When It's Not Better Enough

The tricky thing that I’ve found to be true with the idea of improvement is that it’s hard to quantify, which often makes it subjective and vulnerable to our own interpretation.

Simply put, improvement is a positive change in result over time. This means that things used to be one way, now they’re another way, and if the new way is better than the old way in that it’s closer to what you want… Then you can reason that it improved. 

Accurately labeling something as ‘improved’ requires a few things: A measurement for how things were at the beginning, a measurement for how things are now, and clarity on what you want the result to be (which ideally can be measured as well). 

For example - If you used to weigh 200 pounds, now you weight 195 pounds, and your goal weight is 180 pounds, then you improved. Or put in a different order, if you want your business to be doing $20k in monthly revenue, you’re now at $10k and you used to be at $5k, then your monthly revenue improved.

But it’s not as simple as that. While it’s pretty objective to determine if things improved, it’s completely subjective to reason if the improvement was enough to be satisfied with.

Especially in cases like losing weight, building a business, or addressing things that you’re emotionally connected to… It can feel futile to put so much in only to get just a little improvement out. It can feel discouraging to think that things aren’t happening fast enough, which then may make you second guess your approach overall.

That’s why, rather than viewing yourself and your performance through the lens of improvement, try viewing it through the lens of progress.

No matter how incremental the gain is, it’s all progress. And progress feels good. Progress feels productive. And progress is the engine that generates the larger improvement you desire.

And that’s the takeaway. Many of us change plans and undo the benefits of consistency because things aren’t changing like we want them to. But that’s a trap. In most cases, changing strategy is a distraction and it resets the compounding benefits we’d start to experience if we just stayed the course. 

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