drifting. It's 9 minutes long, so you might want to work up to it if you're new to meditation. It's free to listen to, and I hope you enjoy it.