Experiencing Personal Progress

This post is an answer to Catking's post “How do you experience progress in your life?”.

The post starts with a definition of progress: “[A]n advancement of any magnitude in any area of life that brings you closer to where you want to be”. (So we're not talking about human well-being, science or culture.)

Instead of reflecting on my experience with progress, let's take the definition apart and analyse Catking's answers!

Any Area of Life

Catking goes through 4 areas of life:

On a more abstract level these examples cover these areas of life: the body, the mind, the person in relation to the community and finally the person in relation to society. With just four examples Catking has given a very broad representation of life areas.

But, I'd be remiss not to point out an area of life that I'm missing in this list. I'd call it “moral progress”. I don't only want to do well, I also want to do good. Personally, I try to remind myself of opportunities to act in ways that more closely align with my values: Going vegan, donating blood, donating money, donating blood money, ...

Any Magnitude

The interesting thing to observe here is that Catking measures the progress in Anki differently from the progress in sports or career: For his flashcards he has quantifiable, but tiny steps. Every flashcard is experienced as progress, because the counter of “looked at flashcards” increases by 1 every time. Meanwhile, for sports and career he has bigger milestones: Doing a sports-thing for the first time or finishing some project, course or semester.

I think it's interesting to contrast these two experiences of progress. Why are they different? It's not because they are inherent to these types of activities. There are also tiny quantifiable steps in sports or education: The burned calories, steps you walked, pages you studied, lectures you attended, etc. The same goes for flashcards, where you can make up bigger milestones: Having learned enough vocabulary to have your first conversation in a new language or having all cards of a certain topic reach maturity.

So it's clear that this experience of progress does not stem from the type of activity or area of life. I think the reason for these different perceptions is:

Where You Want To Be

If your goal in sports is to be able to do a flip or a no hands push-up then you'll probably not count calories. And if your goal in education is to get the piece of paper that says you were there, then that's what you focus on. Conversely, if you do Anki for the sake of it, you can feel accomplished and proud for every single flashcard.

These goals are just speculation on my part. Catking has not explicitly provided us with his goals in his post. Except once! He actually summarizes the experience with sports as “Der Weg ist das Ziel” (“The journey is the destination”). But this actually confuses me, because – in my eyes – it doesn't fit with the description that precedes it.

But which is better? Tiny victories and stat tracking or bigger milestones that require long(er)-term determination and work? I think they both have their strengths and weaknesses.

Chasing after milestones and achievements, like a certain level of skill, passing some test or reaching a certain number in some stat is a great way to motivate yourself short- to medium-term (depending on the size of the milestone). It's easy to visualize what the goal looks like and once you reach it you can also share the achievement with others. It also occupies a pre-defined timeframe.

On the other hand, celebrating the journey and the tiny steps on the way does not lend itself to sharing as easily. “Hey, I did 27 steps today – no wait, 29. – Oh 33, 34, 35. Look at me go!” What it does provide, though, is possibly indefinite motivation! Once a milestone is reached, you'll have to look for the next one. But when every step is rewarding, the next step is obvious. You will also not get frustrated by seemingly unreachable milestones if you are happy with just the next small step.

Where I Want To Be

Ok, fine. I'll talk about myself now.

I like to be quite intentional in the things I do and conscious about why I do them. I am aware that I sometimes rationalize my behaviour afterwards, but at least I will have thought about it.

A few months ago I set up the Life-Disciplines-Projects framework for myself. The core idea is to align your sense of self (Life) with your interests (Disciplines) and to align those with your actions (Projects). While I'm still struggling with implementing a daily routine or keeping up with my projects, the set up process in itself was a huge help in reflecting about my values and how I'm (not?) acting on them.

For myself, I have reflected, that core pillars in my life are Connection, Safety, Spontaneity and Knowledge. Those get more tangible when truned into disciplines: hosting events, well-being, stage work, art, learning, teaching, and a few others. These can get even more tangible as concrete projects, like writing a blog, making a game or reading a book.

But I'm always thinking about both, the more abstract disciplines and the concrete projects. This means that I also experience progress in both ways: A project has a goal and a finished project is thus a milestone to reach. But the goal of a discipline is more meta: It's to be a person that values these things and spends time on them. Thus any time spent on things in these disciplines I experience as progress.

Let's take the discipline “learning” and a corresponding project “read a book” as an example. It's tough to spend an hour reading and look at the kindle progress bar that now reads 8% instead of 5%. But I feel good and accomplished knowing that I have spent time “learning”, which fits the goal of “becoming a person that reads”. At the same time the concrete goal of finishing the book is also a great motivating factor and a milestone to reach.

Relationships

Since one of my life pillars is Connection I also want to comment on relationships and how I relate them to progress.

I don't like to think of relationships as transactional. I also don't like to think of a concrete relationship status as a goal. I'm neither looking to “level up this acquaintance to a friendship” nor am I looking to “reach 5 close friends”. Some relationships naturally progress to be deeper ones. Some don't. That's fine.

Instead, what I am actively working on is my own role in all my relationships. I want to be more empathetic when talking to people, I want to give good advice when asked, I want my home to be cosy such that guests feel relaxed and welcome, I want to be open and authentic with the people around me, I want to overcome my social anxieties and be confident in “difficult” social situations.

Closing Thoughts

To summarize my thoughts; Tracking personal progress continuously and as milestones combines the benefits of both. I encourage you to reflect on your life values, maybe through the LDP framework. Think about the body, the mind, the community, society and morality. If you are motivated to set yourself some goals, I also found a neat article on that.

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