Nir Eyal

If I looked into the future,

And I said, look, I have traveled into the future and I know for a fact that if you fail five more times, the sixth time you're gonna succeed.

You're looking for love.

If you go on five more dates, the sixth one you're gonna find the love of your life.

If you're making those sales calls for your business, you're gonna get no's five times, the sixth time you're gonna get a yes, you're gonna close that big deal.

What does that do to your ability to want to fail?

You're gonna say, yeah, great, let's fail faster, that's great.

So if you are failing but learning, persist, keep going.

And then the third criteria is does persistence make a difference?

There are many goals where persistence doesn't make a difference.

You have a goal to be happy at work, but your workplace culture is awful.

It's full of toxic people.

You are not going to outlast those people at work.

And so persistence may not make a difference.

Whereas with writing a book, it feels like you're just...

slogging away at the research and I don't know how this is gonna come together and how do I make this point?

And is this really saying what I think it says?

But if you persist and keep going and keep going, you're gonna get through that plateau.

Certainly with exercise, right?

When I used to be clinically obese and for years sometimes I wouldn't be making any progress at all on my weight loss goals.