No Progress Without Presence

Years ago I wrote a post about how we should favour process over progress. In that article I make the argument that we should not aim for predefined goals to get to some predefined top of the mountain. We don’t always know how long something will take. And we don’t know how the journey will look, so our best strategy is to settle in and focus on what we are doing in the moment.

People—especially large institutions and organisations—fixate on progress to the point where they no longer realise that their checkbox approach has nothing to do with real work. Peter Thiel makes a similar point in Zero To One. Here’s a quote:

“In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work.”

But I don’t want to give examples of how inanely some things function in modern society. The point that I would like to make with this post is that there is never any real progress unless the people involved are deeply present. This is the crux of it all—there is never any real progress without deep presence.

Process Over Progress was about fiction writing but it can apply to anything in life. If we are facing challenges, or have a big project to finish, or have relationship difficulties, or anything really, we should aim to be present. That is the only thing we should focus on.

I’ve never seen true and tangible progress in my life without real and deep presence. When I wanted my health to be better, I needed to show up and do the difficult work of mindful exercise and healthy eating. Daily. When I wanted to understand something difficult, I needed to apply buttocks to seat and focus. I needed to show up and not zone out. Nothing changes on a deep level when we zone out. Nothing shifts if we off-load our responsibilities to experts out there. Real and long-term progress is only found when we commit to presence. There is no progress without presence.

Related Books: The Power of Now, Silence, The Presence Process