A Sense of Progress

 "The strongest known force in daily motivation is a sense of progress." - Adam Grant, Hidden Potential

One of the things I love about eBooks is it is so easy to tag a bookmark.  As I read, I often highlight a sentence here or there and those bookmarks make it is to find them.  Then I transfer them into a draft to save for a day I need an idea to write on. If they sit in my drafts too long, they are often forgotten.  So it was with this quote. 

I was just cleaning out old drafts that not longer interested me when I saw this quote. Something within me respond, "Yes!" Why? It was pretty easy to figure out.  Starting in mid-January, this year turned left and has stayed there.  Nothing major, but just constant snags and worries cropping up rhythmically, with wait periods to survive until the answers come.  And sometimes the answer is, "Well, that's a worry, but we will just watch it for a year."  No one wants to hear that.  And I am truly awful at waiting.

All of that plus the chaos and darkness I see in the world around me has taken a toll. After spending the last few years creating habits that supported my writing and other commitments, I found myself reset back to zero, struggling to get started on anything.  I was still getting some work done, but there was far too much time spent doing nothing. My motivation cup seemed to be empty. 

Being aware of all this and knowing how to recreate those habits didn’t make it any easier to restart them, especially when new snags keep piling on.  One day last week I was sitting bored and decided it was time.  It took everything I had to drag myself off the couch, but I did it.  I went to the hall closet where we had created a pantry for the kitchen and started emptying everything out of it. No judgement, no plan, just take everything out. 

 

Ever since we remodelled our main floor which required us take apart the pantry’s shelving, the reassembled unit has been tipped slightly forward and wobbly. Items fell out randomly when I opened the door - cans narrowly missing my feet, and one jar of spaghetti sauce broke open and sprayed sauce everywhere. For 10 months I had been complaining about it, but never taking the first step to fix the problem - empty the shelves. Whatever it took, this stopped now. 

My plan was to put little shims under the front legs, but my husband got inspired. He stepped in with tools and levels to even the shelving properly and make sure it was both flat and balanced.  WOW.  It only took me about 10 minutes to put things back on the shelves.  An expected bonus was that my pantry supplies were now neat and orderly. Things had gotten quite chaotic over time. 

As I walked back to the living room and sat down I noticed a warm feeling rising in me. A small project that had been on my to-do list for 10 months was gone - finished - vaporized!  I felt good. I felt successful.  Some time that night I re-discovered this quote I had tucked away. Could the timing have been better? By getting up and doing one thing I created a deep sense of progress which led me to feel more positive about my ability to continue onto other things, and that felt good.  

Over the next 3 days I made an effort to cross one thing off my list daily - not a weekly chore - a one and done. It ended up being mostly writing, but each time I finished a project I got that feeling again. I still need to get my daily writing habit re-ignited, and I still need to work on other one and dones that have hanging around forever, but it's all about baby steps. At this point, doing anything that helps me continue to feel capable, successful, and motivated, no matter how small, is a great start.