How Do You See Progress?

Changing the way you look at progress.

Photo by David van Dijk on Unsplash

2020 is a tough year. This year, I see people fall. This year, I see people rise. But why, it’s as if I’m stuck in place, neither falling nor rising. Everyone else progresses but me.

These thoughts filled up my head a while back. He’s fired, but he got in a new, better company. She now can help support her family’s spending. He started a new business. All the while I am still in the same place, just where I am a year ago.

Am I this incapable of starting something? Am I this incapable when compared to others? Am I only capable of this much? These thoughts took away my passion for the things I am doing.

Looking back, I realized where all these devastating thoughts are coming from. I have the unconscious constructed definition of progress as starting something new. That’s it. The only progress that counts for me is to start something new that differentiate itself from how life usually goes.

I realize that, yes, starting something new is a form of progress, but so is continuing something consistently and ending things that don’t work out.

1. Continuing something consistently probably takes more will than starting something. You need to have perseverance to do the same thing over and over again not only for days, weeks, or months — sometimes, for years. Doing something over and over again feels excruciatingly boring. I realize I tend to interpret ‘boring’ as ‘unproductive’. When I feel unproductive, I feel like I am not progressing enough in life. In reality, you got to consistently do something in life for it to grow. Just like the practice makes perfect jargon, you gotta do something consistently before there’s a significant happening. (But to be honest, I don’t think practice is all it takes to make it perfect, but let’s talk about it in another time.)
2. Ending things that you know don’t work out takes courage. Well, ending something takes double the courage of starting. Why? Probably this term will explain it better: sunk-cost fallacy. According to Olivola (2018), sunk-cost fallacy is “pursuing an inferior alternative merely because we have previously invested significant, but nonrecoverable resources in it”. Thus, the thought of letting go something you have invested so many things into it seems too much. You had pour out efforts and time into something that you find it a waste to let go. We often hold onto things that we know wouldn’t work out hoping it would miraculously work out. Not because of the probability it working out, but because the emotional attachment you have towards it. So, let’s learn to let go, especially in 2021.

I limit progress, thus all the struggle of realizing I haven’t start anything new these months. For now, ending things and continuing things is a much significant progress in my life than starting something.

My realization is that I could be in the same place, but not in the same point as I am a year ago. Progress comes in different forms. Don’t ever try to compare your progress and someone else’s progress.

So, what’s the progress you have made in 2020? What progress are you aiming to make in 2021?