So say you’ve set a new goal, you’re gonna get swole af, you’re gonna learn to play the pan flute, you’re gonna just finally get your SHIT TOGETHER. Day one, things are going strong, things are lookin’ up, the world is your oyster. Day two, allright this is a little harder than anticipated but I can DO THIS BRO. Day three, jesus what the hell am I doing how did I get to this place, can I just crawl back into the womb since I AM NEVER GETTING BETTER.
Have you ever found yourself in a similar state of mind? With the best intentions whatever it is you are trying to accomplish becomes seemingly more distant with every passing day? You are not alone. I certainly find myself spiralling into this brand of neurosis far more often than I’d like, but thankfully there is one really easy way to help alleviate this, and that is to remember, WE IMPROVE INCREMENTALLY. No one picks up a new task and is immediately better at it, no body goes to the gym once and comes home looking amazing right away, that shit just doesn’t happen.
just a little bit
I think we human meat sacks tend to compare ourselves to our super lofty ideal goal self when pushing towards a goal, and often forget to recognize all the minuscule almost completely imperceptible stages in between. But these stages are ESSENTIAL. It is so damn important to keep track of even the slightest progress in something, because once you’ve moved forward that one step, it may still feel like the distance to your actual goal is still insurmountable, though you are progressing! A good way to alleviate this is not to change your ultimate goal, but set smaller goals that can track your progress in much smaller chunks or, ahem, “Increments”. Freakonomics has a great podcast on this topic entitled “In praise of incrementalism” that covers more of the current research on this, and it is definitely worth a listen!
As a music teacher, I encounter this with my students fairly frequently, but it is far more common in my adult students than my youngins (perhaps they’ve just logged more self-reflective neurosis acquisition hours). To remedy this I usually recommending going back to play something from about 6 months ago and seeing how much easier it is! It’s amazing how this can get people out of their heads and start them appreciating their own progress. I also keeping track of the most objective measures of progress you can find, in music this is usually tempo or metronome markings (which indicate the speed that you can play a piece at).
It seems like there is this totally inconvenient type of cranial magic that goes on when learning a new task that creates such a massive surge of resistant energy towards something which is hard, but once we accomplish that task, it’s as if that resistance never happened, and we are on to the next difficulty. This can become such a discouraging factor if it feels like you are only jumping from one struggle to the next, but it is important to remember that if it feels easy, YOU ARE STAGNATING. So don’t change your big goals, just set more little intermediary goals! Keep it up, and learn to love the little steps, they are the only thing that are going to get you where you want to be!
