During a recent break from work, I was invited to participate in the celebrations of my friend Derek Arden’s fifth year of ‘Monday Night Live’.
When the COVID-19 lockdown started, Arden began an experiment with a weekly business self-improvement Zoom call.
He invited all his friends and business contacts. He had no idea if it would take off; however, it did. Each Monday for the past five years, a dedicated band of followers has joined together to hear Arden interview an expert, and his enthusiasm, energy, and persistence have helped keep the format going.
Later that week, I went to London for a theatrical day. My matinée visit was to see ‘Les Misérables’, and the evening was spent crying with laughter at The Play That Goes Wrong.’
Les Misérables is the UK’s longest-running musical, in its 40th year on the West End Stage.
That takes some doing, with eight shows a week every week. That’s persistence, too. And boy, do you need persistence to be an actor in The Play That Goes Wrong, because the chaos is phenomenal. They must have rehearsed thousands of times to get it right.
In the world of business, I have rarely seen such levels of persistence. When I spoke at a conference about blogging, one chap was critical, saying, “I tried it once, but it didn’t work”.
I pointed out that you need to be persistent, and people rarely see any benefits of blogging before continually doing it for a few months.
Similarly, I have noticed people giving up on using Artificial Intelligence tools such as ChatGPT because they find it challenging to get results. They give up too soon because they are not persistent.
The people who are persistent with their use of AI are the ones who succeed. Indeed, the boss of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, says that most people give up too early.
However, many people are frightened away from persistently carrying on because of the psychological enemy of persistence, perfectionism.
A recent study I found intriguing established that it is possible to measure persistence by combining three elements: persistence, perseveration, and perfectionism.
Persistence is positive, whereas perseveration and perfectionism are negative factors. Perseveration, by the way, is when people persist in doing something when it is illogical.
As Albert Einstein might have said, that’s the definition of insanity - repeating the same behaviour but expecting different results.
The Polish researchers found, though, that our ability to persist is mediated by factors such as stress, anxiety, and depression.
So, that suggests that our ability to endure and succeed depends on good mental health.
Removing stress from your life will help improve your ability to persist and succeed. One of the main reasons you could be stressed is a lack of autonomy.
When we feel we lack control over our own lives, we become stressed. Similarly, we are stressed when socially isolated and feel we are not part of a community.
These days, more people are likely to feel isolated with increased time working from home. For example, the UK is second from the bottom of 44 countries regarding the hours spent in the office each week.
On average in the UK, workers spend just under two days a week with their colleagues.
At the same time, when working from home, they feel less autonomy as bosses introduce monitoring and ‘check-ins’ to ensure that those out of the office are working.
The WFH movement has a double whammy of reduced autonomy and lower socialising, which together increase anxiety and stress.
This is important in persistence because not only does the resulting stress have a negative impact, but autonomy and community sense are essential components in what's known as ‘Self Determination Theory’.
This is the theory that helps us understand persistence. You become more persistent when you feel in control and have a sense of belonging.
The chances are that each of us could be more persistent, not only by reducing stress and anxiety but also by going into the office more often.
Even if you are self-employed, going out more and meeting people for coffee, for example, will increase your sense of community and improve your ability to persist.
Oh, hang on a minute, that’s just the behaviour that Arden adopts. And in West End theatres, there’s a group warm-up about an hour before the show, one purpose of which appears to be bonding, even though they all work together daily.
Whether you are a lone worker, like Arden, or a West End performer, your ability to succeed through persistence is down to constantly connecting with other human beings.
It reduces stress, which helps persistent behaviour, and improves your self-determination, which is linked to persistence. It is time to get out and about more.
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