Doing Things — The Art of Making Progress

Doing Things — is the Art of Making Progress. Making progress in any avenue of life is fundamentally easy. To make change in your life — in yourself, life, habits, emotions, body, and mind fostering transformation and evolution organically — all that is required is action in alignment with the results that we desire.

It is not exactly easy. But it is fundamentally easy. You just have to continue showing up. You literally have to simply do things on a daily basis in alignment with what you want. It doesn’t matter if it is perfect alignment either.

Action In Alignment With Results We Desire

Making Progress

Act First, Adjust Along The Way

At the beginning action is more important than a perfect plan. At the beginning, we need only momentum. We have so much that we need to learn, do, and develop that almost no action can truly be wrong. We need to engage in the process, and cultivate momentum in our learning, development, to see progress.

At the beginning, this is all that it takes. This is why it is so advantageous to be a beginner (the Advantage of the Beginner). There is so much room to grow, and few true preconceptions, that so much progress can be made rapidly at the beginning, with even a half-way decent system.

Therefore Act First, and Adjust Along The Way.

Adaptive Action

Adaptive Action is the principle of acting in a way that is flexible, adaptive. Sometimes we are required to force ourselves forwards with determination and Unwavering Will. However, it is not always intelligent to do so. Nor is it always correct to do so (at least, not without some nuance).

Rigid, unwavering will does not itself need to change. Not at the deepest level. The pinpoint manifestation of the will might be the Achievement of a Goal or the Completion of a Project at all costs. It might be to succeed in your career, or in the realization of your dreams.

This fundamental orientation does not need to change. But the nature of our approach certainly needs to, with relative frequency.

Doing The Right Things

Eventually, a time comes when just doing things is no longer good enough. At one time, any action is better than no action. (This is true when you are just getting started, or when dealing with problems and obstacles, because action in this regard can make a lot of invisible progress that is not measureable in the moment as forward progress). In the end however, the ideal is to move towards Doing The Right Things and Perfect Action.

The point here is to remember how easy progress actually is. Simply Complete Goals, Tasks, and Projects. Actually finish things, and notice real-world change. Perfecting action becomes important. However, there are many thousands of miles of broken, sloppy imperfect action between most of us, and true Perfect Action in our fields.