When We Don’t Feel We’re Making Progress
The words, “Take on me…Take on me! Take me on… Take on me!” continuously played over and over, again, in my head. “Seriously?!” I thought. My sister has dubbed ‘Take On Me’ as the ultimate feel-good song. I can completely buy into this theory, though in that moment, transferring my thoughts to something that did not include drawing out vowel sounds or reminiscing of 1980’s pop was my first priority.
I was hanging out with my fam for the day, and as various songs proceeded to lodge themselves in our brains, my sister made the noteworthy comment (as she often does) that we continuously mull over songs because we don’t know all the words. As each phrase rolls through our mind, we work to clearly define the string of sounds we know must represent something of significance. What’s interesting, though, is that we may not necessarily feel like progress is being made (as we grow more and more annoyed at the current song replaying in our heads); though, it often is without our knowing.
Similarly, over the past week, several writing projects have consumed me, and often in the middle of a piece, I’ll think, “This isn’t going anywhere!” I’m putting words on a page, though I’m not sure they’re amounting to much. I feel like I’m walking through sludge, and I’m losing – horribly.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, sometimes we’re working, and we are fully ‘in flow.’ Our creative juices are gushing, the words come easily, and we’re focused. Energy flows through us. We know we’re at peak performance, and identifying how and when we reach that space can be crucial to producing high quality work we know we’re capable of. However, reality can’t always wait for us to be ‘in flow.’ Deadlines must be met. Work must be turned in. And progress must be made – no matter how little sleep we got the night before, through no fault of our own.
When we do experience those moments when we’re not ‘in flow,’ we may either feel frustration or void of emotion all together. It may feel like progress of any kind is beyond our grasp. And since progress begets progress, we lose our motivation all together. However, if we continue bulldozing forward, progress does come.
We don’t necessarily feel growth as it happens. We recognize it after-the-fact.
Sometimes it takes either stepping back, or another’s perspective to grasp the strides we’ve made in our work, be it personal or professional. It’s often in small, unexpected moments when we remove ourselves from the process that we see the composition we’ve been molding isn’t really half-bad. Or, we’re at the gym, and one day realize we can lift 5 pounds more than yesterday. The moments may not come easily at times, though they do come.
Whether it’s filling in the words to ‘Take On Me,’ or ripping through a 50-page proposal, we must keep at it. Growth exists despite our inability to see it.
