What You Do When No One’s Watching Determines Your Success
After a point, nothing external can sustain your motivation
The empty gym makes me whoop with delight. Hijacking the music system and setting the AC to a cool blast, I experiment with the lights until I get a warm shadowy anabolic feel.
Humming with pleasure, I breeze through my warmups. With some thrash metal screaming at a deafening volume, I plow through my working sets.
Lost in the trance, I don’t even notice the first few people piling in. This wasn’t always the case — two years ago, I would have walked out of an empty gym.
It was the glances of pretty girls, the awe-filled gawking of beginners, and the feeling of out-lifting others that used to fuel me. Now, it’s the sheer orgasmic delight of working out.
Without this shift, I wouldn’t have continued working out. I already have a physique close to my natural ceiling. So why bother?
What Separates the Great from The Good
Almost everyone starts hitting the gym for one of three reasons:
- Severe bullying and body-shaming.
- Loss of a loved one or a breakup.
- Wanting to impress girls.
My reason had been the first one, and it fueled me for a while. But just a year of dedicated training can get you a decent physique. It’s the same for any pursuit — there’s a short initial timeframe that external reasons can sustain.
After that, none of the external reasons can sustain your motivation.
Over the course of the 5 years since I started going to the gym, I’ve seen a repeating trend with most people — works out for a year, takes a long break, joins to “regain”, stops again, and so on.
But I’ve never stopped — no more than a handful of workouts missed per year. Year in, year out, the results have compounded — any commercial gym I walk into; I turn heads.
And I have just sub-par genetics. Few of my friends who are genetic beasts constantly get asked if they’re professional bodybuilders. And not even the baggiest of hoodies can conceal their bulk.
Just like me, they have been at it for years — and it’s the pure joy of working out that now drives them as well.
Sporadic training can get you an “okay” physique. Writing for a year or two can make you a good writer. Part-time sketching can make you a decent artist. But to achieve greatness?
You need to fall in love with the process and stay at it for years or decades.
It took Arnold Schwarzenegger 8 years of working out for 2–5 hours every single day to win his first Mr. Olympia title. Over 20 years of burning the midnight oil gave Charles Bukowski the legendary writer status he now has.
“When you look at people who are successful, you will find that they aren’t the people who are motivated, but have consistency in their motivation.”
— Arsene Wenger
And basketball legend Kobe Bryant? His work ethic was beyond insane — he’s reported to have woken up before 4 AM and trained for 7 hours on many days.
The Only Person Who Watches Over You 24/7
What you do when no one’s watching determines your success when everyone’s watching.
Every glamorous success story shoves under the rug the countless days of hard work in obscurity — but it’s those days that surreptitiously add up to what we all call an “overnight” success.
If you do something with the same vigor, irrespective of whether there are eyeballs on, you’re intrinsically motivated — doing it solely for the joy of doing it.
You’re doing it for the only person who watches over you every second of your life — your own self. As Srinivas Rao calls it, you’re performing for an “audience of one”.
In fact, when the process becomes the point of focus, the results will cease to matter.
I’m enjoying writing this article despite knowing it will become a dud sitting in obscurity.
No human can completely get over the anticipation of the outcome, but the less you care about it, the greater the result will be.
After all, it is the process, not the outcome, that is in your control — and the process determines the outcome.
Play for The “Audience Of One”
No one needs to see or validate what you’re doing. You are your own witness, validator, and cheerleader.
Do what you do for the primary sake of doing it — the outcome you desire shall naturally follow. Or as Srinivas puts it, “To reach an audience of millions, play for an audience of one.”
“To get what you want, deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a bunch of undeserving people.”
— Charles T. Munger