Eating Your Vegetables: The 10-12 Exposure Rule
Do a hard, avoided skill 10-12 deliberate times before judging whether you actually dislike it.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 92%
A method for building uncomfortable but important skills by forcing enough repetitions to tell 'I dislike this because I'm new/bad at it' apart from 'I genuinely dislike this.' Modeled on how children need 10-12 exposures to develop a taste for vegetables, it pairs a fixed repetition count with a concrete, physical completion rule that prevents you from bailing early.
Origin
Ada Chen Rekhi coined the branded term 'eating your vegetables,' drawing on child-nutrition research that kids need roughly 10-12 exposures to a vegetable before liking it, and applying it to career-skill development.
Core principles
- 01First attempts at anything are bad; one failed try isn't valid data about whether you like it
- 02Repeated exposure (roughly 10-12 times) is what builds affinity for a skill
- 03Distinguish dislike-from-newness from genuine dislike — only the latter, after real reps, should stop you
- 04Target the obvious things you're not good at but that matter
- 05A concrete, physical completion rule beats a vague intention
How to run it
- 1
Identify an important skill you avoid because you're bad at it
Look for the obvious skills that matter for your goals but that you dodge because they're uncomfortable or you've never done them (networking, posting content, cold outreach).
Watch out Don't confuse 'I'm new and bad at this' with 'I genuinely dislike this' — you can't tell the difference until you've done the reps.
- 2
Commit to ~10-12 deliberate repetitions
Set a rule to do the activity a fixed number of times (a sequence of ~10-12) rather than trying once, failing, and swearing it off forever. Space them into a regular cadence (e.g. once a week for a couple of months).
Pro tip Reframe each rep as low-stakes practice, not a make-or-break performance.
Watch out One outreach that fails followed by 'I'm never doing that again' guarantees you never learn — build a pattern instead.
- 3
Attach a concrete, physical completion rule
Give each rep an unambiguous, physical done-condition that forces you through the discomfort rather than letting you escape early.
Pro tip Ada's rule: at each event, hand out all 10 business cards to new people AND touch the back wall of the venue before leaving — the physicality forces you across the whole room.
- 4
Review what resonated and re-judge
After the reps, look back at what you produced or experienced, see what genuinely resonated or got easier, and only then decide whether it's a genuine dislike or a skill worth keeping.
Pro tip With a LinkedIn 30 (post daily for 30 days), the review step — seeing which posts resonated — is where the real learning is.
In the wild
New to Silicon Valley and bad at networking, Ada set a rule: once a week for a couple of months, go to an external event, hand out all 10 business cards by introducing herself to new people, touch the back wall, then she could leave. The first weeks were 'really awful,' but it got easier as familiar faces appeared and she learned to move through a crowd.
→ Relationships formed in those first months became foundational to her professional network today — the discomfort paid off because she powered through the exposures.
Common mistakes
Quitting after one bad attempt
Judging a skill from a single failed try (one awkward networking event, one ignored DM) mistakes newness for genuine dislike; you need ~10-12 reps before the data is meaningful.
No forcing function to finish the rep
Without a concrete physical rule (hand out all cards, touch the back wall), you'll escape the room early and never accumulate the exposure that builds the skill.
Is it for you?
Best for
People avoiding an important but uncomfortable skill — networking, content creation, cold outreach — who keep bailing after early failures.
Not ideal for
Skills that are genuinely irrelevant to your goals, or cases where you've already done the reps and confirmed a real dislike.
From the transcript
“eating your vegetables is really this idea around how little kids don't really develop an appreciation for vegetables until they're 10 or 12 exposures in”
“how do you identify dislike for something because you're bad at it or you're new to it or you've never done it before compared to…”
“I had to hand out all 10 of those business cards by introducing myself to people that were new and touch the back wall of…”
“instead of having one outreach and then failing at it and saying I'm never doing that again”
From the episode
How to make better decisions and build a joyful career
Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey)