Emerging Shortly

I saw this sign recently and it made me think about the rate at which we make progress.

What is the right rate of progress? Should we always be trying to forge ahead?

A long time ago when I worked in the dealing room of a bank, the phrase “you’re only as good as your last deal” was regularly bandied about. I took it to mean that past success was transient and quickly forgotten so you always needed to keep striving, going from one success to the next. In more simple terms, having an amazing February with respect to results was irrelevant if you just had an average performance in March. There was pressure to constantly improve, do more and get better results each time.

In more recent years, I’ve come to question that approach. Yes, I believe we are wired to constantly want more and we are all ambitious for something, although our drivers may vary.

However, maybe we need pause times between successes or maybe the successes won’t occur at all unless we have pause times?

Farmers allow fields lie fallow every few years in order to give the soil a chance to recover before it is productive again. I think we need to recognise this pattern in ourselves also.

Some weeks amazing successes may occur but we’ll have other weeks where we feel we haven’t progressed at all. We should welcome these weeks too as they are a chance to think, reflect and learn. 

Don’t give up on your efforts, because just like the bulbs in the ground near the sign, something is happening beneath the surface and success will be emerging again shortly.