In any activity that we engage ourselves in, from workouts to writing to learning a new language or even connecting with someone over a conversation, we find the start to be the easiest. 

Through the course of our lives, there are some things that we have learnt how to do, some competence we have built and some aptitude we have nurtured, and we can bank on that to get to the first plateau quite easily.

A plateau is a stage we get to where we aren't seeing any further improvement despite putting in the hours. 

This is when we need to do something different than what we have been doing that helps us make a leap towards the next plateau. 

Most of us do one of two things when we hit the plateau. 

One, we give up when we hit a plateau and move on to something else instead, where we go on to hit the plateau again and we repeat this endlessly. 

Or two, we continue to do what we are doing and fret about how we are putting in more and more time but not seeing any improvements.

The few people that assess what it takes to leap across the plateau are the ones that get better and make real improvements.

We all hit a plateau and we hit it often.

It's how we deal with it that makes a difference.