In this solo episode of the No Days Off podcast, host Brian Gubernick explores how personal and professional growth unfolds in non‑linear cycles he frames as seasons. He describes a recurring pattern of four phases: a growth phase that leads to a peak, a brief regression where performance dips, a plateau where effort is focused on discovery and iteration, and a subsequent growth phase that reaches a higher peak. Gubernick argues that the amount of disciplined work put in during plateaus determines the size of the next peak, while personal discipline during regressions prevents backsliding. He warns against complacency, noting that refusing to settle for “good” can extend a peak. Throughout, he invites listeners to assess which phase they are currently in—growth, regression, or plateau—and to take concrete actions (push harder, stay disciplined, experiment) appropriate to that season. He concludes by likening life’s cycles to the four seasons (spring, summer, fall, winter), urging listeners to recognize their current season and act accordingly, reinforcing the podcast’s mantra that every day offers a new chance to improve.
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Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick and welcome to the No Days Off podcast where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into it today. I want to talk about growth, growth in business, growth in relationships, growth in health, just, just overall growth in life. And, and some of my thoughts around how growth actually occurs. Okay. We've probably seen a lot of these charts before that show that growth is not linear. It is not growing at the exact same— you're not growing at the same rate over the length of time. In other words, you have a lot of ups and downs and ideally over months or even years or decades, as you're having these ups and downs, you are still moving up and to the right. The graph is progressing towards the top right, but it's never a straight line. Sometimes we talk about growth being geometric in that very small gains over time, and then suddenly you hit a tipping point and you'll see that hockey stick. I've seen growth of that nature occur too, but I'll tell you what, what I've seen throughout my life, and I, you know, I don't necessarily think I'm right, I'm just, as I analyze progress that I've made in my life. Here's how I've seen the growth curve actually work out for me. Whatever I endeavor, whatever I start doing, whenever I, whenever I begin a project with the intention of success, right? And project being business project, health project, relationship, whatever it may be, what I'll find is that I will grow, right? I'm working towards improvement and I grow and I grow and I grow and I grow. And I hit some degree of a peak. We'll call that peak number 1 for sake of this conversation. You hit a peak and for a number of reasons that we'll discuss, you hit a peak and you start to regress a bit and you regress and you regress and you finally kind of straighten out that regression and you'll plateau. Okay. So we have growth and we hit peak number 1 over time. You know, you can't continue to peak and you begin to regress. Ideally you regress only for a short pit, short bit, and then you hit a plateau. I will call that Plateau Number 1. And then you're chugging along at Plateau Number 1, but then you figure things out again and you start to grow and you grow and you grow. And now you hit Peak Number 2, right? Because this growth is not sustainable. No matter what we do, the growth cannot continue, you know, with, you know, indefinite time period. So you hit Peak Number 2. Now note, peak number 2 is higher than peak number 1. While we regressed previously and we plateaued, we started growing again and we passed where, where we had been previously with our last peak. Now we get to peak number 2 and we begin to regress again. Again, hopefully we regress a short bit before we hit plateau number 2. Now, plateau number 2— I want you to picture this visual— is actually at a higher point than peak number 1. So if we're drawing this from left to right, okay, just picture in your mind, left to right, we're progressing up, we're drawing a line up, we hit a peak. Now we draw a line back down a little bit. Now we plateau, so it straightens out. Then we go back up again, peak, regression, plateau. This is how I've seen progress actually play out in real life. You know, I know again, it's not linear. And I know we all shoot for this geometric progression. I actually don't find it to be geometric more times than not. I find it being choppy, up, down, plateau, up, down, plateau. Now let's talk about each one of these respective segments. First, how hard you train, how hard you work during the plateaus is what impacts the size and the length of the peaks. Okay? So when you're in a plateau, when you're progressing along, but you're not really, you're not going up, you're not going down, you're just working and you're trying to figure it out. How hard you go during that moment, during that period of time— and that period of time may be a week, a month, a year, maybe even years you're at a plateau— how hard you're working, how hard you're focused, how hard you're training during that plateau is what impacts the size of the actual peak that you end up generating. Now you're in that peak, as I was describing, And that peak eventually will, will turn to regression because it's not sustainable. Now you have to have personal discipline to do the things that you really do not want to do when you must do them during a regression. Remember, now you're going backwards a slight bit. Things are not as fun. They're not as exciting. You know, it's a real battle. You have to have the personal discipline to do the things you don't usually want to do because you got to just get them done. Now, when it comes to the peak, you can actually extend a peak, not indefinitely, but you can extend a peak by refusing to become complacent, by refusing to be content. Goes back to a previous episode, Good is Actually the Enemy of Great. So refusing to put up with complacency can extend a peak. Now think through this now. Okay, here's the focusing question for you today. Are you in a growth phase? Are you seeing progress day after day after day and you're excited and things are moving forward? Are you in a growth phase? Recognize that you're going to hit a peak here soon. How do we prolong this growth phase? We have to continue to work hard. We have to continue to push. We have to recognize that we're in a growth phase. And we are going to peak at some point. We're going to peak at some point, but we want to extend this growth by not becoming complacent, by recognizing that you have to continue to strive for more. You have to even take risks. You cannot become content with good. Now, once you hit that peak, you will in fact regress. If you're finding yourself right now in a moment of regression, You're going backwards as everybody does in health, business, relationships. It happens. You must have personal discipline to do the things that you're not really excited to do right now, to get out of bed and go harder than you've gone. Now recognize it's easy to get out of bed when things— when you're on a roll. It's pretty damn hard to get out of bed though, when things are not going the direction you want them to go. That's when you have to have the discipline to do it. Now, as you turn out of this regression, because you will, and you'll get into this plateau period— again, plateau is for discovery, it's for iteration, it's for change, it's for reimagining the direction you're going, testing out other hypothesis, you know, recognizing that what's got you here today is not necessarily what's going to get you there in the future. That's what you're solving for in the plateau. And as soon as you figure it out, you will hit growth phase again. So where are you at in your journey right now? Where are you at in your journey personally? Where are you at in it professionally? Are you growing? Are you regressing? Are you at a plateau? And based on those respective phases, what action steps must you take? What action steps must you take? Now, these are my thoughts on growth. As much as I'd love it to be linear, and I know it's not, and as much as geometric progression is an awesome thing, and it does occur from time to time, that hockey stick growth, What again I found is it's moments of up, moments of down, moments of flat before you turn it up again. The idea here is though, every single plateau has to be or gets to be higher than the previous peak. Stay on course. Recognize that your business and your life runs in seasons, meaning that there are falls and winters and springs and summers. Which season are you in and what are your action steps to move on to the next season or maintain the season that you're in fact in because it makes sense to do so? That's all I have for you today. The No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]
