Much of my life I’ve been haunted by one of Zeno’s paradoxes: the observation that before one reaches a destination, one must reach its halfway point, and before reaching the halfway point, reach another halfway point, and so on. To quote the wikipedia article (whence comes most of my knowledge of math and physics when it’s not coming from more learned friends or speculations over blaseball cosmology): “travel over any finite distance can be neither completed nor begun, and so all motion must be an illusion.”
This has the cadence of a hilarious joke. My internet-poisoned brain wants to translate this statement into an ADHD meme, or wry observations about marking papers, writing doctoral dissertations or novels. There is an emotional truth at odds with reality made delightful through the lens of Actual Mathematical Philosophy.
But as incredible as it may seem, people do complete projects; people do begin and also finish things (even novels, even dissertations), and “people” includes ourselves, whether or not we feel like we will ever reach a finish line. Even you, even me, even — maybe especially — during These Times.
Almost two weeks ago I decided that this, finally, would be the year I execute a single good form pull-up. I knew from past experience that it would be a ludicrously slow process, that it might take me two years of daily effort, that I would probably have to start 3-4 steps behind every online tutorial aimed at men and probably 1-2 steps behind online tutorials aimed at women. With help from three friends keeping each other accountable, we’re doing it; the first step is what’s called a “dead hang,” literally just hanging from the bar with our muscles activated, not trying to pull ourselves up, just trying as hard as possible not to let go. Once we can do this for 60 seconds, we can move on to the next small step.
I’m able to hang on now, in various grips, for 32 seconds; just over the halfway point. Despite Zeno, I got there. And I’m hanging on — as it were — to that truth, to that small daily ritual, to remind me that I can do this in all my other forms of work, in every other way that requires patience with myself, with other people, with the world. To know in my bones that doing a thing without finishing it counts, because I can’t finish it without doing it.
I’d love to know where you’re making progress in your lives — in what tiny, observable ways are you doing a big thing that won’t be complete for a long time? Let’s separate progress from success, from finish lines, and celebrate the endurance of doing the work.
I love this story!! As someone who starts 1-2 steps behind most tutorials, it hits close to home. :)
By the POWER OF GRAYSKULL.
I was going to talk about my quilt, but I think the "I will never complete this" thing that haunts me the most is finding a romantic partner. This one is made even harder by the fact that it feels sorta Waiting for Godot, in that maybe I will never find them.
After 4 years of steady effort and self-improvement groundhog day style, this weekend I have a first sleepover with the person who has come the closest to maybe being my future partner. Maybe this sleepover is all we have, and I am back to OkCupid, and to dance-halls post pandemic, but I am realising even just this tiniest of progress fills me with a hope.
Toe push-ups! I am still working at incline push ups from my desk, and sometimes I can knock out 20 and think I can progress, and then the next week 8 feels like death, lol. So ... still working on the incline!
YAY PULL-UPS!! I set this as my goal about two years ago (maybe longer now??? what is time???) and I can now do about three on a good day (4 pre elbow tendonitis). I wish you lots of good hang time on your journey!
I started a new job this week, and I have been trying to remind myself that tiny, incremental progress is what's going to be important as I adjust to what's essentially a complete career change. I still feel lost and overwhelmed, but not as lost and overwhelmed as I was on Wednesday, and hopefully it will keep creeping up.
“Art is never finished, only abandoned.” Leonardo da Vinci said that, and boy howdy do I feel that! I noodle with short stories endlessly, and am tempted to tear them apart and rebuild each time one come home with a big R on it. Sometimes these second (and third, and fourth) efforts are for the best, and I just wish I had the fortitude to keep them at home while this process worked its magic, but somehow it's the R's that are necessary steps.
That said, I am very nearly done with my first completely new story of the year, and feeling pretty good about that! I'm great at starting stories, but fight hard to get to a completed first draft. A lot of stealing an hour or two in the mornings, before the kids get up.
Also, after a year of working from the room adjacent to the pantry in my house, I have started a keto or near-keto diet (this is the one I was on when I was at VP, the autumn of 2019). So there's that too!
And then, I finished my development work for DART (a NASA mission to impact an asteroid, as a first demonstration of "planetary defense"--it will launch this summer) and I'm about halfway through what I am doing for IMAP ("Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe", another NASA mission.) Designing and building a spacecraft takes a LONG time, believe me. Oof.
Hooray for everybody making progress at things that are worth doing. Best--
I wonder if your friends work for JHU/APL? Both Messenger and NEAR are APL missions. There's a revamped website for APL civilian space missions, here: https://civspace.jhuapl.edu/
I am so colossally bad at seeing incremental progress when I make it; this prompt has me rather stymied.
Pull-ups! I would be very interested if you'd like to share the advice you're looking at about it; I got as far as acquiring a pull-up bar and then hit the "oh no, what doorframe??" blocker and there I have stayed (there are no actually convenient doorframe options available to me, and I never managed to commit to just using the bathroom and finding somewhere to store the bar when it isn't actively in use). 32 seconds! Congratulations on your first pull-up-related halfway mark! (Or arguably 2nd or 3rd or 4th, since you managed the equipment/setup, knowledge-acquisition, and peer group parts as well!)
Which reminds me of the truth at the heart of 'spoon theory' -- that there are so many more increments than we generally talk about, or often notice, and it's really hard to treat them like they are all individually progress towards some sort of goal.
I have been attempting to establish & reestablish various creative practices (writing, painting, jewelry-making, music-making, lino carving, bookbinding, sewing, etc), but tend to feel they don't "count" as progress unless I am engaging with them with rigorous consistency, which I am not. But I do have a cross stitch project I am making consistent enough progress on that I can see it and believe it continues even when I take time away from it! It is the cutest hedgehog you ever did see, and I'm happy to share a pic on twitter if you're interested.
It's so hard to separate progress from completion, and give credit for the process. I feel like there's a deeply-engrained belief that completion is the only way to measure productivity and productivity is the only way to measure worth, and that is bad and harmful and also so hard to unroot. Thank you for talking about it.
Oh! My other exciting incremental-progress thing of late: I have begun learning the Hebrew alphabet, and for whatever reason I am able to recognize when I make progress in that: the way the marks go from vaguely-familiar shapes to distinct, specific, distinguishable *letters* with known associated sounds is incredible. Before this I'd only ever taken some mediocre high school French and limited junior high intro to Spanish, which in addition to being not very well taught also didn't involve learning to *read* anew, and it has been an incredibly rewarding experience already. Watching the way it had shifted the way I *think* has been surprising and fascinating. The whole experience is something of a revelation.
I continue to think language is probably the most gorgeous form of magic I know anything about, and it's astonishing how little I really know. In a delightful way.
"(Or arguably 2nd or 3rd or 4th, since you managed the equipment/setup, knowledge-acquisition, and peer group parts as well!)"
This is such a good point, and I had so much help there! I delegated the equipment/setup part to my husband, and the bar we have (the one pictured above!) is the second try that worked with our doorframes (the very popular Iron Gym one, which we had in Glasgow, did not fit). Right now it's set up at the entrance to my office, and while it's up I can't close the door, but I'm embracing that for now as a Commitment to Progress, and when I start teaching over Zoom again in May I'll have to get in the habit of taking it down and putting it up again.
I want to leave you with some words from Keats that I love, and that I think of whenever I reflect on less noted work of creating space for a project, for creativity. This is from an 1817 letter to J. H. Reynolds, having arrived at his accommodation on the Isle of Wight:
"I have unpacked my books, put them into a snug corner—pinned up Haydon—Mary Queen of Scotts, and Milton with his daughters in a row. In the passage I found a head of Shakspeare which I had not before seen—It is most likely the same that George spoke so well of; for I like it extremely—Well—this head I have hung over my Books, just above the three in a row, having first discarded a french Ambassador—Now this alone is a good morning’s work—"
_Now this alone is a good morning's work_ is a refrain that falls into my head sometimes, whenever I've cleaned a desk, cleared a space, done something that makes me feel better able to write but that wasn't writing itself.
I’m impressed by your commitment to pull-ups, I’ve never been able to do them properly. Just now I have a more dire long-term goal: to be able to walk, even if aided by a walker. A couple of years ago I lost the ability to walk unaided because of deteriorating spinal damage and a major operation. Then a couple of weeks ago I broke my right ankle (classic silly accident In the bathroom, embarrasing as hell) and I don’t have enough strength in the other leg to compensate. So until my ankle can bear weight again, another 2 months at least, I am re-learning how to do all the day-to-day tasks. I’m hoping that I can continue to progress to the level of ability I had before breaking the ankle, though I know that will take time and work.
Like many here, I'm writing a novel. Like some, I'm parenting. On both counts, I'm working to make it about the journey and not the outcome, neither of which I fully control.
Beautiful post, thank you! In my world, I've been trying to learn Aikido since 1995. Despite multiple injuries and trips and massive challenges, last February I reach 3rd Kyu (2 levels before black belt.) Will I ever get a black belt? Who knows! The journey is the destination...
We ordered a bunch of plants from our native plant nursery and got to digging them nice places in the yard. A couple dogwoods, hummingbird and pollinator friendly flowers, some hoary mint to fill in a minor hillside and fight erosion. Some berry bushes for birds and such in winter. Things that will take years to come to fullness, but the sleeping potential is hope and goodness. Six years ago we planted other things which are just now starting to flourish.
Again a much belated comment from me -- I've been having busy Friday nights but have wanted to respond -- congrats on the pull-up progress!
My increments have been on stretching. Our yoga teacher very much emphasizes process over progress, so I've just been working on my flexibility without explicitly pushing myself to any particular goal. As a result, being able to sort of kind of touch my feet when I am doing a forward fold has been a very pleasant experience!
Yay you!
I love this story!! As someone who starts 1-2 steps behind most tutorials, it hits close to home. :)
By the POWER OF GRAYSKULL.
I was going to talk about my quilt, but I think the "I will never complete this" thing that haunts me the most is finding a romantic partner. This one is made even harder by the fact that it feels sorta Waiting for Godot, in that maybe I will never find them.
After 4 years of steady effort and self-improvement groundhog day style, this weekend I have a first sleepover with the person who has come the closest to maybe being my future partner. Maybe this sleepover is all we have, and I am back to OkCupid, and to dance-halls post pandemic, but I am realising even just this tiniest of progress fills me with a hope.
Toe push-ups! I am still working at incline push ups from my desk, and sometimes I can knock out 20 and think I can progress, and then the next week 8 feels like death, lol. So ... still working on the incline!
YAY PULL-UPS!! I set this as my goal about two years ago (maybe longer now??? what is time???) and I can now do about three on a good day (4 pre elbow tendonitis). I wish you lots of good hang time on your journey!
I started a new job this week, and I have been trying to remind myself that tiny, incremental progress is what's going to be important as I adjust to what's essentially a complete career change. I still feel lost and overwhelmed, but not as lost and overwhelmed as I was on Wednesday, and hopefully it will keep creeping up.
“Art is never finished, only abandoned.” Leonardo da Vinci said that, and boy howdy do I feel that! I noodle with short stories endlessly, and am tempted to tear them apart and rebuild each time one come home with a big R on it. Sometimes these second (and third, and fourth) efforts are for the best, and I just wish I had the fortitude to keep them at home while this process worked its magic, but somehow it's the R's that are necessary steps.
That said, I am very nearly done with my first completely new story of the year, and feeling pretty good about that! I'm great at starting stories, but fight hard to get to a completed first draft. A lot of stealing an hour or two in the mornings, before the kids get up.
Also, after a year of working from the room adjacent to the pantry in my house, I have started a keto or near-keto diet (this is the one I was on when I was at VP, the autumn of 2019). So there's that too!
And then, I finished my development work for DART (a NASA mission to impact an asteroid, as a first demonstration of "planetary defense"--it will launch this summer) and I'm about halfway through what I am doing for IMAP ("Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe", another NASA mission.) Designing and building a spacecraft takes a LONG time, believe me. Oof.
Hooray for everybody making progress at things that are worth doing. Best--
Thanks Tom!
I wrote a little essay on this topic (and specifically about working on Interstellar Probe)--it's here in Uncanny: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/sticks-and-string/
I wonder if your friends work for JHU/APL? Both Messenger and NEAR are APL missions. There's a revamped website for APL civilian space missions, here: https://civspace.jhuapl.edu/
I guess I know Noah by reputation but not personally—very cool!
I am so colossally bad at seeing incremental progress when I make it; this prompt has me rather stymied.
Pull-ups! I would be very interested if you'd like to share the advice you're looking at about it; I got as far as acquiring a pull-up bar and then hit the "oh no, what doorframe??" blocker and there I have stayed (there are no actually convenient doorframe options available to me, and I never managed to commit to just using the bathroom and finding somewhere to store the bar when it isn't actively in use). 32 seconds! Congratulations on your first pull-up-related halfway mark! (Or arguably 2nd or 3rd or 4th, since you managed the equipment/setup, knowledge-acquisition, and peer group parts as well!)
Which reminds me of the truth at the heart of 'spoon theory' -- that there are so many more increments than we generally talk about, or often notice, and it's really hard to treat them like they are all individually progress towards some sort of goal.
I have been attempting to establish & reestablish various creative practices (writing, painting, jewelry-making, music-making, lino carving, bookbinding, sewing, etc), but tend to feel they don't "count" as progress unless I am engaging with them with rigorous consistency, which I am not. But I do have a cross stitch project I am making consistent enough progress on that I can see it and believe it continues even when I take time away from it! It is the cutest hedgehog you ever did see, and I'm happy to share a pic on twitter if you're interested.
It's so hard to separate progress from completion, and give credit for the process. I feel like there's a deeply-engrained belief that completion is the only way to measure productivity and productivity is the only way to measure worth, and that is bad and harmful and also so hard to unroot. Thank you for talking about it.
Oh! My other exciting incremental-progress thing of late: I have begun learning the Hebrew alphabet, and for whatever reason I am able to recognize when I make progress in that: the way the marks go from vaguely-familiar shapes to distinct, specific, distinguishable *letters* with known associated sounds is incredible. Before this I'd only ever taken some mediocre high school French and limited junior high intro to Spanish, which in addition to being not very well taught also didn't involve learning to *read* anew, and it has been an incredibly rewarding experience already. Watching the way it had shifted the way I *think* has been surprising and fascinating. The whole experience is something of a revelation.
I continue to think language is probably the most gorgeous form of magic I know anything about, and it's astonishing how little I really know. In a delightful way.
"(Or arguably 2nd or 3rd or 4th, since you managed the equipment/setup, knowledge-acquisition, and peer group parts as well!)"
This is such a good point, and I had so much help there! I delegated the equipment/setup part to my husband, and the bar we have (the one pictured above!) is the second try that worked with our doorframes (the very popular Iron Gym one, which we had in Glasgow, did not fit). Right now it's set up at the entrance to my office, and while it's up I can't close the door, but I'm embracing that for now as a Commitment to Progress, and when I start teaching over Zoom again in May I'll have to get in the habit of taking it down and putting it up again.
I want to leave you with some words from Keats that I love, and that I think of whenever I reflect on less noted work of creating space for a project, for creativity. This is from an 1817 letter to J. H. Reynolds, having arrived at his accommodation on the Isle of Wight:
"I have unpacked my books, put them into a snug corner—pinned up Haydon—Mary Queen of Scotts, and Milton with his daughters in a row. In the passage I found a head of Shakspeare which I had not before seen—It is most likely the same that George spoke so well of; for I like it extremely—Well—this head I have hung over my Books, just above the three in a row, having first discarded a french Ambassador—Now this alone is a good morning’s work—"
_Now this alone is a good morning's work_ is a refrain that falls into my head sometimes, whenever I've cleaned a desk, cleared a space, done something that makes me feel better able to write but that wasn't writing itself.
I’m impressed by your commitment to pull-ups, I’ve never been able to do them properly. Just now I have a more dire long-term goal: to be able to walk, even if aided by a walker. A couple of years ago I lost the ability to walk unaided because of deteriorating spinal damage and a major operation. Then a couple of weeks ago I broke my right ankle (classic silly accident In the bathroom, embarrasing as hell) and I don’t have enough strength in the other leg to compensate. So until my ankle can bear weight again, another 2 months at least, I am re-learning how to do all the day-to-day tasks. I’m hoping that I can continue to progress to the level of ability I had before breaking the ankle, though I know that will take time and work.
Good for you and your arm muscles!
Like many here, I'm writing a novel. Like some, I'm parenting. On both counts, I'm working to make it about the journey and not the outcome, neither of which I fully control.
Beautiful post, thank you! In my world, I've been trying to learn Aikido since 1995. Despite multiple injuries and trips and massive challenges, last February I reach 3rd Kyu (2 levels before black belt.) Will I ever get a black belt? Who knows! The journey is the destination...
I wrote three haiku while on break from work this week! I'm slowly getting back into writing and it makes me hopeful and happy.
We ordered a bunch of plants from our native plant nursery and got to digging them nice places in the yard. A couple dogwoods, hummingbird and pollinator friendly flowers, some hoary mint to fill in a minor hillside and fight erosion. Some berry bushes for birds and such in winter. Things that will take years to come to fullness, but the sleeping potential is hope and goodness. Six years ago we planted other things which are just now starting to flourish.
Again a much belated comment from me -- I've been having busy Friday nights but have wanted to respond -- congrats on the pull-up progress!
My increments have been on stretching. Our yoga teacher very much emphasizes process over progress, so I've just been working on my flexibility without explicitly pushing myself to any particular goal. As a result, being able to sort of kind of touch my feet when I am doing a forward fold has been a very pleasant experience!