Work in Progress

The path to greatness is paved with half-attempts and failure; but also with persistence.

We all are works in progress.

We always have been; always will be.

None of us is the same as the day before. Just like a tree which is never the same on a subsequent day as the day before. The trouble is that the change is hard to see. Have you ever woken up, looked out the window, seen a tree you see every day and thought; that has changed!

As humans, we are only capable of seeing big changes. 

If someone loses 15 Kgs you will notice. But who the hell has ever lost 15 Kgs in a day. Alas, we just do not have the ability to see that we lost 100 Grams. This is part of the reason most people give up on their exercise regime. Improvement is never a step change but a series of small changes that accumulate over time to make a huge difference. Weight is still something that can be measured.

Have you gone back to something you had written years ago and found it to be crap? The you, who wrote it would not have felt it was crap. If you had thought so, you would not have written it. But sometimes the only way to get better is by writing a lot of crap. You hope that there will still be those who take the time to read it and encourage you.

The most important thing is to make sure that you are moving in the right direction. The only way to establish that for a fact is by asking for the opinion of others. When it comes to weight, we ask the opinion of the weighing machine. Who do you ask, when it is a creative pursuit?

Create something - ask people what they think about the creation - improve - repeat.

Apply this to anything you want to get better at.

Ultimately, you need to persist. You need to keep doing whatever it is and keep improving a little bit at a time.

When you do not lose weight at first, don’t give up.

When you write junk at first, don’t give up.

Keep working and progress will come to you. Even when that progress comes, you will still be a work in progress.