This has absolutely nothing to do with Swedish Rounding.

I was at the gym this morning, and my trainer (a new guy who obviously doesn't know me) was urging me to do one more rep. He was coercing me in the nicest possible way to do something that he and I both knew was good for me.  And all I wanted to do was to tell him to go away, I didn't want to do one more rep.  Or words to that effect.

Physical exercise is a great metaphor for personal development.  There are so many parallels about effort and reward, pushing through, setting goals etc etc.  Many of the blogs on this site occur to me at the gym because I think about the process of developing capability (and there's not a lot else to do while you're on the cross trainer).

I reflected that the reason we don't change, even when it's clearly in our best interest to do so, is the way we calculate the cost-benefit ratio.  The short term cost of one more rep is real, immediate and "expensive".  It's right in front of us, and it isn't pleasant. 

But the long term benefit is, by comparison, less real because it's off in the future.  Its value is general and uncertain - something called being healthy, staying alive, maintaining energy. While we really want those things because they're very important, it's not all that clear at that very moment how one rep is going to deliver on the promise.

The interesting challenge as I think about what NBCoach offers is how to change the calculation.  A lot of people in this industry talk up the benefit - undreamt-of wealth, rampant growth, life fulfillment, and leisure time spent in exotic locations.  The steak knives probably get thrown in to make some of the benefit "immediate".

But most people discount the self-interest behind the claims, and the hype doesn't change the fact that the promise is still off in the distance somewhere.  So the second option is to reduce the cost.  That means reducing the effort required to the essential elements that will deliver the greatest benefit.  There's a fine line here, because it's only the effort that produces the benefits.

One of the comments that people make about programmes like ours is that when they finish, they've only implemented a fraction of what they learned, and they need time to put it into place.  And then they don't get to the implementation.  So what's needed is either a system to help them put it into place, or to focus on the small number of things that make the biggest difference, and really get those nailed.

I'm working on something at the moment which addresses that issue, but more on that later.  For now, here's the inevitable question: what's the One Thing that if you really nailed it, would make the biggest difference?  If you're lucky, it might be a small thing, easy to do.  Typically, though, it's not.  Because if it was, you'd have done it by now.  Wouldn't you?