Twice in the past week, an accountability partner has told me "Remember, Lacy, progress over perfection."
One was talking to me about my book, the other about my health journey, but the message was the same - stop expecting immediate results, and simply embrace the progress you are making every day.
That's the thing about incremental progress, though. It's incremental. You can't really SEE it while it is happening. It's only when looking back over a period of time that you can see changes, or the accumulation of work. The day-to-day isn't impressive, but the monthly, quarterly or yearly changes can be profound.
One section of a book doesn't feel like much. One pound lost seems tragically small. But if you do that every week, it becomes a whole book, or the accomplishment of your health goals. The key is not giving up when things are incremental—you have to hang in until they are substantial.
So that's my goal for this year. To stop focusing on the incremental, and to raise myself up to 30,000 feet every so often in order to see the progress I've made during a longer time period.