What is Potential

Potential captures your personal growth and the capabilities you are still developing: mindset, skills, knowledge, mastery, and self-awareness. It is the pillar that tracks if you are constantly developing into the person you most want to be.

How we define Potential

Somewhere in our twenties, most of us stop being beginners at anything. Researchers have found that people's good days are the days they feel more capable and more self-directed than their own baseline. Not more capable than other people — more capable than they were the day before. Feeling competent is one of the three basic psychological needs in self-determination theory, alongside autonomy and relatedness, and our need for it does not stop once school ends.

At optml, we define Potential as the pursuit of growth, whether that is being a beginner at something or mastering something you have loved for a long time. It does not have to be useful. It just has to be growth. Because if we're not growing, we're dying.

Here, we break Potential down into: mindset, skills, knowledge, mastery, and self-awareness.

Mindset

The first part of Potential is the belief that, taught how, you can. Without the proper mindset, you will never achieve what you are fully capable of. This is why it is also the step before the plan in the optml method.

Psychologists call this belief self-efficacy, and it is one of the most reliable predictors we have of whether someone will actually accomplish what they set out to do. And this belief in your ability is built by doing. In a classic study of children learning math, the ones given small, near-term goals made rapid progress, came to believe in themselves, and grew interested in the subject, while a distant goal alone did no better than no goal at all.

Believe that you can do something, then earn that belief by doing a small version of it.

We recommend starting with a small action in this pillar you are certain you can do, then noticing that you did it. Keep a running list of what you have learned this year, however small, because that record fuels this belief.

And watch how you talk about yourself: "I'm bad at languages," or "I can't draw." Disempowering language becomes reality if you say it with emotion often enough and don't take steps to prove otherwise.

Skills

Skills means learning something from zero: a language, an instrument, a sport, code, a craft.

In a 2014 study, researchers had older adults spend three months learning digital photography, quilting, or both, about sixteen hours a week. Their memory improved more than that of groups who met to socialize or did easy puzzles at home, and some of the gains were still measurable a year later.

So, pick a skill you've always wanted to learn (e.g., speed reading, fencing, embroidery), and book in time on the calendar. Schedule out the first month's worth of lessons or dedicated time, and just show up when your calendar tells you to. After a month, if you've lost interest, pick a new one. But make sure to schedule it or it won't get time.

Knowledge

Knowledge is the reading, the courses, and the lectures: the kind of learning that changes how you think rather than passing the time.

Researchers followed 3,635 adults over fifty for twelve years and found that the ones who read books had a 20 percent lower risk of dying than the ones who did not, an advantage of almost two years, after accounting for education, wealth, and health. Newspapers and magazines helped less. The advantage was a result of cognitive engagement: books make you think, and thinking keeps you alive.

At optml, we recommend always having a book in progress, and giving it at least twenty minutes a week. Listen to it while you're doing the dishes, or read it during your lunch break. Take one course a year on something that has nothing to do with work.

Mastery

Under Potential, mastery is going deeper into something you already do (or know how to do). The tenth year of piano, the black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, the recipe you could recite in your sleep.

The best violin students had put in more than 10,000 hours of solitary, effortful practice by age 20, far more than the future music teachers. It is the practice, the part you control, that makes you excellent. Getting better at something unrelated to your job also helps you recover from work. Learning outside work, surprisingly, is rest.

Self-awareness

Self-awareness is knowing yourself: what you are good at, what you actually want, how you relate to other people, and who you might become.

In research, goals consistent with a person's own interests and values got more sustained effort, were more often reached, and did more for wellbeing. We all carry around "possible selves," the people we might become and are afraid of becoming. And this part of Potential is discovering who those selves are and how to step more into them.

Use curiosity: in a 21-day diary study, on the days people felt more curious than usual, they did more growth-oriented things and reported more meaning and higher life satisfaction. And looking back works when it is structured: across 46 studies, a structured debrief of what happened and why improved performance by about a quarter, for individuals as much as for teams. Just make sure to review the plan without making a judgment on yourself.

At optml, we do a Sunday Check-In every week, where we rate each of the six pillars and ask: what did we accomplish, what was magic, and how do we feel? Once a year, we write the best version of ourselves three to five years out; across 29 studies, that exercise alone raised mood and optimism.

"Find out whether I enjoy this" is a legitimate quarterly goal, and it counts as success to stop doing something that didn't feel right.

How we prioritize Potential

Here is how Potential gets planned in optml, following one example the whole way through.

The rating. On a Sunday in June, Maya, a product designer who hasn't been a beginner at anything since college, rates her Optml Six. Potential is rated a 3: the last new thing she learned was the software her job required. Her beloved guitar has been in the closet for two years, and she's lowkey dreading the trip to Mexico City next spring because she has the same four words of Spanish she has always had.

The vision and the year-long goal. On Potential's card in optml she writes the vision, three to five years out and in her own words: "I can hold a real conversation in Spanish, I am always learning one thing that has nothing to do with work, and I have stopped saying I'm not a language person." Under it, the goal for the year, written so she could check it in December: "A ten-minute conversation in Spanish with a stranger, and six books finished."

The quarter. For every pillar, optml supports multiple quarterly goals, so the year's goal breaks down into this quarter's: "By September 30, fifteen minutes of Spanish five mornings a week for twelve weeks, one conversation a week with a Spanish speaker, and three books finished." From now on the card shows whether the quarter is on pace.

The first Sunday Check-In. In Weekly Capture she empties her head: download the app, book a tutor, do the first three lessons, pick the first book, ask Diego at work about a weekly lunch in Spanish. Each of these items falls under Potential. She stars two must-dos, booking the tutor and the first lesson, then drags everything into the week beside her existing calendar events, in Potential's color: fifteen minutes at 7:45 on weekday mornings as a recurring action, a thirty-minute tutor call Thursday at 6pm, twenty minutes of reading at 9:30pm as a recurring block, and a fifteen-minute block Tuesday at 12:15 to ask Diego.

Following the day. On Monday, the Today tab shows the lesson first and she does it with her coffee. On Wednesday, an early meeting lands on top of the 7:45 slot; she drags the block to lunch rather than deleting it. Tuesday's fifteen minutes turns into a standing Friday lunch in Spanish, which goes on the calendar in Potential's color and counts for People at the same time.

The next Sunday. The Weekly Overview shows Potential: three hours planned, two hours ten completed. Four of five lessons happened, the tutor call happened, and she read five nights out of seven. She rates Potential again: a 4. She keeps the lessons and the tutor call, and the reading moves ten minutes earlier, because 9:30 was a little too late.

The end of the quarter. In the quarterly reflection she scores the goal. Lessons happened ten weeks out of twelve, she made nine tutoring calls, and she finished two books, not three. Call it 75 percent, but she ordered a coffee in Spanish without rehearsing it first. She has also learned one thing about herself: she learns better in the morning. Next quarter's goals build on this quarter's: she keeps the lessons where they are, increases the tutoring to twice a week, and moves the reading to the commute. The year's goal is on track, and Potential is a 6.

The year. In the annual review, she asks whether Potential still deserves the most effort or whether it is now maintenance while another pillar takes the lead. That is the whole loop: rate, name, plan the quarter, plan the week, follow the day, look back on Sunday, adjust.

Potential is the third of The Optml Six, between People and Prosperity. The annual review is where you decide how much weight it carries this year.