Our desires are shiny, eye-catching baubles. We are entranced with all the places, physical and metaphorical, we want to go: I want to travel the world (or change it), achieve fame and fortune, find true love, and a million other smaller but equally real desires. With these desires acting as a beacon, we become frustrated when we compare our current position to where we would like to be.
To counter these frustrations, we have mantras like “Focus on the journey, not the destination.” We typically interpret this mantra as an injunction to enjoy the present and practice gratitude. And yet, the interpretation of focusing on the present never sat right with me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the journey itself was wrong, and I was not moving towards my destination. The feeling of not moving towards my destination was the product of two observations: I was not moving in the right direction, and I was not making enough progress.
Both of these senses show up in familiar tropes. Wrong direction is the classic “doing well in a job that you don’t care about.” You’re making progress, sure, but not going to anywhere you want to be. Insufficient progress looks like the novel not getting written, or the band failing to get gigs. You might be pointed the right way, but you’re not going anywhere. Both can happen together: you can be in a dead end job going nowhere.
The actual work of aligning direction with your deep desires and developing habits to support consistent progress is the work of a lifetime (and the subject of a great many self-help books). Raising direction and progress into awareness is a good first step.
Checking direction can be done by asking yourself, “If I continue doing everything the same as I am now, what do I think will happen with my life? Do I like where my life is taking me?” Asking this question is scary as it forces us to confront the possibility that we might not like the direction our life is heading, and we might have been going this way for some time. Still, there’s no time to change direction like the present.
It’s generally a good idea to address direction before progress. Heading quickly in the wrong direction puts you in danger of stranding yourself deep into a lifestyle that you don’t want, which despite your dislike, is somehow hard to escape.
Checking our progress is a little more nuanced. It breaks down into two components: “Am I making any progress?” and “Am I making enough progress?” Making any progress is about beginning to move, and it is the place to start. Moving a little bit in the right direction is often the most we can ask for when we are first becoming familiar with a path. But we soon return to frustration if we are not moving towards our destination quickly enough.
Making enough progress is a question of velocity, which involves looking at how much time it took to cover a certain amount of distance. Making money is great, but if you are not making enough to save up for a house (or with my generation, pay off your debt), you still wind up dissatisfied. Once you have started moving a little bit in the right direction, it is easier to see ways to move more quickly down the right path. You find out what’s working and what isn’t. You can read articles or books and talk to friends. You experiment and practice and improve.
What’s so important about focusing on direction and velocity is that they are much more within your control than position. Often, there are immediate or short term steps you can take to improve your direction and velocity even if your ultimate destination is far away. Taking those steps feels good both in terms of being able to do something right now and in terms of knowing that you are moving closer to the right journey. Get the right direction and velocity, and your position will take care of itself.
The Pragmatic Philosopher 