The Real Reason You Can’t Stick to Anything
Has it ever happened to you that you are interested in everything and want to be a master of everything?
When I was a kid, my mom used to speak highly of people who could handle more than one thing at a time. She used to call them “all-rounders.”
One of my friends at school was one of those kids. She knew how to sing, dance, excel at every sport, write amazing essays, and always score a perfect 10/10. She was an “all-rounder,” and somehow, my best friend back then. I used to admire her so much. My mom admired her too, always saying stuff to her mom like, “How about I trade my daughter for yours?” Well, she was just kidding, trying to make me feel competitive and work harder. However, I tried. I must say I tried, but let’s be serious for once — it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
I used to sing well. My best friend also used to sing well. But there was always a difference. In every major event, I was always chosen to sing the solo or take the lead part.
Why? Because it was my thing to do. I loved that, and I focused only on singing while I admired my best friend for everything else. I wanted to do more than what I truly wanted to do. This usually ended with me giving up on things. Eventually it became a habit, until I realized what was wrong with me. This question kept coming up in my head:
What if the problem is that you are actually very good at quitting things that make you uncomfortable?
This is not a consistency problem.
That was my story as a kid. Even now that I’m not a kid anymore, sometimes I feel like I was better as a kid than I am now. At least I used to try and do things, then fail and give up. As an adult, it’s become so hard even to “try.” They keep saying, “Consistency is the key!” But finding the lock of consistency is sometimes a real task. What is it that you want to be consistent with? How can I find that?
Because I love to sing for one month, paint for the next, and write for another four weeks. The moment one thing starts to bore me, I switch to another. It took me a while to realize:
The problem isn’t that you can’t stay consistent, it’s that you struggle to stay with things once they stop feeling rewarding.
But I must say, it’s very clear that “consistency is the key.” Every day I eat twice a day, and this consistency has led me to gain a few pounds here and there. If I wasn’t consistent, I might not have been able to gain so much in so little time. Right? But when it comes to doing something productive and sticking with it, trying to be perfect at it, it eventually stops feeling rewarding and starts feeling boring. I wonder why this doesn’t apply to the food I eat twice a day. How am I never bored of that? If you guessed it right, you’re a genius — it’s the comfort that comes with eating, versus the discomfort my brain feels when I try to stick to one thing, that makes the difference.
You are not quitting the goal — you are escaping the discomfort.
I wanted to learn one of the world’s toughest languages — Mandarin. I was highly motivated after watching a bunch of C-dramas. I literally tackled the hardest part: getting started. I started learning the basics of Mandarin. Day 1 — I was on cloud nine, because I learned to say “ni hao,” which is “hello” in Mandarin. Day 2, I was slightly above cloud nine, because I had learned to say “wo jiao CD,” which means “my name is CD.” My brain was so happy to experience the novelty and excitement of learning something new.
Day 3 — the real fun starts here, because the moment they started teaching me to write the basics of Mandarin, my brain had already begun to regret its decision to start. I decided to keep going anyway. By day 8, a week after I’d started, my brain was resisting the discomfort, finding reasons and excuses not to continue. I know this trick my brain plays on me, so I ignored it and continued until day 15.
By then it was hard for me to focus, as my brain was trying its best to escape the discomfort. It crushed me into extreme boredom and self-doubt — constant self-doubt — which ended up with me procrastinating this task every single day and eventually quitting.
The “Motivation” Trap
“I will do it when I feel like it.”
It is literally going to get you nowhere. I used to think that to start something, you need that push, that motivation — and yes, sometimes you do. But all motivation can do is get you started. It can’t keep you going without quitting, and for a long time, I relied on motivation to do exactly that. What we really need is not motivation, but tolerance for discomfort.
The real reason you can’t stick to anything is that you, or rather your brain, are always trying to escape this discomfort, which will eventually get you nowhere but your own doom. I gave up on Mandarin on day 15 because I had lost motivation. You cannot rely on motivation if you really want to achieve your goal in life. Motivation will never last. What you can really rely on is discomfort.
Consider discomfort your best friend — tough, but always pushing you forward, someone you keep fighting with but can talk philosophy and astronomy with for hours. The day I realized how much discomfort could move me forward in life, no matter how loudly comfort called to me, I started choosing discomfort every time, and it has helped me find my way to a better life. Stay with me until the end, and I’ll show you how to do the same.
Sometimes motivation also fails to do its job, and your brain reaches for a very common excuse to escape the work: “I want to do it perfectly, so I’ll do it later.” This is also one of the reasons you can’t stick with one thing.
How “Perfectionism” Quietly Makes You Quit
As I mentioned before, I spent a month on singing, a month on painting, and a month on writing. Here’s what really happened: I watched a TV show where people sang beautifully and got praised. I was motivated, and I decided I wanted to do something similar.
In my mind — or I should say delusion — I was already on that TV show before I’d even started practicing. The image of me as a “perfect singer” was set in my mind. I had set such high expectations for myself.
I started practicing and posting videos online. Everything was going well so far — good traction, people commenting and praising me. But once, I rushed to create a video and ended up posting one with a bit of background noise. In the name of being a “perfectionist,” I ended up disappointing myself. One piece of negative feedback pushed me into a corner and led me not just to avoid such situations, but to quit entirely.
I could have just deleted that video or posted a better one. But what it proved to me was how weak-minded I was, and how my brain had found a new excuse not to do something I really wanted to do. “Perfectionism” is actually a myth, and I’ve written a whole article on that topic — click here to read it. It’s never really about wanting to be perfect. It’s mostly about how good you want to look in front of people. But in reality, what we fail to understand is that being perfect actually requires starting imperfectly. If you never start in the name of “perfection,” you end up quitting in the name of “perfection.” It’s just your brain playing tricks on you to escape the discomfort.
Why Some People Romanticize Starting Fresh
I realized this recently: “starting over” is no joke. I used to be crushed by the thought of it. Back when I worked as a flight attendant, I thought that’s what I was going to be for the rest of my life. That was the company I’d work for, and those were the friends I’d hang out with, talking about life, work, managers, and everything in between. The day I got laid off, my world shattered into pieces.
My perfect cozy room, my TV, my wardrobe — literally everything — and the thought that I had to do this all over again scared me so much. After two years of hard work, no life, nothing but a work schedule, all I got was peanuts to munch on at 3 a.m. Then I watched my Instagram feed fill up with people who had “started over” three or four times already — at 20, 21, 22, 27, every age — all romanticizing the fact that they had failed at something and started over.
Sometimes life pushes you into corners so hard that you’ve got no choice but to “start over.” But some of us think that once we try something and fail, we need to shift focus to something else and start again, instead of facing the failure and continuing to push through. I’ve done this before. I started learning guitar, and before I could even play my first song, I quit — gave up, and decided to learn piano instead, until my brain caught up with the discomfort there too. It decided to do something else. The moment things start to get a little complicated, your brain can’t take it anymore, and it shifts your focus to something new.
The Dopamine of starting Fresh.
When you start something new, it gives you new hope — the motivation and pull toward your end goal are so fresh that taking action doesn’t feel like a task anymore. There’s this feeling of “This time things will be different” that lingers for a while, and all of your optimism stays intact until you see the amount of actual work you need to do. The moment motivation starts to disappear, things start to feel hard. When you realize a task needs “repetitive” effort every single day, it becomes too much for your brain to handle. You end up quitting entirely and starting something new to chase that dopamine hit again, and the cycle goes on and on, until you realize what you’ve been doing has kept you in the same place for years.
Rather than staying committed to the process to reach one goal, we become addicted to beginnings. When I figured this out about myself, I realized what was actually coming between me and my end goal. It was my own mind. I decided to follow a few rules that help me keep the discipline alive and stick to one thing at a time.
What Actually Makes People Consistent?
Every high achiever I’ve known or studied so far reached that level in life not through motivation or determination, but through discipline — the discipline to do the same few things every day. The kind of daily discipline that leaves you at a stage in life where, if you don’t follow the routine, you feel uneasy. How they reached that level of discipline is by following a few principles.
Here are a few principles that help me stay consistent with anything I do.
Principle 1: Make the goal smaller
Instead of “I want to earn $10,000 online,” start with $1,000. I made this mistake initially. I tried to learn guitar with a goal of eventually being able to write songs. To reach that level, you need to know a bunch of chords, progressions, strumming patterns, and whatnot. I hadn’t even started, and I’d already set my end goal as becoming a singer-songwriter. If I had started with a smaller goal — learning the basic chord progressions and strumming patterns — I might not have ended up quitting entirely. Later, I realized my goal should have been to learn to play one song. I did, and it felt so good that I still keep practicing every day, working toward my next goal.
Principle 2: Expect the boring phase
This is very important, because this is where most of us give up. To me, learning guitar wasn’t the goal at first — it was a means to understand music well enough to write songs. But these things take a hell of practice, and that eventually gets boring, because your brain isn’t seeing anything new to feel excited about. Whatever the task is, expect that at some point it will bore you. But you must keep going, because you don’t want this to become one more reason you can’t stick to anything. For once, prove to yourself that you can do it.
Principle 3: Stop measuring yourself by perfect streaks
Social comparison can be one of the reasons you can’t stick to one thing. You see someone making a perfect painting, then the next second you see someone at a concert with everyone shouting their name, and suddenly your brain sets a temporary end goal for you. Then, as you take action toward that goal, you keep measuring yourself against the people who did it perfectly. And when you realize you can’t deliver the same result as them, there you go — give up again.
Principle 4: Learn to tolerate being “Bad”
I am the “Bad” Friend, because I choose myself and my goals over daily hangouts and parties. Let’s be serious — hangouts and parties aren’t bad. But if they’re not occasional, and you feel forced to show up for unnecessary drama every day, that’s a different story. Sorry, but I am really happy being a “Bad” Friend. One thing you need to learn for real is that self-growth and mental development come with a cost: disappointing those around you.
Principle 5: Separate feelings from decisions
If you’re invited to hang out and decide not to go, you’re choosing to focus on your goal despite being pulled at by boredom. It’s not always going to be supported by your feelings. It’ll be one of those “I don’t feel like doing anything today” days, but you’ve decided not to give up this time. In that case, you must do the task for at least 5 minutes today.
Stop waiting to feel like doing it.
Today is the perfect day to write this section. I usually write my articles within 3–4 days, and today’s task was to finish this article so it’s ready for proofreading and the rest of the process. But I didn’t feel like it today. Ever since I woke up, my head has felt heavy, and I haven’t wanted to do anything. But I’ve been in this phase many times, and whenever I feel this way, I make myself do the task for at least 5 minutes. So this is my 5 minutes of the day, on a day when I’m at my lowest.
If you really learn to face discomfort, you’re already ten times ahead of everyone around you. What you realize is that sitting with boredom, uncertainty, imperfection, and slow progress is what will get you somewhere in life. Those who’ve succeeded in life didn’t give up on one thing to start another. They started one thing and never gave up on it. They learned things that are never taught, things that can only be experienced and implemented. Chasing change every now and then, or clinging to certainty because it feels secure, will only give you temporary joy. But the deeper thesis is this: if you really want to stick to one thing and succeed at it, boredom, uncertainty, discomfort, and consistency need to be your best companions.
Final Thoughts
Maybe the real reason you can’t stick to anything isn’t because you’re lazy, inconsistent, incapable, or undisciplined. Maybe you’re just expecting yourself to stay committed to things that were never connected to a strong enough reason.
You start something with excitement, imagine the person you’ll become — and then reality arrives. The excitement fades. Progress feels slow. Boredom shows up. Work becomes repetitive, and suddenly quitting feels easier than continuing. But that is the exact moment when, if you decide to stay consistent, growth happens.
I am truly proud of myself for finishing this article on a day when I really didn’t feel like it. This is solid proof that you don’t need to feel motivated every day. You need to understand that the boring days aren’t proof that something isn’t working. They’re part of the process.
You don’t need a new goal every Monday. You need to learn how to stay when the novelty wears off.
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