Complete Story
 

12/03/2018

Science Says It's a Terrible Idea to Push Yourself Outside Your Comfort Zone

Experts say stay in your “zone of proximal development”

If you're looking for self-improvement advice online, the first thing you're likely to encounter is some guru armed with a workout metaphor telling you that growth starts where your comfort zone ends. It's simple, intuitive advice and it clearly appeals to a great many people's masochistic desire to prove their mettle by making themselves uncomfortable.

There's only one problem with this bedrock piece of internet wisdom: science proves it's just plain wrong.

Pushing yourself harder can leave you weaker
But wait, many self-actualization obsessed folks will respond, if you want to get better at anything, surely you have to push yourself. That's true. If you want to get stronger, repeatedly lifting a weight too small to cause you to break a sweat is going to do exactly nothing. Doing the exact same thing day after day never leads to a better result.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Inc.

Printer-Friendly Version