The Problem with Obsessing Over Results
Self-help gurus tell you: “Visualize your goals! Create vision boards! Write your goals every day!” And while that sounds motivating and exciting, here’s the cold hard truth—it’s a huge mistake. Obsessing over results is more likely to sabotage your results, instead of helping you achieve them.
Why? Because results don’t come from thinking about them. They come from consistently executing the right processes, day in and day out. If you’re sitting around dreaming about the end goal but not taking action, you’re not going anywhere. It’s like staring at a map but never starting the engine.
Here’s the key thing to understand: no matter what you’re chasing—whether it’s building a business, getting in shape, or improving your relationships—results don’t show up overnight. There’s always a lag between when you start doing something, and when results start coming.
So understand that there’s 2 phases to success in anything. First is the “habit building phase” and second is the “results phase”.
The Two Phases of Results
Let’s break it down:
- The Habit-Building Phase (0-12 months): This is where you’re laying the foundation for your future success. You’re executing the process but results are little to none. The goal of this phase is not to get spectacular results, but to build the habits which eventually get you results! The big mistake is expecting and focusing on results in this phase!
- The Results Phase (12+ months): Once the habits are ingrained, that’s when things start happening. This is when results from the habits you built in the first 12 months start coming. But here’s the thing—you only get here if you stick it through the first phase. This is when you can start thinking about the outcomes and improving your processes to get there, but until then you have no right to worry about the outcomes!
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The problem? Most people quit during the habit-building phase because they’re too fixated on the lack of results. They get frustrated, doubt themselves, and throw in the towel. But here’s the truth: you didn’t fail because you didn’t see results. You failed because you gave up. And by giving up, you walked away from the path that would’ve eventually led you to those results in the future.
The Cake Analogy
Think of it like baking a cake. If you stare at the oven for two hours, constantly worrying about whether the cake is baking properly, you’re going to drive yourself nuts. You might even start messing with the temperature, open the oven too early, and ruin the cake. But if you trust the process, set the timer, and walk away, the cake bakes perfectly.
The same goes for life. When you’re overly fixated on results, you create unnecessary stress and doubt. You start second-guessing yourself, and that’s when things fall apart. Instead, focus on the process, trust it, and let the results take care of themselves.
Wisdom from the Tao Te Ching and Bhagavad Gita
The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu it says:
“Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity.”
And the Bhagavad Gita tells us:
“The wise, who are free from attachments, perform their duties with a mind steady in wisdom, renouncing the fruits of their actions.”
What does this mean? It means do the work with full intensity, but don’t worry about the outcome. Focus on the process, and let go of the results.
Why Obsessing Over Results Backfires
Now, you might be thinking, “But Colin, if I don’t focus on the results, how will I ever achieve them?” Here’s the thing: obsessing over results actually reduces your chances of success. It creates a constant sense of lack—a feeling of “I don’t have this thing yet”—which leads to constant frustration. This frustration will inject a sense of negative emotions in your life, leading you to misery and giving up entirely.
Truly successful people aren’t obsessed with results. They’re obsessed with their processes. As Tom Brady said:
“You can’t always control the outcome, but you can control your effort every single day.”
Changing Your Criteria for Success
Here’s where things get interesting. Society and social media have brainwashed us to equate success with results. But the truth is, you don’t have full control over results. What you do have control over is whether you execute the process.
So, here’s the shift you gotta make: change your “criteria for success”. Instead of measuring success by whether or not you achieved a certain outcome, measure it by whether you took the right actions. Did you do the work you promised yourself you’d do? If yes, that’s a win—even if the results aren’t there yet.
For example, if your goal is to make 100 cold calls a day, success isn’t whether you closed a deal. Success is whether you made those 100 calls. If you did, celebrate that. Reward yourself for taking the right actions, regardless of the outcome.
The Winner Effect
This mindset shift ties into something called the winner effect. In his book The Winner Effect, Ian Robertson explains how success leads to more success. When you win—even in small ways—it creates a biological response that increases your confidence, motivation, and performance. It’s essentially an upward spiral or “positive feedback loop”.
By focusing on the process and celebrating your actions, you create your own winner effect. Every time you execute the process, you’re generating that positive feedback loop. But if you tie your happiness to outcomes, you risk falling into a loser effect.
Why? Because like I said, you don’t have control over the outcome, so if you depend on outcomes to drive your winner effect, you won’t keep up the winner effect momentum and instead fall into the loser effect (the opposite of the winner effect). This is where you fall into a downward spiral of failure where each failure leads to more failure:
win-lose-lose-lose-lose-win-win-lose-lose-lose-lose-lose
Instead, what we really want is:
win-win-win-win-win-win-win-win-win-win-win-win-win
And the only way to do that is by anchoring our winner effect to whether or not we took the right action (something we have 100% control over) instead of our outcomes (something we don’t have complete control over).
Nurture yourself like a baby
The big issue most of us make when we start anything new is beating ourselves up because of the lack of results. Like I said above, this is a huge mistake because it kills your winner effect, which is crucial for long-term success.
What you need to do is view your progress like nurturing a baby. If you yell at the baby because it makes mistakes, you’ll kill it’s self esteem and that baby will not grow up to be a healthy adult. Instead, if you encourage it and shower it with love and affection (despite it’s mistakes), then it’ll grow up to be a healthy and confident adult.
Once the baby grows up to be a teenager, that’s when they’re capable of taking constructive feedback without being crushed by it emotionally and so that’s when the parents should begin to introduce such feedback.
You have to think of your own progress in the same way. In the formative phase of your progress in anything new, you must encourage yourself, console yourself and view everything as a “positive”. Once you’ve “grown up” i.e. have spent enough time doing this and started getting results, that’s when you can introduce “constructive feedback” to improve.
Practical Steps to Detach from Results
Alright, let’s get practical. How do you actually detach from results and focus on the process?
- Stop Checking Outcome Metrics: Stop looking at and obsessing over things like sales numbers, follower counts and views. You need to actively block these outcome metrics from your sight.
- Track Your Processes: Create a simple tracker for your daily actions. For example, if your goal is to write 500 words a day, track that. Not the book sales, not the likes—just the writing.
- Get Off Social Media: Seeing others’ highlight reels will only make you feel disappointed. Instead, focus on your own journey and compare yourself to who you were yesterday.
- Remember the S-Curve: Remember, your goal in the “habit building phase” is simply to build the habit of taking the right actions, not to “get results”. Only once you’ve spent 12 months building the habits should you even start thinking about the outcomes!
- Celebrate Small Wins: Don’t discount your progress, no matter how small. Those 30 followers? That’s 30 real people. Imagine 30 people sitting in your living room listening to you talk. That’s a lot of people!
How I’m Applying This in My Own Life
As of the time of posting this, my YouTube channel has 110 subscribers. I’ve been working hard, putting out videos, and guess what? Most of them get less than 20 views. It’s easy for me to feel discouraged, but instead of allowing my mind to do so, here’s what I’m doing instead:
- I don’t check my YouTube Studio stats. I’ve deleted the app from my phone.
- Instead, I track my video uploads. My goal is 25 videos by my birthday next year. Every time I upload one, I check it off. That’s my win. If I do it, I feel happy (regardless of how many views it gets).
- I trust that if I keep putting out content that helps people, the results will come—whether it takes one year or three. To me it doesn’t matter. All that matters is expressing my views and sharing my ideas to the world.
As the Bible says in Galatians 6:9:
“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”