Dru's Notes

You can be consistent and still be dying. Every habit has a hurdle rate: the minimum input it needs to clear the entropy working against it. Show up below the rate and you lose ground daily, even while the streak holds.

Show Notes

You can be consistent and still be dying. Every habit has a hurdle rate: the minimum input it needs to clear the entropy working against it. Show up below the rate and you lose ground daily, even while the streak holds.

Featuring: Lewis Carroll

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Creators and Guests

Host
Dru Riley
Founder of Trends.vc
LC
Guest
Lewis Carroll
Featured in Dru's Notes: Consistent But No Progress? It's the Hurdle Rate.

What is Dru's Notes?

One mental model each day in a few minutes. Habits, business, building products and thinking clearly. From Dru Riley, founder of Trends.vc.

"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

Lewis Carroll

You can be consistent and still be dying.

I started with a few seconds of meditation. I was consistent.

My stress kept climbing. The inputs kept piling up. Travel, screens, cortisol. The load on my system was bigger than what seconds or even a few minutes could clear. I was paying below minimum.

Think of it like a credit card. If you pay $50 a month on a card accruing $80 in interest, you are technically paying. You are also technically drowning. The act of paying doesn't make you solvent. Only the amount relative to the accrual does.

Habits work the same way. If your output is less than the entropy working against it, you are losing. Days logged don't matter. Showing up doesn't matter. The interest is compounding faster than you're paying it down.

What finally worked was a much longer sit. Long enough to beat the accrual.

Are you clearing entropy or just dying slower than you would otherwise?

Every habit has a hurdle rate. The minimum input it needs to clear the entropy working against it. For my meditation, that input is well above five minutes.

Consistency below the hurdle rate is just dying on a schedule.

What habit are you consistent with that might be below its hurdle rate?