The boot camp principle to get better at something id inspired by military basic training programs and it goes like this:Go through unrelenting challenges that you are completely unprepared for, day after day, for a handful of weeks, and you'll come out strong and resilient.

The Boot Camp Principle

Taking this approach to getting better at something means you have to get yourself on a self-imposed routine, where you do a little of your activity—writing, running, meditating —pushing the performance level daily. You gradually increase your mileage, so that your everyday target is just beyond what’s easy.

Gentle Ramping Approach

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<img src="https://www.raptitude.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/anisur-rahman-500.jpg">For whatever reason, whenever I resolve to get good at something, I habitually take a "boot camp" sort of approach. I draw up a challenging regimen, to be followed by hell or high water-for 30 days or so.
The regimen is always way too much to sustain forever, and I know that. The hope is that an intense period of focused striving will catapult me to new, higher realms of prowess and confidence, so that when I return to baseline, that baseline will be higher.
It works, sort of, sometimes. You can look at my <a href="https://www.raptitude.com/experiments/">experiment logs</a> to get a sense of the mixed outcomes. Some have been abject failures, almost comically so. Write at least a thousand words a day! (Result: "Outright failure.") Read a book a week for a year! (Result: "Catastrophe.")
And those are only the immediate outcomes. Longer term, the results are probably weaker. On many occasions, I soared through the boot camp period, declared myself permanently improved, and then quietly slid back to the baseline, which apparently had not moved.
For a long time I assumed that this pattern was due purely to my own personal bumbling, and not a problem with the method. After all, a boot camp style approach can be found for anything you want to get good at. There are programs that identify as "boot camps" for novel writing, personal budgeting, dating, poker, building a YouTube channel, reading the Russian masters, and of course hundreds of fitness programs. 
These programs vary a lot in how they actually instruct. But I think the essential boot camp promise, the thing you think of when you see the words-strive hard, for a time, and end up lastingly better-is mostly a mirage. 
The boot camp principle, inspired by military basic training programs, makes sense. Run new recruits through unrelenting challenges they are completely unprepared for, day after day, for a handful of weeks, and they come out strong and resilient.
However, real military boot camps come with two additional factors that make them work: once you sign up, you can't slack or quit without severe consequences. There's no way forward but to suffer and adapt. Afterward, you're kept from backsliding by peer pressure and institutional standards, for a few years. So they work really well.
A much less sexy approach to getting better at something is a "gentle ramping" sort of approach. You get yourself on a regimen where you do a little of the thing in question-writing, running, meditating, whatever-then a little more, and so on, always pushing the performance level slightly, without ever clobbering yourself with challenge. You gradually increase your mileage, reps, widgets, or some other metric, so that today's target is usually just beyond what's easy for you. 
Rather than going for the maximum challenge you can handle (for a mercifully short time) you're looking for that "just challenging enough to improve" window. And once you find it, you live in it.
I am, after fifteen or twenty serious campaigns to do so, finally approaching a condition I would call "physically fit" for the first time in my life, and I think it's because I'm taking the gentle ramp this time.
I run three times a week and lift weights three times a week, following a gently ramping program for each. My workouts aren't very long.
One thing I had to get used to was not going all-out in my training. On most days, I was clearly doing less than I could have. I would do my scheduled sets or miles and call it a day, even though I could have done more. I wasn't "leaving it all out there" or "giving every ounce" very often.
And precisely for that reason, I haven't had trouble sticking to it. There are extra-challenging days, but because they aren't the norm, I can always be ready to meet them. Excited even. The improvement has been very consistent. There's no more bargaining, no dread, and no compromise. I can live here.
That is exactly the gentle ramp's strength: you can live on it. You're not trying to just get through it. 
The gentle ramp demands things of you that the boot camp doesn't. Staying on it requires you to develop certain aspects of character. You have to accept, for example, that when you're on a sustainable trajectory, improvement takes time, and that time can't be compressed with a blast of effort. You start to give up on notions like making up missed sessions on the weekend. The gentle ramp's great lesson is that nothing really works but consistency over time, and that there's no replacement for either.
In other words, the gentle ramp allows for that fabled "lifestyle change" to actually happen. Your identity has time to catch up with your aspirations. The effort required to advance along a gentle ramp is doable for a regular person with other commitments and limited willpower, which describes pretty much everyone. (When you get into advanced territory, you may need advanced strategies, but by that time you're far past where the toughest boot camp could have taken you.)
The boot camp idea is certainly superior in one way: its marketability. It's an ideal selling proposition-you'll pay a lot now, yes, but reap great benefits ever after. Just get to the end of a short, painful "cost" phase and then enjoy your improved self. Temporary sacrifice, enduring benefit. It's the same angle used to sell us luxury vehicles and granite countertops.
I know I'm being a bit hard on the boot camp notion. It does have its place. But I think that place is mostly to get you onto some sort of gentle ramp. Some place you can actually live, and enjoy.
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For whatever reason, whenever I resolve to get good at something, I habitually take a "boot camp" sort of approach. I draw up a challenging regimen, to be followed by hell or high water-for 30 days or so. The regimen [...]

Two Ways To Get Better At Something

The Boot Camp Principle

Gentle Ramping Approach

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