This week, a giant container ship got stuck in the Suez Canal.

A bunch of tugboats and bulldozers have attempted to create some kind of motion for the ship, but the scale at which they are working is comically small compared to the giant cargo vessel.

I can relate. That’s how I’ve felt lately not only trying to make a change happen and influence others, but also in trying to change myself. How can I begin to overcome entrenched habits and beliefs? How can I change course without getting stuck? It feels like it will take forever, and experiments feel risky.

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When you first start playing guitar, the physical pain can be quite a deterrent.

“It’s like getting a sunburn on your fingertips,” I tell students. “It’s okay. Keep playing every day — just take a lot of breaks.”

It gets worse before it gets better. However, for those who persist through the discomfort, magic awaits. Your body will, in obedience to your habits, provide assistance in the form of calluses. With this hardened extra skin, your guitar chords will ring out true and clear. Playing won’t hurt anymore, and your learning will accelerate.

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It’s an irony of life that the more desperate you are for a thing that you want, the more elusive that thing is.

And when you already have plenty, it’s easy to come by.

How do you get from one state to the other? I believe that such a shift is related to a shift in our habits. And while changing our habits is difficult, it’s a worthy effort that can allow us to transform aspects of our very identity that we thought were immutable.

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Parkinson's law is the well-established idea that the time it takes to do a task expands to fit the time allotted for it.

We must be aware of this potential pitfall if we want to get more work done in a shorter period of time. 

However, this is awfully tricky to do. Because of the way our brains automate our habits to make us more efficient, we will just do what we’ve always done. Without conscious intervention, nothing changes. We have a set point that we return to when we’re not actively pushing against it. To make the shift to do things differently and overcome this set point requires us to see what we don’t see, a skill that usually requires the help of a trusted teacher or coach.

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