The Power of Progress: Measure The Gain, Not The Gap
It’s not always easy to maintain consistency as we work toward our goals. And yet, consistency is often the one thing that matters most in pursuit of these goals.
Consider what Confucius wrote centuries ago:
“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones… It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.”
The challenge with consistency is that it’s quite difficult to sustain. One strategy I’ve found incredibly useful is Seinfeld’s “Don’t Break The Chain,” whereby on the very days you show up to work toward your goal, you mark an X on your calendar. Your objective then becomes very simple:
Don’t break that chain of X’s.
The idea here is three-fold. It draws you back to the present moment, pushes you to focus on what you can control, and reminds you that growth and expansion happen in the process, not the result.
You don’t become a comedian the day you walk up on stage, you grow into one day after day as you stretch yourself in the process of writing jokes. Likewise, you don’t become a writer the day you finish your book, you grow into one day after day as you honour the process of sitting down to write.
But how do you sustain that consistency in your creative practice?
How do you keep your gaze fixated on the process and not the result?
The secret lies in measuring your progress.
Measure The Gain, Not The Gap
Too often, we define success by sizing up where we are today against the ideal we had set out for ourselves a year ago. We compare what we’ve already achieved with what we want to achieve as an end.
This happens in everyday life. When you trek up a mountain, you’re curious as to how many more kilometres you still have until you summit. When you’re off on a road trip, the only nagging question that buzzes through your head is “how much longer do we still need?”
But once we notice how much further we have to go, a hybrid wave formed from hopelessness and demotivation rises within us. “All this effort I’ve put in and I’m still so far away from where I want to be;” that’s what you begin to think:
Three months of daily workouts and I’m still 20kg off my weight target.
Four months of writing daily and I still don’t have a decent chapter.
One year into this newsletter project and I still haven’t reached 1,000 subscribers.
It’s funny how our mind plays tricks on us.
But as we both know, the way we think defines how we experience the world around us. And so, as we learn how to create a distance between our mind and our thoughts, we learn how to think about our thinking. We engage in what is known in psychology as metacognition—being aware of one’s own thoughts.
We learn to observe our thoughts, rather than merely engage with them all. And so we learn how to observe progress from different angles.
Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach, an organization that thrives on mindset and entrepreneurial coaching labels the earlier examples as a way of measuring progress by focusing on “The Gap.”
The gap is the distance between where you stand today and where your ideal stands way ahead. And as you continue to focus on that gap, you’ll continue to see how far away you still are, and thus you’ll continue to feel dissatisfied with your effort.
But Dan offers a solution to this. He reminds us that we can change the way we think by first changing the way we look at things. Instead of casting our gaze forward, we flip the coin and cast it backwards. As he explains:
“The way to measure your progress is backward against where you started, not against your ideal.”
The proper way of measuring progress? Look backwards, not forward. Gaze right from where you are today, back to where you were when you first started. Do you see all the progress you’ve made? Do you see all the obstacles you’ve mounted and the raging rivers you’ve crossed? The many doubts you’ve tamed.
Do you see how far you’ve come?
That backward distance is defined as “The Gain,” and it’s much more inspiring, motivational, and rewarding, than what lies ahead in “The Gap.”
Focus on Your Progress, Not Your Ideal
Another drawback from being totally fixated on “The Gap” is that the gap will constantly grow bigger, and so naturally, you’ll become the rabbit chasing that elusive carrot.
How?
Well consider this: You’re a constant work-in-progress. You’re always changing, evolving, and growing. Who you were ten years ago is different to who you are today, and likewise, the person you will be in five years from now will be different to the person you are today.
As you constantly move and change so will your ideals move and change. As you outgrow your own clothes, so will you outgrow your own ideals. As you continue to flow forward, so will your goals and ideals.
The goal of publishing a single book suddenly becomes two. The goal of launching a small side project now becomes “let’s make this a 7-figure business.”
The salient point here is that what you choose to pursue will constantly elude you because your ideal is a natural moving target.
So if you fall for the trap of measuring your current self against your future self (the person who will have attained her ideal), you’ll never be satisfied with where you are today because there will always be a gap to fill. You’ll never feel worthy of yourself either. And that’s precisely why it’s best to focus on your progress and not your ideal. The progress that you’ve already compounded should be your primary benchmark for achievement.
So turn around and measure your progress against your starting point.
Be in The Gain, not The Gap, and you’ll experience a sense of having achieved something beautiful. And that’s the feeling that’ll crush your inner critic’s voice and motivate you to keep going.
Turn around and measure your current self against your previous self.
Compare who you are today and where you are today with who you were yesterday. Pause, look back and reflect. Realize how far you’ve come and how much you’ve grown. That’s all it really takes—a single moment to alter the way you think, a multitude of moments to alter the next path you take.
So cast your gaze back upon the first day you started:
Who were you then? Who are you now?
Where were you then? Where are you now?
What are all the wonderful things you’ve done?
Whatever highs or lows you uncover, I promise you this:
You will feel more fulfilled. You will feel more powerful. More beautiful. More grateful. Much more confident and empowered. You will feel lighter. You will feel happier. Simply because you gifted yourself a moment to pause, to breathe and draw your attention back to what matters most—your effort in the present—and recognized just how far you’ve voyaged to become the person that you are today.
But Why is it Important to Measure Progress and What Difference Does it Actually Make?
Published research in the Psychological Bulletin reveals the importance of measuring progress in order to achieve your goals. Through a meta-analysis of 138 studies comprising 19,951 participants, professor Benjamin Harkin of the University of Sheffield discovered the following:
If you’re trying to achieve your goal, the more often you monitor your progress and physically record it, the greater the likelihood that you’ll succeed.
Why? Because, in the worlds of Dan Sullivan, “the feeling that we’re making progress is powerful and positive, but it only comes from knowing you’ve moved forward, and the only way to know that is through specific measurements.”
You see, as humans, we’re naturally forgetful.
Our brains process so much information on any given day. We’re bombarded with over 5,000 ads per day. An average smartphone user receives 50 app notifications per day. Factor in the e-mails, the text messages, the social posts and all other micro-moments that distract your thinking and you begin to realize just how much information your mind juggles at any given moment.
In The Shallows, a brilliant book that explores what the internet is doing to our brains, Nicholas Carr writes:
“The influx of competing messages that we receive whenever we go online not only overloads our working memory; it makes it much harder for our frontal lobes to concentrate our attention on any one thing. The process of memory consolidation can’t even get started.
Memory consolidation is simply the process by which a temporary memory is transformed into a more stable, long-term form. But since our minds are constantly consumed with stimuli and content, so much of what you think about just washes over like a breaking wave at the shore.
This means that what you don’t track and make note of, you simply forget.
If you don’t believe me, then let me ask you this:
How many articles have you read in the past two months?
How many times have you run to the bathroom in the past week?
How many apples have you had since the start of the year?
Now of course no one expects you to measure your progress on such mundane daily events, but consider the point I’m trying to make: You don’t track these things because they don’t matter to you. But you know what does?
Your goals!
So why aren’t you tracking your progress on them?!
Didn’t see that one coming, did you?
Look, it’s imperative that you physically measure your progress, especially toward the one or two goals that matter most to you.
When I began my writing journey at the turn of 2020, I knew that it would be a long voyage forward, but I also knew that I needed a way to measure my own growth so I can keep myself accountable and motivated to keep going, especially when my energy runs low.
So I created an excel sheet and called it “The Growth Tracker.”
My growth tracker that measures “The Gain.” It tracks the articles I publish on this blog and on Medium every single month, along with my Medium follower growth and my newsletter subscriber growth.
In some months I didn’t publish as much as I did in others, but do you notice the consistent growth month over month?
Whenever I would experience a slump in energy, I would open the sheet and look back at all the effort I’ve put in and all the progress that I’ve already made, and those two things alone would motivate me to get back on my chair and write.
As you create a visual representation of your progress and focus on “The Gain,” you do three things:
You keep yourself motivated.
You lift yourself up when you’re feeling low on energy to carry on.
You highlight the growth (in numbers) that you’ve already experienced, and that achievement alone gives you a reason to keep going.
As Dan Sullivan writes, “the only progress you can achieve is the progress you measure.” Linking all this back to Seinfeld’s strategy, it’s no wonder how effective it has been for my writing: Seeing that chain grow longer every day is a way of seeing my progression grow deeper by day.
Remember: There’s Nowhere For You to Arrive at, You’re Already There
Measuring your progress is crucial for both, your motivation and growth; but your attitude in life matters more.
You see, we’ve been wired to believe that success is a measure of speed. That success is somewhere we must arrive at. That achievement is found in the hustle and grind. That there’s always more action to take, more targets to hit. And all this kind of thinking has left us running around feeling empty, chasing new goals, and constantly raising the bar of what it means to ‘make it.’
As a result, we never truly cultivate a sense of being that is rooted in self-worth and contentment with where we are, right here, right now.
And as long as we continue to chase that big elusive dream of an imaginary future, we’ll never be able to truly find happiness and self-worth at the present moment that is happening today.
So here’s what I want you to remember as you work toward your goals and measure your progress:
Your happiness and wellbeing have nothing to do with how well you think you’re doing, how far into the journey you’ve crossed, or what’s coming next. Your happiness and wellbeing have everything to do with how present, accepting, and content you are with all that is.
That’s one of the five powerful teachings of the Wabi-Sabi philosophy.
As you write, you are becoming a writer. As you build your company, you are becoming an entrepreneur. As you sow, you are also weaving the very fabric through which you shall reap. It’s in the process where we grow and expand and mould our identity, one day at a time.
There’s nowhere for you to arrive at, you’re already there.