Making Measurable, Encouraging Progress

We're making progress. It's gradual and time-consuming, but it's measurable, permanent, and encouraging. It's nice to see the mountain get whittled down, piece by piece. Seeing how much we've already accomplished helps encourage me to keep at it. If only the rest of life were this way.

In life, progress is usually no less slow or gradual, but it's rarely as measurable, permanent, or encouraging. We can't always see how far we've come, and sometimes we can't even tell whether we're making progress at all, especially when setbacks happen so frequently, stalling our progress. Often, we put in a lot of work, and we're not sure what we have to show for it.

I guess that's why it's so helpful to set SMART goals, goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timed, especially the Specific and Measurable parts. If we can nail down what our goals are and find ways to measure the progress we make, that progress can be encouraging enough to help us keep going.

We're going to keep working at this project until we complete it, partly because t just has to get done, and partly because it's encouraging. Hopefully, when we have other tasks that need to get done, we can find ways to measure our progress, so that progress can be encouraging, too.