Progress = Traffic 🚗🚌🚐
We have a very romanticized view on what productivity and progress is. How it should feel. And the rate of improvement.
We expect it to be this linear growth - one that progresses as you invest time.
Just work hard and pull yourself up by the bootstraps and you can succeed.
I think a more realistic, representative analogy of the productive progression grind is sitting in traffic.
Let me explain.
As a mundane, less-than-favourable task, it paints a more realistic perspective on the ups and downs. It is a non-rose-coloured glasses perspective on what progress can be. There’s road rage, there’s frustration, there’s heightened emotions along the way.
The pace varies from fast acceleration and the grinding halt. There are highs and lows, sometimes beyond your control, that dictate your progression. Similar to an accident on the highway out of sight, your progression can be impacted by unforeseen conditions and elements.
Persistence and patience dictate how far you go on this metaphorical journey. Sitting in traffic doesn’t do the greatest job in reflecting the amount of effort you put into the process. You’re doing more than just putting some pressure down with your right foot on the gas pedal when it comes to productivity and progress. But the messaging regarding patience and persistence remains. Keeping steady, continuing the stay the course, all of it leads to movement forward.
A lot of content on productivity and efficiency describes it as a simple hack. Implement these 5 things in your life or follow these 5 steps and WHAM, you’ve gained back 10 hours of your day. Problem solved, you’re super happy. And you didn’t have to sacrifice anything.
Unfortunately, I don’t think those are realistic at all. It is the accumulation of tips, tricks, habits, perspective-changes over the course of days, weeks, months, and years that finally design a system that works for you. Because these things have been so ingrained in your outlook and lifestyle do they gain a momentum shift that eventually does equate to hours of saved time, but it’s only in the grand scheme of things that it comes to fruition.
And ultimately, this analogy poses the question.
Can you love this process? Can you enjoy the journey that is sitting in metaphorical traffic? Can you love the process of needing to completely full stop? Maybe you need to take a detour? Take a pit stop? Change your pathing to get to your final destination.
Can you love sitting in traffic with the fortitude to know, you’ll eventually get to your destination. Trusting and enjoying the process.