Are You Making Progress?

QUOTE OF THE DAY

AM I MAKING PROGRESS?

437 Words | 1 Min 35 Sec Read

Are you actually making any progress? This is a question you’ll come to ask yourself at some point in your journey; maybe you already do ask it on a daily basis, and if so, you understand how this nagging question in the back of your head can drive you mad.

More annoyingly, the answer to the question can only be answered by you because what may seem like progress to someone else is just vanity metrics in your own mind with no meaning, so how can you actually tell if you’re making progress?

Here are 3 methods to use that you won’t regret reading:

Firstly, don't compare yourself to others. We get it; you need a point of comparison; you need something to compare yourself to in order to truly see whether where you are in life is good, bad, behind, or ahead, but comparing yourself to complete strangers on the internet is digging a hole for yourself that you won’t be able to climb out of.

It’s important to remember that people only put out on social media what they want other people to see.

Our egos force us to only reveal the very best versions of ourselves, which gives us that slight subconscious boost. This, however, creates a never-ending loop of someone seeing something filtered on social media, feeling the need to not truly improve themselves but improve how other people see them, and therefore creating a false reality for themselves, and then there is always another person who feels the same way.

So if you shouldn’t compare yourself to others you see online, who or what should you use as a comparison? The answer is to only compare the current you to the past you, because that is how you see if you are actually making progress. If you’re making progress every day, you won’t notice a difference until you look back to a previous time and see what's changed.

Just like when you see your grandma after months and she goes mad with how much you’ve grown—in your eyes you haven't, but because she's using a previous version of yourself to compare you to, in her eyes you’re a giant.

Therefore, you need to zoom out on the graph. If you feel like you’re not making progress, maybe you’re just looking at the graph wrong. Like a stock graph, close up it may look like every day is a flatline, but when you look at it from a different perspective and instead of looking at a daily graph, you change it to a yearly one, you’ll be shocked by the amount you’ve grown.

ACTIONABLE NEXT STEPS:

Zoom out or create markers; for example, if you’re trying to grow a following, take a picture every week or month so instead of looking at a similar follower count every day, you can see how you’ve grown thousands month on month.

TAKEAWAYS:

Progress is something that shouldn’t shock you, especially if you analyse it day by day. It will seem like you’re crawling towards your goals instead of running towards them. In reality, there is no perfect growth metric, no amount you should be improving every day; therefore, take every day as a successful one and move on to the next.

BOOK OF THE WEEK ⤵️

The book of the week is ‘The E Myth’ by Michael E. Gerber, a book that walks you through the steps in the life of a business—from entrepreneurial infancy through adolescent growing pains to the mature entrepreneurial perspective: the guiding light of all businesses that succeed. Check it out HERE

CREATOR OF THE WEEK ⤵️

The creator of the week is @LeonHendrix, a superb creator who makes content for those who are hungry for more in life. Each one of his videos is like its own movie, with fantastic storytelling and straightforward messaging.

LESSON OF THE DAY ⤵️

You have to learn to do things you hate in order to do the things you love.

No payoffs come without sacrifice.