Power of Habits

Last year, when I first joined my new high school, I met a very hardworking friend. He was sad about his progress despite being a very strong worker, but his consistent effort eventually brought him good results. With this small anecdote, I want to introduce you to something new called the Plateau of Latent Potential.

This concept is originally described in Atomic Habits by James Clear, which talks about the work done at a particular time in relation to its progress or results. For instance, imagine we have ice cubes in a cup. If exposed to twenty degrees, it remains the same, but if we slowly increase the temperature to twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, and twenty-four degrees, the cube is still in the cup and unchanged. But when it reaches twenty-five degrees, it starts melting. In the same manner, some careers or daily work we do can seem to make no difference, leading to discouragement in continuing. But just like a small shift in temperature, seemingly having no difference, can unlock a huge change, there should be no discouragement when doing any job because in learning or making habits, we may come across a critical threshold that must be crossed in order to seize the big change.

All the big things are the result of our small beginnings. The seed of every habit that we have today is the effect of a single, tiny decision that started many days earlier. Additionally, progress is determined only if the decision we made is repeated and we stick with the long habit enough to survive the Plateau of Latent Potential and break through it.

In conclusion, we often expect progress to be linear, or at least come quickly. In reality, the results of our efforts are often delayed. It is not until months or years later that we realize the true value of the previous work we have done. This can result in a “valley of disappointment” where people feel discouraged after putting in weeks or months of hard work without experiencing any results. However, this work was not wasted; it was simply being stored. It is not until much later that the full value of the previous efforts is revealed.