Everyone has experienced a plateau.

It might go by other names: slow progress, languishing, stuck.

It seems like progress has stopped. More work doesn’t seem to be producing more results.

It might be a sport; your golf game, for example.

No matter how much time you spend at the driving range, you don’t seem to be improving.

It could be something at work; you can’t seem to make progress, despite spending hours on a project.

Or you realize you took the wrong direction, and have to start over.

Seth Godin calls it “The Dip”—the point where your effort doesn’t seem to be producing any reward, after an initial burst of energy and progress.

‍

There are a few things you can do to help push through:

Prepare for it: If you know it’s coming, it hurts less when it happens. Almost everything we do will have a tough period—a “Dip”—and planning for it helps us push through.

Bring some tools: A coach, a peer group, a mentor, a new framework—these are all tools you can bring in to provide a little jolt of energy and fresh perspective. Sometimes that’s enough to break through the plateau. Even if not, it often provides some much-needed confirmation that you’re on the right path.

Team up: Everything’s easier when you’re going through it with someone else. Try and get a teammate on board early, or find a group that’s going through something similar. A training group, or peers on a similar path at a similar stage.

It’s almost impossible to avoid a plateau when pursuing something new.

But if you prepare well, you can make it as painless as possible.

Our health isn’t like an on/off switch.

We aren’t healthy one day, and unhealthy the next.

Our mental health works the same way.

It’s more helpful to think of them like a gas tank.

We slowly deplete the tank when we don’t exercise. If we reach empty, something bad is bound to happen.

The same is true of our mental health; we aren’t healthy one day, and unhealthy the next. It’s a gradual process, for both improvement or decline.

The only difference is that things get worse as our tank gets empty. Positive and negative feedback loops don’t happen in a car, but they’re real for us.

Our physical well-being can affect our mental health, and vice versa.

Poor mental health might affect our work, which in turn affects our mental health.

The gas tank analogy is useful because it helps us correct along the way.

Here are a few things you can do:

Check in: What level is your tank at? Why? How can you tell? Physical health is easier to assess than mental health. For physical health, you can test yourself, or use benchmarks and measurements. For mental health, you’ll have to use more subjective measures. How do you feel when you wake up? Do you feel motivated at work? Do you feel energized through the day?

Identify the habits that drain the tank: This is also easier for physical health. Eating poorly or lack of exercise are going to cause decline. For mental health, what things drain your energy? What do you dread doing each day?

Identify the habits that fill the tank: For physical health: what healthy meals do you like to eat? What unhealthy food can you cut? How can you make exercise or activity fun? For your mental health: what relaxes you? What feels like play to you? How can you spend more time with friends or family, or have more time to yourself?

Schedule: The final step is to schedule time for the things that fill the tank, and try to reduce those that drain it. This is easier said than done. But acknowledging that your tank is low is the first step.

Our mental and physical health doesn’t decline or improve instantly. It’s a slow, gradual, process.

The good news is that gives us ample opportunity to figure out how to fill the tank.

We all judge things every day.

Other people, sports plays, the latest news. We all form an opinion.

The problem is that we often don’t have the context, or the knowledge, to form a good opinion.

It can make for good conversation, true, but when we form an opinion we get stuck with it.

We defend it, and then we seek information to confirm it. We do this all without thinking. It’s how we’re wired.

But we would be well-served to try and improve how we judge things.

Here are four ways we can be better:

Reserve judgment: We should all be a little more comfortable saying “I don’t know” and “I don’t have enough information to form an opinion.” The modern workplace frowns upon that kind of response, and while it matters less in conversation, it helps us avoid becoming attached to a particular view.

Wait: Initial impressions are rarely good impressions. Our initial impressions are emotional, and often related more to past events than the one we’re trying to evaluate. Waiting helps us put things in perspective. It helps us remove the emotional component, and really consider the question we’re trying to answer, like “was this action correct?” instead of an easier one like “do I like this person?”

Seek opposing arguments: As we start to form an opinion, it helps to deliberately seek out an opposing view. The military often calls this “red-teaming”: you assume the opposite perspective, that of the “enemy.” Figure out why the other side believes what they do. Try and prove it yourself. Then revisit your original opinion—does it still hold up?

Test some mental models: Mental models are simplifications of the world that help us think. They are never exact representations of how the world works, but they can help us see it in different ways. Inversion is one such tool: instead of trying to answer the question, ask and answer the inverse question. For example, try and figure out how to avoid being unhappy, instead of how to be happy. Repositioning the question or using some different models can help us think about an issue in a new light.

We can’t avoid judgment; it’s part of our nature.

But we do it so frequently that even small improvements can yield big results in the long-term.

Better judgment = better decisions = a better life.

My post-university years turned into a crash course in entrepreneurship and startups.

I opted not to do a masters in favour of attempting to build a startup of my own. 

That didn’t go that well, but it did lead me to Founder Institute, a program that trains entrepreneurs over the course of 4-6 months. 

Founder Institute gave me a group of entrepreneur peers, and a network of mentors willing to help.

It also gave me a wide base of entrepreneurship knowledge.

The new startup that came out of that program didn’t work out either, but the contacts I made there would lead me to my next job.

That job? An associate with Techstars Boston. Techstars is a well-known tech accelerator. They bring in 10-15 companies for 4 months and give them resources to speed up their growth. 

Along with 8 or so other associates, we handled some of the administrative stuff for Techstars, and did whatever we could to help the startups. 

That meant I got to see the struggles, try and solve problems, and learn a lot about different industries. We also got exposure to another exceptional group of mentors.

After Techstars Boston, I continued working with some of the people I’d met there, but it didn't last long.

I ended up joining one of the startups that had come out of Founder Institute—Lean Systems—in a cofounder role.

We got accepted to Techstars New York as part of their Winter 2017 cohort. We went through a similar accelerator program to Techstars Boston, this time as one of the companies.

It was another 4-month program of a lot of work, meeting amazing entrepreneurs, and learning and pushing hard to grow our company.

Eventually, that startup wouldn’t work out either. I moved on to join yet another company founded during Founder Institute called Unito.

In hindsight, my journey post-university seems well-planned. I got to see startup scenes in two major tech cities, get exposed to hundreds of different companies and founders, and learn while attempting to apply the lessons myself.

In reality, I had no idea what would come next, but I was choosing the options where I was most likely to learn.

The crash course I got in startups taught me all kinds of tactical things. It built a broad knowledge base of all the components required to build companies. It gave me exposure to the kinds of people that build successful companies too.

The main lessons I left with:

Everyone is figuring it out as they go. First-time founders almost always have one insight and specific skills, but quickly have to figure out things like hiring and finance. And they all do. They tackle problems as they come and keep moving forward.

Ruthless execution is the norm. Founders of venture-backed tech startups are obsessive problem-solvers. They're impatient, pushing the boundaries of how fast something can finished, or doing it themselves in the beginning. Once you get used to this kind of speed, it’s hard to do anything else.

You can choose what kind of founder/manager to be. The vast, vast majority of the founders I worked with, regardless of how successful, were extremely kind, considerate people. Some of them were more frank or brash than others, but very few fit the model of the domineering, bossy founder.

Startups are hard. There were a lot of brilliant people I worked with who had startups which didn't work out. So many things have to go right that are outside your control. 

I don’t know where my career will take me over the next 5 years.

But I hope it involves as much learning as my post-university crash course in tech and startups.

It's hard to know what excellence looks like until you see it in action.

Humans learn by imitation. Just watch a child imitate the behaviour of those they see around them.

As adults, we like to think we’re more advanced. In reality, we’re simply better at hiding it.

My summer job in university taught me to be a professional.

That job was working for the Canadian Coast Guard in their Inshore Rescue Boat Program.

We worked May to September in regions around the Maritimes, providing search and rescue services.

Coast Guard employees manage the program, but those working the stations are all students.

Many have little on-water experience when they start. Others have a background in lifeguarding, or outdoors work, but little experience in boats.

I was one of the few that did, but the transformation that takes place in the first few weeks is impressive.

Training camp in your first year is three weeks long.

During camp, you get trained on the skills you need to perform the job. Boat handling, communication, rescue techniques.

After that, it’s an apprenticeship. You spend the summer with other students who have been in the program before, often for several years.

Most of the skills come with practice. Those get developed during training in the summer with your crew.

But training camp teaches you the skill of being a professional.

Showing up late isn’t tolerated.

You’re expected to perform to high standards on both written and practical exams.

You get called out for making mistakes, and have to correct them if you want to finish camp.

Checklists get used often, and are expected to be followed.

Drilling new skills happens for hours on end, day after day.

Long workdays are part of the experience, and you’re expected to perform regardless.

There are concrete skills that you take out of training camp. New knowledge too.

But the lasting benefits are the habits of a professional.

Showing up on time.

Following procedure.

Drilling and practicing the skills that you may not use but are expected to have ready.

Effective and efficient communication.

Those skills are transferrable to whatever job you’re performing.

Those are the skills that separate professionals from amateurs.