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”
Victor – thanks for this email. I really needed it this morning, as I’m a new consultant beginning my first client engagement today and definitely feeling on the edge of discomfort. Your email helps me remember that the edge of discomfort isn’t a bad thing!
Hello Victor,
Like Sarah I’ve been thinking for a while that it is better to focus on one subject and excel at it because you get to see different parts of the industry in your internships. And that it is a loss of time not knowing, maybe broadly, what you want to base your career on.
But what you said made a lot of sense since you can’t really know an industry/ company unless you work there for some time and first couple of years of mgt. consulting being like a crash course is really beneficial.
Now my question is if we get the feeling of being “jack of all trades, master of none” after the first five years or so, should we always think that we are on the path to F500 or that maybe it is time get out of consulting and focus on one thing? Because like you said there are very few companies that appreciate what you said and they don’t have enough positions for all of us.
Great insights. For body building as well as career building.
Hi Victor,
thank’s for that reminder. It applies very well to my current situation and it is an interesting approach to actually embrace the discomfort.
I am wondering however if it is possible to “feel comfortable in a state of discomfort”. Similarly a weight lifter would actually enjoy the feeling when his/her muscles burn and fail. Maybe it is a bit paradox but I am trying.
Best, David
P.S.: Why is it not possible to log-in first and post here without entering Name and Email newly?
Dave,
It is possible to be accustomed to being uncomfortable.
Victor
PS. I don’t know the answer to your login question.
Again, what a perfect timing!! Speaking of succeeding at the edge of discomfort, I’ve shared my thoughts sometime back when you wrote, “I will face my failure head on (rather than hide from it), receive this gift, and have the courage to try again.” At that time, I received my bar exam result, and it wasn’t what I was expecting..
Honestly, it’s not easy to go through the same process again. The feeling is far from the “comfort”.
But when you do.. when you actually live and breathe through it, you will be stronger than you ever were.
I know this because I succeeded at the edge of discomfort.
Victor, I passed!!
Thank you always : )
Gloria,
That is awesome!!! Congratulations.
You learned something that I doubt you will ever forget.
Victor
Thank you Víctor!
I guess in a way 3 very applicable quotes are:
– do every day/ week something that scares you.
– leave you confort zone every day at least once (richard brandson i think)
– if you are not failing from time to time, you are not trying hard enough
Álvaro
Alvaro,
I agree with the sentiment.
Victor
Hi! Victor. Yes it is very good to live at an edge of discomfort. But the discomfort shall be from inside; otherwise it may be sign of failure.
Victor, have ever worked with a stupid board of directors? My problem is how to go along with incompetent board.
Regards;
Worku
Worku,
I don’t work with incompetent people. At this stage of my career, I have the power of choice. I don’t work with people who aren’t good at what they do.
If I didn’t have such a luxury, I would work through them, with them or around them. Don’t focus on how their incompetence interferes with what you would ideally want to do, instead focus of what options remain. It’s a subtle shift but it makes a big difference.
Victor
How do you reconcile this with the need to be focused and almost specialized in one area?
I have moved from analytics to marketing to strategy to product design and now in trying to get back into marketing I have to take a step down.
So much for a broader skill set
Sarah,
It doesn’t have to be broader skill set, it can be deeper too. Or it can be can be an integration of what you know with a field you don’t. Apple is brilliant not for its engineering or for its sense of design. It’s brilliant because of the integration of the two – engineers that are artists too. Rare combo,
Victor
I never thought there is a 10%-20% kind of thing to measure a sustainable discomfort.
Career path wise, I have been in quality assurance, then procurement, then customer service and branch operation , and now in research and consultancy. Always, when I feel need some knowledge, I would look for additional postgraduate degree to supplement my thirst for knowledge required to do my job such that I did my MBA when I needed to understand accounting to understand the account ledger, people management and customer service etc. etc.
But now, being in research and consultancy area, despite having a expertise in one of the technological area, (a PhD as well) I am always being thrown at a different technological area. 60% of what I counter is novel. (No one could teach me as detailed as I wish, and even google scholar lacks quality information), no proven framework, just a piece of sheet to jot down the possible hypotheses.
Despite of this, up to 7 years ago I never feel I was living on the edge of discomfort. What happened exactly 7 years ago, I faced failure in one of my project. I was the project leader and sole team member, my collaborator – the technology provider is based in other country, which makes it hard for us to really collaborate other than vague email conversation, computer power was not there – 2Gb/4Gb RAM at most , the computer takes a week to run analysis on big data and produce output. It was very depressing.
Ever since that failure, I scrutinize most details, especially on the stakeholders expectation and implementation process, of 60% of research project. 60% of the projects has totally 100% new technology. When I do research and consultancy here, my job starts from seeking customers who provide grant to do the research. Customer has specific requirement and we always try to meet the requirement, else we will be jobless :). Once we got it, we have to implement it till successful. And finally, once it is completed, we have to calculate the value created by the research through transforming how people does work, productivity, reduction of failures and downtime, and etc. If, the research fails then no value can be created and bad customer satisfaction. I will get bad KPI. Not only that, if through the job, we could create something useful and commercializable, then we need to get copyright, patent and do some marketing on that. This cycle will keep on repeating when new project is acquired.
What do you think ? Am I living on the edge of discomfort ? It is quite subjective, right.
That is so true, thanks for reminding me that!