Episode 36: Moving on After Success
June 2, 2025
Knowing when to quit might start with noticing when it worked.
Sometimes progress doesn’t stall because you failed—it stalls because you succeeded. Whether in fitness, work, or life, there’s often a burst of growth followed by diminishing returns. But what if that first wave of success isn’t a signal to double down, but a cue to move on? This episode explores the idea that tangible progress may be the turning point, not the destination—and how recognizing that moment might help avoid stagnation before it sets in.
Transcript
I've had this idea floating around in my head over the last few months, and I'm wondering if there's something there, or if I'm just ascribing value to something that's just a fleeting idea.
What this came out of was, I've mentioned this show before, I'm very much into weightlifting and bodybuilding style weightlifting, that's my fitness activity of choice.
One of the things you do when you're working on building muscle, especially once you get into the more advanced, intermediate and advanced stages of it, you start occasionally focusing on different muscle groups.
In the beginning, when you're just starting out, you can pretty much do almost anything and build muscle all over your body.
You do a set of bench press, and you're going to stimulate so many different muscles, your triceps, your shoulders, your chest.
You'll be able to just kind of grow everything.
If you focus on sort of complex movements and overall strength builders, you're going to grow muscle in multiple areas at once.
However, as you get deeper in, you'll notice that there are, maybe you were working through a plan at some point that didn't hit certain muscle groups all that well.
So then, as you're, you know, looking in the mirror or whatever, you're noticing that there are certain areas of your musculature that may be less developed than others.
For any number of reasons.
It could be a genetic thing.
It could be the exercise selection that you've been following.
There's many reasons for it.
But the overall point is, maybe you're looking and you're like, oh, you know, my chest is developing well, but my shoulders are a little lagging.
Or, you know, my back's coming along well, but my triceps really aren't growing.
Like, things like that.
So then you start going down a road of, okay, well, let's do some extra exercises that will focus in on whatever that lagging muscle is, right?
So where I noticed this recently, and I've done this many times, right?
Over the course of time, I have done this with many different muscle groups to varying degrees of success, but it's a common thing.
And what you'll usually do is just set aside some extra time during your, you know, selection of exercises.
There's some extra exercises along the way that really zero in on this.
It's usually at the expense of added volume elsewhere.
It's a normal thing.
So most recently, I did this with shoulders.
I was feeling like my shoulders, like I'm not sure I had spent quite enough focus on that.
So I spent some extra focus on that.
And then I started seeing some legitimate results.
And so I was, you know, looking and I was like, oh, I know, and maybe it took a couple months, but I'm of doing sort of the same increased focus on them.
And I noticed that there was a difference.
I've done this in the past.
I've done it with other muscle groups, you know, arms, back, like it just depends on where I was with things.
But what I'd always done in the past was I would see that result and then I would keep drilling in on that muscle group, thinking to myself, you know, if I've been successful to this point, if I keep pushing it, that success will just keep rolling.
For whatever reason, this time around on this latest run, when I was kind of focusing on shoulder work, it occurred to me that maybe there's a different approach there.
That maybe the better approach is that once you start seeing that noticeable result, maybe that's the time to move on.
Now, there's a few things that play into this.
The main driver for this is that I, having done this many times over the years with other muscle groups, that initial benefit that you see is the satisfying part.
However, if you, I've noticed that if I keep drilling on it, the, it's diminishing returns that the, the amount I gained beyond that initial kind of benefit that I see is, is, is, is minuscule.
It drops off pretty quick.
So, what you end up doing is continuing to, to, to, to just drill in and drive hard on, on one particular thing.
Then, and then you already saw a bunch of benefit, but you don't see much after that.
It's this diminishing returns kind of curve is what I've noticed.
In other words, let's say you're focusing on shoulders.
You can only add so much in a period of time.
You'll get, and there's a delay on it.
And that's sort of the key here is that at first, at first, let's say you start doing this, focusing on something.
You won't see much at first.
It might take a month or two, but then at that month or two mark, whenever it happens and you do notice a difference.
At that point, you have built enough where you can tangibly see something different.
And what I'm wondering is that once you tangibly see that difference, is that the time to stop and move on?
Because anything beyond that point is probably going to become this diminishing returns thing.
And that energy might be better spent elsewhere.
Now, from a weightlifting perspective, I feel pretty strongly that this is a good way to proceed.
And I'm going to try this with my, you know, for the next year or two of anytime I focus on something, kind of waiting for that first batch of tangible results and then moving on to focus on something else.
But it got me thinking and wondering if this is a good approach to many things in life.
And this is really the reason that I'm talking about it here.
For instance, and this is not the most healthy example, but this is a probably a pretty good mindset to go into gambling.
Like if you go to a casino where people stumble a lot of times is that they they're up and then they try to keep going.
But maybe once you see that, quote unquote, tangible result, maybe you're up by, you know, some maybe you define in your head some percentage that once you're up by that, you're out or whatever.
It's the same kind of mentality of if you just keep grinding at it, all it will lead to is frustration.
And I've been wondering if this is something that can be applied more generally in other areas of life beyond just this.
For instance, take your professional life.
You know, you're let's say that and I've heard this story from many people and I definitely felt it along the way as well.
You're going through your career.
Things are going pretty well.
And then you start feeling like you stagnate.
And people can treat that in a number of ways.
Some people will kind of try to grind through that and get out the other side if there's reasons to stick around or, you know, other external factors or it's just what they believe they should do.
And sometimes you get that advice like, well, you know, just see it through.
It ebbs and flows.
It'll come back around.
Stable job.
Good benefits.
Whatever.
But maybe the wisdom could be, well, when you start feeling stagnant, maybe it's already a little too late.
Maybe you should have left when you started seeing your successes.
And when you noticed your first batch of growth, some of this, you know, to me really does come back to the idea of sort of an 80-20 rule.
It's almost like 80% of, if you follow this train of thought and if you believe its premise, it's sort of like 80% of what you're ever going to see will happen in that whatever first 20% of time.
It's not an exact parallel, but you know what I mean.
By the time you see results, tangible results, you've probably already experienced 80% of what you will ever experience in terms of progression and growth.
Again, I don't know if I fully subscribe to this idea.
It's just something that's been kind of rolling around in my head.
And when I think about applying it to various other things in life, in some cases it makes sense.
Now, I think that the downside of this sort of thought pattern is that it can probably lead you to just constantly bailing on things as soon as something good happens.
I don't think that that's the point.
I don't think that's a great thing either.
But I do think there's something to be said, particularly, I mean, you know, obviously this is colored by my life experience and worldview, but there were times in my career along the way where had I left when I saw a batch of tangible successes, that might have reduced a lot of down-the-road frustration and stagnation.
So, anyway, just thought it was kind of interesting thing to think through.
Again, I'm not fully subscribed to this, but it's something that's just been kind of tooling around in my head and thought I'd put it out here and see what others think.