The problem with progress
Progress is a general desire, one humans are wired for, but why do so few people get what all of us desire?
One of the most frustrating things in life is turning up at a milestone date or achievement, wondering what the next step is, with no answer in sight. Even more frustrating is when the current situation becomes too toxic or untenable, but the mind cannot figure a way out of the chaos. Even when there is freedom of choice, one feels caged in an arrangement they desperately want out of.
Until work, personal development and earning become major priorities, progress is largely linear, unproblematic and straightforward. A person of average intelligence can move from class to class until secondary education is complete. A little bigger than that, status-defining examinations become the qualification criteria to move from one bloc of progress to another, like from primary to secondary and from secondary to university. For those who further up until the master's and sometimes PhD level, the linearity of progress is very well pronounced.
So many people get a jolt of reality when they eventually leave school. They must grow up, be responsible, find love and, most importantly, find work. When they ultimately find it, they are first of all happy to have something to do, then they aren’t. Eventually, they realise that they must also find meaning in the work. Not just that, they must design and establish a fairly consistent system of progress, one they are unskilled at, but also one that grossly contributes to the meaning that work should give. And so, one stumbles across their internal disgust for stagnation. Contrary to popular belief and assumption, progress is not exactly easy after responsibility strikes.
Disgust for Stagnation is a Human Feature, not a Bug
That’s a lot of gut punches for an adult. It is safe to say that any adult who is not internally disgusted by stagnation is broken at a human level. Even the most twisted criminal aspires to something. Every criminal has a story, a justification for what they do. There is an innate desire to be progressively better at something, to have more of something, no matter how twisted it is. Abundance is a goal that cuts across many fields of desire. People want better love, better friends, and better life experiences. Within the confines of what is generally assumed about satisfaction, everybody always wants more. That’s where progress comes in.
Real-life progress outside a regimented environment is undefined and non-linear. Everyone has to do the hard work of designing it; it’s very much possible to find the luck of working with a template or two that point in the direction of achieving personal desires - mentors, role models, and examples. But even in the best-case scenarios, they are just templates. Paths are unique and must be designed by thee traveller.
There are even stages of life where progress is no longer a desire; it’s an expectation. The point where being described as having potential is no longer a compliment but a degrading insult. With progress, path and pattern design is constant because the internal locus of satisfaction and desire is constantly changing. That’s why when the overall context changes, doing more of what used to bring happiness is not always the way forward. Living in a well-designed, self-contained apartment is the peak of the bachelor/bachelorette lifestyle. As soon as one gets married, that becomes the base. So, how does one arrive at more?
Not Everyone gets More.
Many people deserve more, and some think that they deserve more. They feel they have put in the prerequisite effort to achieve and acquire more. Unfortunately, not everyone gets more. In fact, progress is so difficult that many people resign from seeking it. So, they brainwash themselves to redefine satisfaction. Contentment becomes the new term assigned to the debris from a lack of ambition and the death of dreams caused by failure. That’s why many people feel overwhelming sadness just before their birthdays and the New Year. All that communication about progress and reminders of the passing of time leaves them paralysed. Now that the New Year resolution craze has subsided, this is an excellent time to sort out the progress engine without the pressure. This is the pit stop in a Formula One race.
The dream problem.
Some people struggle with progress because they can’t seem to stop thinking small, acting small, and living small. Small here does not have an outside context; it’s living daily with the sinking feeling that the results currently present do not reflect the stage of life one should be in. But somehow, they can’t figure out what more is. There no context upon which a dream can be cast so dreaming looks impossible.
But everybody can dream and see in size. There is a certain knack for knowing what wholesome individual fulfillment would look like in a distracting world, even as children. Everyone can point to a certain lofty ambition they had as kids. No matter how unachievable it currently looks, the capacity to see in size and dream extensively is one of the things humans generally agree on.
As adult life and career begins, people who only see small pictures can only do what’s in front of them. They have incredible focus to do the little things well, but they can’t see or comprehend the whole picture. Worse, they can’t figure out how to escape the simple grind, even when they loathe it. Dreaming has everything to do with size. After all, the real meaning of the word is sleeping and spawning an entirely different world in another plane of existence. Being stuck in the small things makes it impossible to dream and see the big picture in the real world, even if they know it exists. It’s hard to design themselves into the system they desire.
As long as dreams don’t happen, the bite of stagnation will be ever-present, but the power to follow the prompt that the bite gives is non-existent. This is the dream problem.
The execution problem.
Some others are big dreamers and sharers but don’t know how to tunnel down and execute. They see different parts clearly but are unable to connect them. They spawn worlds for fun and pleasure but draw the line when their hands need to get dirty. It’s like looking and desiring an estate from inside a plane or an elevated position. The beautiful roofs and structured patterns are a wonder to behold, but the beholder has no idea the kind of work involved to put that up.
These people are considered lazy and referred to as big talkers because sometimes, they don’t even know when they overshare. The tenacity needed to see small bits and pieces of the big picture is placed on the other side of the river and there is no boat in sight. So, while they know what it takes in theory, they never really get trusted with the big responsibilities that help them progress. They are the big talkers and the big dreamers.This is an execution problem.
Fortunately, you need both for progress.
No one skill carries all the advantages. While people eventually have to tilt to one side, both contribute a fair amount to progress. To properly design a progress system, the ability to dream and execute is non-negotiable. A perfect example of how each is tilted to one side is how big organisations operate - the CEOs and COOs. CEOs are dreamers, the vision casters, while COOs are the executors.
That’s not to say CEOs can’t execute and COOs can’t cast visions (they wouldn’t have been able to get to their respective positions without doing both). Most early life (career and otherwise) would involve tuning down and focusing on executions. Mastering the skills required to be exceptional at one or a few things is a staple. One must obsess over fine details up to the point of boredom. Doing them long enough is the cost required to earn the privilege to cast visions.
An interesting paradox presents itself at this juncture. While doing the boring thing, the vision makes it worth doing. Being able to cast personal visions of progress means that work is only a mutually beneficial relationship. The individual is on a journey they have designed for themselves while also being an important cog in the vision that another person has designed. While getting financial remuneration for the work done, there is a true north guiding the individual to their own goal, mutually excluded from that of the employer.
Personal vision and direction while still contributing to another person’s goal is the place where progress is birthed and direction is maintained. The personal vision determines the next steps, and provides adequate information if the current arrangement settled for will eventually lead to that vision. This vision should be the primary driver of why and when you should switch jobs and build a particular skill set. It is also why people might chose to overlook more lucrative offers because the cogs don’t fit.
How does one balance the big picture and the small, boring task? How does one know when it’s right to chase something different or to hold on to what’s in hand? Transitions are a great place to start.
Fixing Your Transitions.
In football, transitions mostly happen between both boxes. It is when you have to suddenly defend while attacking or when you have to attack while defending. It goes like this - your team has the ball, and you are looking to score a goal. Suddenly, your teammate makes a mistake and loses the ball. Because they have now lost the ball, your team changes from trying to score to trying to prevent a goal. The other team also transitions from trying to prevent a goal to trying to score a goal.
To make progress, small steps lead to big steps, and big steps lead to small steps. Fixing your transition is learning to choose small and big steps when appropriate. It’s knowing when to dream and when to execute. If you are lacking motivation, dream. Find something in your future to get excited about. If you have dreamt, plan. If you have planned, focus and execute. Then, you don’t stop when you are tired; you stop when you are done. But again, progress is not linear; it’s not simple. Dreaming and focusing might not be enough. How do you make sure you are correctly fixing your transitions?
Change your lenses.
Spectacles help people with long or short-sightedness get the sight they lack. The spectacles become a transition aid, so they can see long, short, or clearer, as the case demands. Except self-awareness is achieved as a child, by 18 years old or adulthood, more than half of held opinions do not belong to the person holding them. But not just opinions - habits, ways of life, patterns and ways of doing things. Many things people believe and do are hand-me-downs, some living even longer than one generation. This includes ways of thinking about life and progress.
At the point where one can’t dream or can’t execute, they are only reflecting their environment. Chances are that the biggest influences in your life up until that point have influenced you more than you are willing to accept. You would almost indefinitely realise that what you are dealing with is something they have dealt with all their lives and have adjusted to. You are looking through their lenses, which may be clouded, dusty, or outright broken. If you have come to a point where you can’t do what you need to do to move forward, you need to change how you see.
To fix your transition, you need a new perspective. Get a new lens. Leave the comfort of what you’ve known and venture into the vast areas of land in front of you. Challenge the things you have been told before. Your methods, your strategies, and your repetitive way of doing things keep giving the same results. Ask people who have better outcomes to share their lenses. Most importantly, get a new pair of lenses, one that covers your areas of deficiencies. With new lenses, you can see far and dream if you have a dream problem. If you have an execution problem, you can intently focus on the tiny bits to execute the simple steps. Either way, you can see what’s possible and use your new lens as a transition apparatus.
Fix Your Associations
Influencers on social media have provided a certain template for the association. Nearly every influencer who is reasonable has their day ones. Associations fix transition problems because it is the nature of unlike charges to attract. Dreamers attract doers, doers attract dreamers, and many successful ventures are a collaboration between unlike charges. There is a world where a dreamer might not be able to get down to the level of an executor but still desires the results and vice versa.
Hikers also demonstrate this every time. By joining the right groups of people, collective energy creates results far greater than the sum of its parts. In the right group, one can reach mountain peaks they are personally incapable of. They can walk distances that they dare not try by themselves. The goal is simple. Find a group of people or even a person who is headed in your direction. A linkage between one who has a skillset for which you can strike an exchange with yours is another viable deal.
At a fundamental level, that can mean joining someone with an opposite skill—accountability partners, value exchange partners, or whatever name a group or person can take on. Align at a level where one can fixate on crafting the goals while the other focuses on getting everyone involved in executing. Soon enough, a rhythm of progress is struck.
Expand your knowledge base with relevant content.
Lack of knowledge is a real problem. Lack of progress is often a result of ignorance in any of its three forms. There is the ignorance of what the next step is. If the next step is known, then how to get there isn’t. But sometimes, it’s even ignorance about a next step. It’s the proverbial case of a horse who’s been freed from its tangles, not knowing that freedom is already available.
Getting more content about the place where one is stuck is often the first step in making progress. What are the standards that exist that can be met? Who are the people that can guide? Knowledge is one expert way to fix transition. Learning the what, where, why and how of a field one is playing in can unlock a great deal of progress. Many new age careers do not have natural path progression like engineering or medicine. But they do have progression.
For example, someone who starts as a graphic designer would after a few years know that they can’t continue like this. Their life is changing and demands for something new. But if they don’t know that a graphic designer can become a UI/UX designer, can become a website designer and can layer one skill on top of another, they will keep moving from one graphic design role to another. Even if better pay is always on the offering, their lack of knowledge about adjacent fields of design that can test them and offer longer career focus that gives satisfaction hinders them.
Expanding one’s knowledge base can help one get out of progress rot. Knowledge can help you dream better and imagine better. With content and information, realities and flexibilities are given a medium of expression. An artistic genius who does not know what a Canvas is would never get to express that genius.
Commit to a Full Process
Everything worth doing has a full process, but only a few people commit to it. One of the reasons why organisations with defined hierarchical structures and growth trajectories are great is because they stimulate the defined environment available in early life. Many times, when people commit to the process afforded by this opportunity, those who struggle with dreaming can learn and grow their dreaming ability. Those who struggle with execution can also sort that out for themselves.
Outside of highly structured organisations, people can learn to be committed to the full process. The folly of youth is to find shortcuts. Unfortunately, shortcuts breed half-baked people who have missed the opportunities to learn and grow along the way. Hence some of the obstacles mentioned above. Committing to the full process can be slow but offers a guarantee that if you stick long enough with it, in the trajectory you have seen, something good will result. It assures you during the bad days because while you are trusting the process, the process is aware of the enormous trust placed on it.
Committing to a full process eliminates sentiment. You have a template and your job is to see it through. Feelings have no bearing on the outcome. The math is always simple. IF A is desired, then B has to be done. If B is truncated, then C results. Even in times of uncertainty, committing to a full process of legitimate enterprise often helps fix transitions and pull people out of the lack of progress sinkhole they find themselves.
Sometimes, You Just Have to Wait.
Sometimes, the obvious thing to do is often the most difficult - waiting. We are too anxious to succeed and progress, and the recent pressure on young people to achieve wilding success has not helped. Many people who complain about lack of progress are just too anxious to succeed. A simple search into their daily efforts would show that they are doing the right things. They are speaking to the right people, having the right dream and even executing at an excellent level. They just have their clocks strung a bit too fast, even when they are ahead.
Before jumping to the conclusion that one is stuck, they have to truly examine their situation to find out if they are stuck or they just have to wait. In 80% of cases, a process that would take 3 years to bloom will not happen before the 3-year mark. So setback looks like being on a trajectory to achieve a 3-year result in 18 months and being knocked back by 8 months. What is termed as stagnation as actually incredible speed by all metrics available.
Patience has remained a virtue. In the periods where one feels stuck, they can wait it out. They can work harder to set themselves up for wilding success. While waiting, make concerted efforts like cards on a domino deck. Stack up the hard work so that success comes in two’s, three’s, or four’s.
Find Balance in the Rat Race
The rat race is the never-ending chase of progress. Your life should be set up to allow you to enjoy the fruit of your work without the pressure to get more. You should be able to turn off the pressure and not feel scared. Turning off the pressure should be a goal in itself. There is always the next mountain, the next financial target, and the next career goal.
Many people have fixated on that to a disproportionate level and have robbed today of its joys. Be intentional about the pressure you allow yourself to come under. It’s okay to bask in a win, to take time off and do nothing. You should let the expectations drop from time to time. While the comfort zone is not a place where anything grows, one needs to steady themselves. That’s the only way you can learn to bring the heat to the grind when it is required. May the odds be in your favour.
If you have an idea I might have missed out on, don’t hesitate to put it in the comments. If it’s a contrary perspective or opinion, I would love to hear it. Finally, can you share this with someone in your circle who would enjoy it? I’m counting on you.