Progress is never a steady graph in the upwork or downward direction. On your path to your goals, there will be a ton of ups and downs, high points and low points. What matters is the view of the graph when you zoom out.
I’ve been tracking my weight every day for the past 2 months. I decided I wanted to use all the movement I’m doing daily to help me cut some fat from my belly. I’ve been tracking calories and weighing myself every day after the gym or my walk and the graph of all the data points is slowly forming.
When you look at a small chunk of the graph, it really doesn’t look like my weight is going down at all. What you’d see is a lot of high points, some low points, and in betweens. There’s really no trend one way or another.
Looking at that is kind of a bummer. I question what I’m doing wrong and if I could really put in even more effort. It’s frustrating to see all my hard work not showing the results I expected. But that’s where the zoom out method comes in.
When I switch the view to my weights over the past 2 months, there’s a very cleawr trend in the downward direction. It’s not a steady slope by any means, but the trend lines don’t lie – my weight is progressively moving down.
This is the kind of thing we have to do with all our goals, from business ventures, habit formation, weightloss or gain, skill level, everything. You cannot base your progress off the past few days alone, but instead zoom out and see the full picture. Look at where you started and where you are now and base your progress off that. Look at the entire journey then decide what direction you’re headed in.
We’re so fuckin hard on ourselves because we compare today’s information to yesterday or last week’s. We often fail to look all the way back to the start of our journey and recognize how much progress we’ve made.
I constantly think I’m not progressing in my Japanese, but if Bryce from 2 years ago saw me reading hiragana and katakana with ease and speaking full sentences – god damn he’d be hyped!
If you’re trying to be better every day and putting in the effort, I guarantee you’ve made a lot more progress than you think. Take the chart and zoom out. This isn’t a day by day game, it’s a whole life game. Don’t give up. See the full picture and keep moving in the direction you want to be moving in.
October 17, 2024
