The Goldilocks Rule: How to Stay Motivated in Life and Business

Excerpted from Atomic Habits. Built around Steve Martin's eighteen-year arc to comedy stardom — "10 years spent learning, 4 years spent refining, and 4 years as a wild success" — Clear introduces the Goldilocks Rule: peak motivation comes from working on tasks that are right at the edge of your current ability, neither so easy you're bored nor so hard you're defeated. Long-term consistency is a function of staying inside that just-manageable zone.