Came across the term quantum leap in my reading recently. It prompted me to think about habit formation. A lot of books and podcasts out there advocate breaking down a Big Hairy Audacious Goal into smaller goals so that the journey of a thousand miles doesn’t become overwhelming.

Because you start off with a single step and focus on making the next step. Incremental improvements, these authors proclaim, will keep your morale high and prevent you from getting discouraged. Small goals also help you to stay focused. Once you detect something in your iteration, you can nimbly go back to the drawing board and make improvements to enhance the quality of the next iteration.

In a nutshell, these content creators have primed us to scale back our ambition and ration our energy,

But what if we are determined to go for break from the start? Pump in our all so as to achieve substantial results within short periods of time. Have our sight set on quantum leap.

I can think of actors and actresses pushing themselves to lose or gain weight or learning a craft within a short period of time in order to do justice to a meaty role. But most of us aren’t engaged in the creative arts industry, so we are unlikely to undertake such challenges.

I can’t think of any examples in my life that involved a quantum leap, except for my time in the Japan Exchange Teaching program. During my first year, my Japanese improved so much that I was selected by governmental authorities to embark on a Japanese-English translation course. It was an honour because I was deemed to have made a quantum leap in my Japanese proficiency.

I guess what I’m saying is that don’t be so overly influenced by your favorite authors and podcasters. Chances are, if you ponder carefully and creatively about your problem, you may come up with an exciting solution that facilitates quantum leaps.