When you look at the top performers in every domain, all of them share one thing in common. They live their lives at the edge — at the edge of discomfort.
All growth comes from this edge. It’s a thin line between success and failing.
This is especially apparent in the weight room.
I’ve been lifting weights on and off ever since I was 14 years old. What I’ve learned is that your muscles do not grow if they are comfortable.
If you can lift weight 10 times comfortably, you may be able to maintain your muscles, but they won’t grow.
The reason why?
There is no tension. No discomfort. No need for them to grow.
In comparison, let’s say you lift a weight 6 times comfortably, but the 7th and 8th repetitions are very uncomfortable.
Then, let’s say you find the 9th repetition extremely difficult, as it takes you three times as long to lift the weight.
Your muscles burn like crazy. Sweat drips down your forehead. Your body trembles to keep that weight moving ever so slowly, and then you finally do it successfully.
And then on the 10th repetition, the same thing happens, only in the middle of the trembling and muscle burn, your muscle “fails.” You can’t complete that last repetition and your body is exhausted.
What every weightlifter knows is that, the next morning, there’s a good chance you will be sore. And it is that soreness that signals your body that you lacked enough muscles to handle the load placed upon it.
This is what causes a muscle to grow. Your body builds more muscle in an attempt to handle the load you placed on it last time.
Stated differently, the entire value of a weight training workout is in the final repetition of each exercise — the one where your muscles struggle profusely and then “fail.”
It’s the last repetition, where you struggle, that’s responsible for most of your muscle growth — hence the term “the edge of discomfort.”
The same is true when it comes to developing career and life skills.
When you’re learning a new skill, the place of optimal struggle is one where you’re being severely challenged, but not outright overwhelmed.
If a work project is too easy, you learn nothing. (If a weight is too light, you don’t get stronger by lifting it.)
If a work project is way too hard, you fail immediately. There is no struggle. It’s a complete and immediate failure.
The optimal level of struggle is where a task is 10% – 20% out of reach of your current skill level.
I call this living your life at the edge of discomfort.
All of the top consulting firms base their professional career development around this principle.
At McKinsey, just as I got comfortable with a particular kind of skill, my engagement manager would give me new harder work that I had never done before.
In my entire time at McKinsey, I was NEVER comfortable EVER.
Once I got the basics of analysis, they had me manage clients. Once I could manage clients, they had me manage other consultants.
Once I understood how to do market entry strategy, they had me do sales force performance optimization.
Once I grasped how to do that, they had me do human resources strategy.
Once I understood retail, they had me work with financial institutions. Once I grasped that, I worked in technology.
It was ENDLESS. Never the same challenge twice. Always something new.
The top firms in industry do the exact same thing.
General Electric is famous for doing this.
(Incidentally, more Fortune 500 CEOs were former GE or McKinsey employees than former employees of any other companies in the world.)
When you’re on the “high potential” track (ranked in the top 1% of the company), they rotate you to a new job roughly every two years.
Got good at sales? Great, now do engineering. Ran a finance organization? Good, now run a manufacturing line.
Ran a business in Asia? Great, now do it in Africa. At GE, you do this over 30 – 40 years and at the end of the process, you get Fortune 500 CEO.
Once I was in industry, I crafted my own career path to constantly seek new challenges.
Once I started my own company, I did the same…
Always learn new things… ALWAYS.
Never feel comfortable… EVER.
It’s the only way to grow your skills and your career.
So, my question for you today is: Are you comfortable?
Are you living at the edge of discomfort?
If not, and if you desire to, what can you do to get to your edge of discomfort?
Give it some thought…
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45 thoughts on “Succeeding at the Edge of Discomfort”
Hi,
My name is Shanta and I don’t know if I will ultimately become a consultant but I love your website and material. Especially this post struck a chord with me. Coming from an engineering/lifescience PhD with postdoc experience, I was exploring career options and hit upon your website. I really enjoyed this post in particular because I have felt it in my own career. I love to learn new things and keep switching and trying new things. From chemical engg to cancer research to process improvement. Am hoping the next stop is an industry job in biotech. Glad to know that this is a very important trait.
Hi Victor,
this post couldn’t come in a more appropriate time.
I changed country before getting graduated, writing my thesis at 3AM after being working for a living.
At that time paradoxically I use to feel fine: I was aware to do the right thing and to sacrifice myself and usually, as I have also learned from your posts, these two things are a good indicator for success.
That happened: I have graduated, learned a new language in 4 months and I got a job in a major retail Bank ( I haven’t attended a top university so I wanted to get a “big brand name”) but I don’t feel ready to apply for a Management Consulting position yet.
And that’s what I realized:
if you eat a piece of bread before dinner when you are hungry, you must really want the steak that will be served in few minutes time otherwise you’ll be full with just a sneak. Your hunger will come later, at 10 o’clock. When it’s late.
Motivation is what this “sneak” job took away from me: what would you suggest to bring it back? I want to deserve McKinsey steaks!
Daniele,
Motivation is over rated. Action is under rated.
Apply this month.
Victor
Absolutely agree! However, as it is to me, human are by nature lazy and reluctant to be pushed at the edge of the discomfort. What “muscles” do you develop to keep yourself going into this position again and again? How do you develop those muscles?
Thanks!
York
York,
I disagree that people are by nature lazy. I think some people choose the oath of least resistance while others are willing to choose the path of greatest growth. It is a choice.
It’s not a muscle that needs to be developed. It’s more about knowing your own motivations. My college roommate had a congenital heart defect. His heart beat would sometimes skyrocket to 300 beats per minute. The theoretical maximum heart rate for a human being is 220 beats per minute.
He had open heart surgery several times. He had a scare about a foot long down the middle of his chest.
Do you know what he wanted to do as a career?
He wanted to become a doctor.
Do you know why?
Because by all accounts, he should not be alive today. Modern medicine made his life possible.
So when he had to study late for organic chemistry, do you think he was able to do so?
Yes.
He went to Duke for medical school, did a fellowship at the National Institues of Health, and also got his law degree from Yale. He now works for one of the big pharma companies.
I haven’t talked to him since college. I googled him a year ago to see where he ended up in life. I’m not the least bit surprised. I never had any doubt that he would do what he wanted in life. Never.
If you lack motivation and drive, you don’t lack any muscles. You lack a a big enough reason WHY. Your dreams may be too small.
Find your reason why and much of the rest falls into place.
Victor
Dear Victor,
I like the example you chose to make your point. Thanks for the crystal clear explanations.
Victor,
Thanks for the great article. One point I would like to make is that high performers succeed at the edge of discomfort because they push themselves AND their leaders allow them to fail in the early stages. If you compare the performance of someone who has been in say one industry/function vs. a high performer brand new, I would think that initially the long-timer has better performance. Over time this may shift, but you have to allow newcomers to grow into a role. I think that is one area where companies can fail is if they try to compare performance at snapshots in time vs. the trend. Also, companies like GE (where I have worked for a short time) understand this concept and value those who continually grow. I think other companies may not value this and would like people to go very deep into one area so they are performing at peak performance all of the time.
John,
I totally agree. Certain company cultures are designed for high performers to engage in stretch assignments. In these cultures, the absolute level performance is not the only performance criteria – the trajectory of improvement and pace of achievement is often as important or more important.
If person A succeeds at a job after 20 years of trying, while Person B achieves the same success within a year — the latter has so much more potential than the former.
Victor
Yes, I am living on discomfort but since it’s fluctuating (I am in consulting) so sometime I am not motivate to do my work. It’s completely different than industry.
Once again a great post. To answer your question I am operating within the 10-20% threshold of discomfort and loving it.
Mostly, I feel comfortable in my work and personal life being. Still, it really makes you rather boring regularly…
Victor,
I’ve been subscribed to the Strategic Outlier Letter for about a year now and I’m finally commenting to thank you so much for writing these on a consistent basis for free.
I learn a lot from these; and even if it’s a topic that’s fairly well known, such as your most recent letter on getting out of your comfort zone in order to grow, it’s such a nice refresher when you put it so clearly with facts and examples. Tbh, I’ve been a little overwhelmed these days because I just started my career in a fortune 100 company in a rotational program that has a very similar culture to GE and McKinsey (no comfort, rotate every 1.5 to 2 years). Like you stated, I’m always learning and just as I start to get a hang of a project or a report, they’ll make me learn a new one. Your letter reminded me that the frustration and discomfort I deal with everyday is what I need to go through to grow. So thank you for reminding me of this. I’m saving this letter for when I need to suck it up and get a dose of the “No pain no gain” reminder in the future 🙂 Now back to month end reports haha.
Thank you,
Kevin
Thank you for that amazing piece. You related it to working out which I enjoy very much. It is a daily routine for me. And as such, I was able to connect with this article.
PS. I love your writing style.