What gives us the feeling of progress we need to create the progress we want to see and how can we apply that to the area we really want to move forwards?

For each blog I write, I start by naming and filing it. Partly for the practical fact I’ve lost too many unfiled blog posts (among other documents) and partly because it allows me a few more moments to work out what I want to write or where to start or just generally to feel productive while briefly putting off the actual writing of the blog. 

I also notice that each time I file this blog-to-be I feel a satisfaction to see the folders of months filling up with blogs. The process provides a sense that as I embark on writing something else I am adding to something. In filing the document I feel the progress I am making to consistently write blogs. 

And (so far) that slight surge of energy gets the writing going. 

The feeling of progress provides the energy to create the progress I want to see.

With that in mind what are the ways we feel progress that help us continue or recommit to the things we want to move forwards? 

What is it that makes us feel progress?

What are the moments we feel a sense of progress? 

It could be progress broadly in life, a sense that ‘I am moving in the way I want’, or progress in a specific area. 

Where do you feel that sense of progress?

What is its impact? 

What are the different occasions you feel progress? 

How do they differ? 

For example, I can feel progress when ticking of to dos for a list of emails to send but not if I see that list as part of a bigger list of other things to do that day (then I simply feel overwhelm and feelings of anti-progress). 

Sometimes progress is felt in the act of recording rather than what is recorded. 

Similarly to the filing of blogs I notice logging a run, rather than how I did in the run, is the thing that makes me feel progress in that area. 

What is the point in feeling progress (especially if it isn’t reflected in real progress)?

Having worked with a lot of people who have felt stuck, the thing that helps them come unstuck is feeling a sense of change, that the thing they are stuck with, or in, feels different, even if it is simply their perspective on the thing. 

To feel progress is to also feel that something other than now is possible, which creates possibility.

When you feel progress what feels possible?

When things do not feel like they are progressing what does it feel like? 

While it is valuable that our feeling of progress is not totally unfounded it does not have to be measurable to make a difference. Again, the blog is filed before it is written and that sense of progress provides the push to write the thing, which is arguably how progressing consistent blogging would be measured. 

Ultimately real, tangible, observable progress can take longer to materialise where as the feeling of progress can come far more frequently and often before any measurable, external indicator of progress.

How may we apply the things that help us feel progress to areas we really want to progress? 

If we know what progress feels like to us, what helps us feel it, and what feels possible as a result, where would we like to feel the sense of progress that helps us make real progress?

What may give us the feeling of progress in this area? 

What ways of feeling progress elsewhere could we apply here? 

What is the real progress we want to create that feeling progress can spark? 

What will that progress look like? 

What would it be like if we are all able to find the thing that enables us to feel the progress to make real progress in the things we really want to progress?