Is progress your goal or are you just happy when you’re experiencing measurable movement? Perhaps this sounds like a trick question! Who doesn’t appreciate movement or activity? However, movement without seeing progress is a bit like spinning your wheels. Would you want a career where you are working harder and harder every day, putting in time and earning a pension (wow, did I ever show off my age in this sentence) and yet still never feeling like you are growing and expanding your horizons? OF COURSE NOT.
Movement, activity, feels good. Once almost anyone is off the couch-of-life and doing things, they feel much better. THIS can actually be a problem. When movement feels like progress we can get lulled into complacency, stuck in a rut or caught up on a hamster wheel of life.
Progress Measured
Progress requires you to stop periodically and take stock. Where am I? What needles are moving and what specifically is making it happen so I know what to do more of and less of ending the otherwise busy, busy work. Where am I going? When I’m putting my head down to focus on activities am I veering off course? Do I have enough check-in’s along my career path helping me know if I’m really making progress? What if my vision changes? Will I be scrapping all the work I’ve done to date?
I’m not suggesting progress happens when you stand still, however I’m certain it doesn’t happen when you are running in circles doing busy busy work. (Note: I am trying to stay away from asserting certitude but, in this, I really am certain!) Between my Instagram story, my #podcast episode and the newsletter reflections that went out this week on my theme, I have shared four VERY different stories. While I’m making a point of not repeating the theme stories I’m using n the other platforms, I’ve decided this week to recap them here.
Progress Disrupted
Progress is disrupted when we are spinning. In my Instagram story this week I share a memory of my mom. When we were the “4 sisters” growing up in Central Saskatchewan my mother would set us up in a row in the back seat of the Chevy when she needed to go on errands (no seat belts or car seats in those days). She’d bring us all out into the attached and heated garage getting us settled in first. We were 8 years apart from oldest to youngest so there was a method to the madness in how we were arranged AND it probably depended on who was getting along with whom at the time. Starting the car to warm up the engine after opening the garage door (no remote garage door openers at the time) ensuring the car exhaust would go out while we gave the car a few moments, preparing the engine for the frigid cold and warming the interior for our comfort too, I suppose.
There was this one day when we all just sat and waited for the adventure of the day to begin and Mom was likely engaging us in a song or a conversation of some sort to occupy us – she has a special gift for this. I don’t recall the details personally, I suspect, but we’ve told this story so many times over the years I feel like it’s embedded in my memory. All of a sudden Mom says, “Oh, I know what I can do” and she jumps out of the car and runs to the back and is about to close the garage door and we hear her laughing uncontrollably. She jumps back in the car and turns around to the four of us, all staring at her blankly, and says, “Girls, you know what I almost did?! I was going to close the garage door before we even drove out.”
On one of our family vacations soon after this experience, she found a magnet that read “the hurrier I go, the behinder I get” and I remember her laughing and reminding us of that story in the garage that morning and how it was a perfect example of how, when we get ahead of our selves, by acting before thinking, we can actually impede our progress and waste energy.
Threatening Progress
For anyone reading this who doesn’t live in Canada, you often think only about how cold it is here but in summers, and to extremes as the planet warms, we experience unbearable heat and humidity. Of course it is a huge country and the climate varies but if you live in Toronto you enjoy the extremes on both ends. I share this story in the #podcast episode
Just to add to the part I share in the episode. While my A/C is restored the project continues as they work on those whose problems were the focus of the work to begin with and I continue to observe all the activity and scampering around without a clearly articulated plan. Sure there was a project plan but no communication plan, no effort made to provide us with updates and information. It has been interesting to participate in and observe the scrambling and hamster wheel behaviour both of the contractors who are fighting fires (no literal fires) and listening to angry owners who are uncomfortable and concerned that our money has been wasted. This was supposed to move us forward and make the entire community happier and more comfortable. Instead, because our board and management team neglected to consider more than hurried action, there is anger and distrust and blaming throughout the building. What is progress? Well it is definitely about more than simply activity. (In my workshops we look at what situations of this sort do to individuals and groups by way of our human brain’s reaction when triggered.)
What Does Progress Feel Like?
In my newsletter I tell the story of back to school. My niece started high school and my nephew University this week. Last week as my niece was on her way home with her parents from dropping him off and setting him up in his dorm, she texted me to arrange our long-standing ritual of a back to school sleep over. I receive the text Friday night as the long weekend was starting and that same day I had taken notice of a weird and uncomfortable feeling that was over-taking me. I’m actively making a point of trying to describe and name my feelings, especially when they are disturbing. The only word I could think of was malaise. I hadn’t looked it up and didn’t anticipate it being at all related to this week’s theme but here we are! I didn’t connect the dots immediately but as I looked back on Monday and realized that during Olivia’s visit I was not in that malaise at all. BUT it was back and I needed to dig into it and see what it could teach me. WOW….rather than telling the story again, here is a link to the newsletter reflections.
Progress for Humanity and the Planet –
What is, at first, appearing as progress, with limited information, can become destructive over time. OR, is it something more insidious at work? Are we collectively blind or are we complacent to implications. 30 years ago we had a chance to stop global warming AND at the time the only thing that got in the way of this progress, was human greed.
This was the plan for my story this week. It is what inspired the image I used as well. Last week as I was thinking about this topic and a story that best illustrated it I listened to one of my favourite podcasts – The Daily. Listening, I was stunned. I know I was aware of a lot of what is reported here and still as I reflected on what this all meant about how we are guilty of failing to act when meaningful action could have prevented the crises we are facing today, I felt sick.
Living in Toronto I can see first hand what progress can look like. Ontario began reducing in 2001 and ultimately eliminating the use of coal and because of this and other progressive decisions, we enjoy blue skies once again and the benefits of cleaner air and quality of life. Clearly we as a species benefited from the “progress” of the industrial age and yet we seem reticent to act on what we are learning from the information and knowledge age especially when it costs us money. Along with the restoration of our clear and beautiful skies, we are all paying significantly more to heat and cool our homes and offices. Hydro costs are outrageous. I, for one, think it’s worth it AND I still hope we figure out how to bring costs down. So this got me thinking about progress. While I chose not to search for articles on this, I do recall reading about the history of the combustion engine and how there were opportunities to move to electric cars much sooner BUT powerful special interests groups and their money, just like we still see in the oil & gas and coal industries today, resist and win over progress.
Progress is about more than activity. There was a time when people would see the smoke stacks and consider the amazing progress humanity was making and now we look at them and shake our heads at how much humanity disrupts progress when it is inconvenient.
A Question of Progress
- When are you getting ahead of yourself and stepping on your own progress? Catch yourself before you jump to close the garage door.
- What are you looking forward to in your life and how are you building it into your daily, weekly or monthly experience in an effort to avert any feelings of malaise or whatever feeling is holding you back? Become more aware of the feelings your are stuffing inside or blasting out to the world unproductively.
- What are you failing to see that, at first glance, appears to signal progress, that could just as easily set you back in time? Watch out for the smoke stacks.
How I Can Help
Learning when you unpack your struggle and consider how to adjust.
- Register for an ASK ROX RoundTable. The next one is tomorrow night in Toronto and then there are a few more available on-line , Just register on the Eventbrite page.
- Check out the workshop system on the services page and join us to explore and learn the skills to be more resilient to enhance and make the most in your career.
- Register for 1:1 or group coaching with me. Learn more on the related services page. Contact me to arrange a complimentary exploratory conversation
- Book me to speak at your conference or to a group in your organization.