This distinction has resonated with me after the company I ran died. The more I live, the clearer it becomes that activity and progress are different beasts. Activity is motion while progress is motion that changes your reality.
We get stuck in perpetual motion machines (activity) and so when we do achieve progress, it’s often difficult to appreciate our growth because we are caught up in an activity-based mindset.
Consider the work-for-a-boss example: people grind through the year doing the tasks the job requires, and then get disappointed by a performance review or a small salary bump.
That’s activity.
If you allow external review cycles define your improvement you are not in control over your own progress. The counter example is owning your objectives and specifically your learning objectives.
Owning progress is about agency. You can be part of a company and still direct your growth, however what’s the point of getting so vested in your company’s mission, especially if you are not invested in your company.
As long as you’re getting paid and you’re fulfilling your own learning and personal objectives, you’re good. It’s a bonus if these align with your employer’s objectives, but don’t chase that unrealistic ideal.
We need to manage our energy in ways that make us proud.
Having a kid changed my perspective on life and specifically how I should be evaluating and making decisions in a more thoughtful, structured and precise way. Conveying values to my daughter forces me to convert activity into intentional progress.
Progress requires decision and iteration
Decisions must be made with confidence, because you can’t just be a leaf floating in the wind and then be disappointed about where the wind took you. That’s what losers do.
If you fail, you need to iterate. Are we going to get it wrong sometimes? Of course we are. But then we try again and ...fix it. This is the only way for activity to become a series of disciplined experiments.
Act, measure, learn, adjust. Without that loop, activity is just repeating rituals. Set hypotheses for your actions and evaluate them, rather than endless motion without criteria.
We start from different starting lines and therefore some of us may be subject to wind conditions to a far larger degree than you or I. Still, regardless of whatever constraints you have, I venture to think you’re more resilient to the wind than you might think.
So what exactly is activity?
Going with the flow.
Small talk ad nauseum.
Talking to friends as if they were clients.
Activity often disguises itself as normal social or professional behavior. Time spent on email threads, meetings, and other busywork obscures our ability to gauge whether we are moving toward our goals.
Especially in client work, you can fall into predictable power dynamics where interaction is transactional and also rife with a pernicious behavior style that makes it difficult to have beyond-superficial friendships and connections.
This is activity masquerading as progress.
Startups suffer from this, fucking 99% of the time. They build functionality that nobody uses. Sometimes, someone tries and everything breaks. The correct approach is to deliver a smaller set of features well. It’s better to offer only 10% of the functionality that you’re capable of delivering on BUT then execute and deliver on it a 110%.
Promising a thousand features, delivers chaos. Progress in product work comes from focus, ruthless prioritization, and consistency.
Do fewer things superbly and then scale them.
Which relationships in your life are about mutual growth and which are activity-based exchanges?
One week experiment
Evaluate the power dynamics and the relationships that are prominent in your life. Are you happy with those dynamics? Do they support your progress or simply consume time?
A long-term orientation matters because activity feels like an accomplishment, while progress is slow and invisible.
Until it’s not.
Progress is also a symptom of values put into action. The daily grind has got to align with the desired endpoint. Focus on a few things that move the needle, be ruthless about measuring outcomes, and treat relationships, work, and projects as experiments you can learn from and improve over time.
