Sometimes more information is the wrong move.

If you’re training consistently and getting better, that’s already enough. Getting better isn’t usually anything dramatic so you don’t notice it. But sometimes you do. And what’s interesting is that noticing can actually become a problem.

One thing you might do is start chasing these moments, or peaks. You start to trying to optimize around them. This takes you off track. You look to fix things that don’t need fixing. In software development, theres’s a term called premature optimization. This is kind of like that.

The other way noticing hurts is when you notice less. At the start, improvement was big and regular. Then it slows down.

I was reminded of this when some students told me about their New Year goals, mostly around losing weight. Often it’s a two or three month plan, and changes are very noticeable at first. But a few weeks in, things seem to stall, and it gets tempting to start deviating. There’s just so much information out there. Soon after that, it’s back to old habits.

You see a version of this with kids’ programs. Parents want the best, but when they don’t train, they don’t know how slow and uneven progress is. So they switch schools. I’ve had a lot of kids that started out very slow, and I predicted they would leave. Some did. But many had parents that made them stick with it, and they’re proof that time and effort usually pay off. For many, it just takes longer to notice.

If your training is going well, you’re not getting hurt, and you’re having fun, don’t rush to change much. Keep doing what’s working until you either reach a clear stopping point, a goal, or at least a couple of months. Charlie Munger said about investing, “Never interrupt compounding.” The same idea applies to jiu-jitsu. Progress takes time. Don’t reset the clock.

Look at the big picture. Maybe it’s time to adjust. Maybe not. But it’s easier to make the decision after you’ve let the process run, not in the middle of it.