If you pick up self-help books today, you’ll often find a lot of talk about metrics to maximize your productivity or to get the most out of every work session. I often think these kinds of books idolize being a super-achiever and expect you to buy into this mentality that if you’re not constantly pushing the boundaries every day in everything you do, you can’t succeed. But I don’t think you have to embrace such an extreme view in order to feel successful or fulfilled. 

While you do need to step out of your comfort zone and set aside time to put in work to learn and grow, I think you can do this on your own terms and build up habits in a way that is good for you and your situation. You shouldn’t need to feel like you have to work constantly, making room for nothing else, or that you have to reach higher and higher to strive to top each previous day’s experience. Progress, no matter where and when it happens, is still progress. It happens in our living rooms, in our neighborhoods, and in the communities that surround us. We sit down and show up for online courses after making dinner, we jog around the block, we read and reflect on new ideas in our armchairs, or meditate on our yoga mats. We’re out there living our lives and all that comes with it. Yet, we can still show up, we can still learn, improve, and grow. 

By making some time and leaning into just interacting with what we want to achieve, no matter how imperfect the situation might be, we give ourselves the chance to bring ourselves closer to where we want to be. We each have our own ways of doing this, but I think that as long as we have the passion, put in the time, think about and learn from what we are doing, and work in a way that is good for us, not based on how others tell us we should, we can not only be successful but enjoy the path to success as well.

Things probably aren’t ever going to be so perfect that we can drop everything and work on “grinding” away to achieve arbitrary metrics that are set for us. I think progress, like the goals themselves, takes on its own unique appearance for each of us and takes us on a path that is as different as our own situations. Sometimes it gets influenced by all the other happenings in our lives, but it still always moves forward if we let it. Progress can happen wherever we are and grows wild in its own ways into what we will become, helping us find fulfillment and meaning in both the journey and in success.