by Mike Reeves-McMillan of Living Skillfully
I recently discovered that another blogger had linked to a post of mine about the dangers of “all or nothing” thinking when you’re trying to change. She was a mother, trying to get back in shape after having a baby, and the post had reminded her that slow progress is OK. Which was helpful, because slow progress was what she was making. This is also an evidence of how change slowly but surely.
Most of the time, for anything worthwhile, slow progress is what we’ll all be making. We have a myth of overnight success and a habit of instant satisfaction, but one reason so many people never achieve much is that big things take time. Whether you’re building muscle or losing fat, growing a business or developing a relationship, preparing for a big competition or writing a book, significant achievements are going to come slowly.
Most people, when they discover that, give up. How are we going to not be among them?
How to Change Slowly but Surely
1. Commit to the long haul. If you go in expecting big things right away, that’s going to be a revolving door. You’ll be out again as soon as you realize it’s not going to happen.
You have to, as the jazz folks say, pay your dues. Unless you know someone (and probably even then), you’re not going to succeed at anything immediately, because it takes time to build up relationships and to learn the ropes – through making mistakes, generally.
All that, plus there are limits to how quickly you can change anyway. In particular, anything that requires your body to change is going to take time, because your body is very well defended against change – it’s good at maintaining the status quo. So is your mind, actually.
Be prepared for that going in.
2. Make working on your goal part of your routine. Long-term goals are very easy to lose sight of because daily routine goes on around them and if you’re not careful, covers them up and pushes them to the side.
So your goal has to become part of your regular routine. Not necessarily daily, though that’s best, but periodically.
For example, I have a fitness goal, to reach the standard of fitness for a man my age that’s required by the US Navy. (Not because I have any intention of joining any military force anywhere, but because it’s a well-tested and achievable standard to measure myself against.) Part of my routine is to exercise in ways that directly relate to that goal. I have a weekly cycle of exercise planned, and a time set aside to do it.
3. Don’t obsess. When change is slow, we can get tied up in knots about it. “Is this really working? Is it worth doing this day after day?” Before we know it, we’re spending more time on measuring our progress than on doing things that will create that progress.
If you’re doing something towards your goal every day, don’t necessarily measure your progress every day. Measure it once a week, or even once a month (depending on how long you expect the goal to take).
Certainly don’t measure it every half an hour.
4. Take small actions that will have a big cumulative effect. Proverbially, the way to eat an elephant is one spoonful at a time.
When we hear people talk about their success, they often talk about the big moments, the ones where everything changed. We hear about the guest post that brought hundreds of visitors, the gig where the music producer came up afterwards and offered the contract, the six-figure product launch.
We hear about those moments because they’re the ones that make good stories. But behind each of those moments are thousands of small, regular actions that add up to something big. That great guest post probably wasn’t the first post, or even the hundredth post. The gig wasn’t the first time the band played together. The product was the culmination of purposeful action after purposeful action, trial and error, day in, day out.
There’s a joke about a street musician in New York City. A well-dressed man rushes up to him, with concert tickets in hand, and says, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”
The musician looks at him and says, “Practice, man. Practice.”
5. Check up periodically. I’ve already mentioned this, but it’s worth a point by itself. You have to be tracking your progress. Not obsessively or too frequently, but regularly.
Tracking progress serves two purposes. If the progress is good, it serves to encourage you that you are actually headed towards your goal, that the actions you’re taking are working.
If your progress is not good, or if you’re going backwards, that’s a signal that you need to change your approach. It’s a feedback mechanism. Maxwell Maltz in his classic book Psycho-Cybernetics talks about guided missiles, and how their guidance systems constantly correct their course by measuring whether they’ve drifted off. This is how your mind works too.
Right now, for example, my newsletter subscriber numbers are actually decreasing. I know why it is – I was part of a big giveaway event, and now that people have got my free stuff, they’re dropping away (they’re not in it for the long haul, so they don’t belong on my list in any case).
So I’m doing more guest posting on blogs that my Right People read. It’s corrective action.
6. Remove the hindrances. You make progress by walking forward, one step at a time. But if something’s making you stumble or standing in your way, that slow progress becomes slower still. Your chances of giving up increase.
If you’re checking up, you’ll notice when you’re no longer making progress, or when the progress is hindered. You can then analyze the situation and decide what’s wrong. If you can’t figure it out, call in a coach, or just a friend who has a different perspective.
Some of the biggest surges forward in long-term improvement projects come from removing your hindrances. You can actually feel the improved flow and ease. For example, on the advice of a coach I de-cluttered my blog’s design, and noticed an increase in response – because it was clearer to people what there was to do.
7. Celebrate your progress. You don’t have to reach your goal before you can be happy about how you’re doing. You can be happy with every little indicator of improvement. If I do more situps than I did last time, even if it still didn’t meet the US Navy standard, that’s something to celebrate.
If I get a single email in a week from someone I helped, that’s something to celebrate. If I make one sale, that’s important. It’s not quit-my-day-job time yet, but it’s progress.
You don’t have to throw a party every time. But celebrate it to yourself. Tell someone who’ll be happy with you. Boast a little, it’s OK. Not in a “I am the MAN!” way, just in a “I got a good result and I’m happy about it” way.
Little celebrations keep you motivated. And motivation is what you’re going to need to succeed with a long-term improvement goal.
