📈 Progress Review | I Can Do Things I Couldn’t Do Before

From: Office of Productivity & Purpose
To: All Staff
Subject: Progress Review — Looking Back

The Office has identified a problem with the way progress is sometimes measured.

We tend to stand where we are now and look ahead.

At everything still to learn.
Everything not yet achieved.
Everything other people seem to do more easily.

From this position, the gap can look enormous.

So the Office tried something different.

It looked backwards.

Things that once felt unfamiliar are now routine.
Things that once required enormous concentration take less effort.
Questions we once did not know how to answer can now be worked through.
Situations that once felt intimidating have been entered, attempted and survived.

None of this means the work is finished.

There are still gaps.
There are still things we cannot do.
There are still moments when we wonder whether we are progressing at all.
But perhaps progress is difficult to see when we only measure the distance still ahead.

Every now and then, turn around.

There may be considerably more ground behind you than you realised.

Current capability: Incomplete.
Previous capability: Also incomplete, but considerably more confused.
Finding: Progress detected.

Filed with appropriate forward momentum,
Office of Productivity & Purpose
“Sometimes progress becomes visible when we look back.”