{"id":4480,"date":"2020-11-04T15:08:57","date_gmt":"2020-11-04T15:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloomsoup.com\/?p=4480"},"modified":"2021-09-19T15:24:08","modified_gmt":"2021-09-19T15:24:08","slug":"process-over-outcome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloomsoup.com\/process-over-outcome\/","title":{"rendered":"Process Over Outcome: Optimising for Effortless Results"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s your running pace per mile?&#8221;, asked my friend. I looked blank. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;How far do you normally run?&#8221; I shrugged my shoulders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Are you even training for anything?!&#8221; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;d recently started exercising again and my mate wanted to know about specific running results. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Much to his chagrin, I didn&#8217;t have any to show. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But unbeknown to him, I was using a process over outcome attitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Childhood motivation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>When I was younger, I played lots of sport, including everything from badminton and cricket to football and tennis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I loved it all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My parents often spent their evenings and weekends ferrying me from one training to another, not to mention long summers playing one tennis tournament after another. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then I went to university and started drinking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Slowly the sport fell away, replaced by late nights and morning hangovers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not exactly conducive to running around a tennis court. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After University I spent significant time travelling and working abroad, which didn&#8217;t lend itself to regular exercise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Soon, however, I knew I was missing something important in life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I felt unhealthy, overweight and psychologically blocked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I regularly experienced episodes of anxiety and overwhelm, for which I turned to meditation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, I felt I also needed a physical release; to return to a more basic, primal and overall, playful mode of being. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It wasn&#8217;t because I wanted to sculpt a beach body or collect social media likes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact, external results didn&#8217;t factor in at all\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Results<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Why do you do what you do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If it&#8217;s like most people, it&#8217;s because you desire a particular result. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>In a career, that might be money and prestige<\/li><li>If you&#8217;re creative, it might be becoming a famous artist<\/li><li>If you&#8217;re into fitness, it might be about Instagram selfies and impressing the opposite sex<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>What start as genuine childhood passions soon become outcome-orientated as society emphasises the importance of external rewards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This sets us up for constant disappointment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Instead of focusing on an activity for its own sake, from a place of joy, we&#8217;re obsessed with outside validation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When things don&#8217;t go our way, we become despondent and quit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After being sold the myth of overnight success, we&#8217;re unwilling to put in the work and patience to improve our efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you really want to make progress, I believe it&#8217;s better to ignore these external results and adopt a process over outcome orientation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are two vital components for this to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Process over outcome<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Intrinsic motivation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;ve just said that society tries to motivate us through extrinsic rewards, making us act for the wrong reasons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To focus on the process we must replace these benefits with more powerful incentives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Adults, like children, should return to a more playful state, engaging in activities for pure enjoyment and inner satisfaction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There&#8217;s immense pleasure to be derived from improving your abilities, even in the absence of external plaudits or praise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For me, restarting running was never about physical appearance, but rather a deeper sense of fulfilment and lightness of being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Ignore results<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>When I restarted exercise, I knew it would take time to regain fitness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While most people run out (pun intended) and buy a smartwatch and the latest gear, I didn&#8217;t do any of that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My only goal was to run every day. It didn&#8217;t matter how far or long. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact, I didn&#8217;t want to know, deliberately ignoring the data. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As soon as I saw these results, I knew I&#8217;d become obsessed with the metrics, and that <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Goodhart%27s_law\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Goodhart&#8217;s Law<\/a> would prevail. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Instead of acting for intrinsic reasons, my behaviour would be results-driven; a man-made abstraction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Shielding yourself in this way is especially important after starting something new, when you&#8217;ll invariably be in comparison mode, self-conscious of your performance and highly sensitive to negative feedback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Enjoyment over ability<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong, <a href=\"https:\/\/bloomsoup.com\/quantified-self\/\">collecting data can aid performance<\/a>, especially when approached from an experimental or curiosity angle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But it&#8217;s a delicate balance and I feel it&#8217;s often prudent to ignore the results and focus on the feeling instead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just by using the two methods above, internalising a process over outcome mentality, you can go far. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It wasn&#8217;t until I&#8217;d been exercising consistently for over a year that I finally invested in a running watch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And even now, I remain careful with the data I consume to ensure I don&#8217;t become excessively performance-driven. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I mean, does it really matter that you aren&#8217;t the best as long as you love the activity? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Surely we should be optimising for enjoyment above all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At least that&#8217;s how I view my running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A couple of years after those initial questions, I can&#8217;t imagine quitting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve done enough repetitions that, regardless of my running ability, it&#8217;s an <a href=\"https:\/\/bloomsoup.com\/best-habits-to-adopt\/\">identity-driven habit<\/a> which pays for itself many times over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Invest in systems, not results<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Everyone wants to set outcome orientated objectives\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Make a million dollars<\/li><li>Buy a mansion<\/li><li>Become a best selling author<\/li><li>Blah blah blah<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Instead, ignore these proxies for happiness and go smaller. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Focus on what you can do actually do today to create immediate enjoyment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These <a href=\"https:\/\/bloomsoup.com\/goals\/\">process related goals<\/a> are much more manageable and while outcome orientated folk are quitting preemptively, you&#8217;ll have the patience to persist indefinitely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you spend the majority of your days engaged in this fulfilling pursuit, you&#8217;ll not only start to enjoy the system, but experience natural improvement, hitting your goals as a byproduct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s your running pace per mile?&#8221;, asked my friend. I looked blank. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;How far do you normally run?&#8221; I shrugged my shoulders. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Are you even training for anything?!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d recently started exercising again and my mate wanted to know about specific running results. <\/p>\n<p>Much to his chagrin, I didn&#8217;t have any to show&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4482,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Process Over Outcome: Optimising for Effortless Results | Bloomsoup<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Want to make sustainable progress? I believe it&#039;s better to ignore external results and adopt a process over outcome attitude. 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