The Baby Step Shuffle

One impediment to reaching any significant goal is that progress is often marked not by breakthroughs or steep learning curves, but by progress so incrementally small that it is nearly undetectable. I feel more fit this morning by a tiny amount, but I had to pay attention to really be confident (or fairly confident) that my perception was true. In dance, too, I know in my head that over a period of several months I have improved significantly. In fact, it's pretty obvious; perceptually, though, the conclusion seems different: On any given day it's hard to sense improvement. Indeed, we might feel slippage from previous progress and conclude that we're actually getting worse! These two factors--fine-grained progress and frequent slippage--are demotivators, mental demons that lie about our true progress over time.