In Praise of Non-Linear Progress
A short guide to finding meaning in the detours.
Well, we know where we’re goin’, but we don’t know where we’ve been. Talking Heads weren’t lost — they were just describing the progress chart in every one of our heads: arrows forward, memory foggy on the loops behind.
We love a good before-and-after. Start messy, cue montage, end victorious. Linear, satisfying, narratable. But somewhere between struggle and triumph, life inserts three reruns, one detour, and a technical glitch nobody covered in a motivational video. Still, we squint at our imaginary progress chart and ask Why am I not further by now?
Work makes the illusion even worse. Promotions, new titles, bigger desks — the ladder metaphor is so deeply wired in that we forget ladders also wobble, get stuck, or take you nowhere except a dusty attic. But life rarely hands out tidy stages. More often, it’s a spiral staircase that has you circling the same view until suddenly, the perspective looks different.
Our apps trick us too. They show streaks, charts, and dashboards like progress is a loading bar. But real growth isn’t a software update that hits 100% and never downgrades. It’s more like your phone battery — sometimes it drops to 3% just to remind you to slow down and plug back in. The pause isn’t failure, but maintenance.
It’s why your sourdough starter refuses to rise for three weeks and then suddenly grows like it’s auditioning for Stranger Things. Or why your plant looks dead for months and then throws out a single, triumphant leaf the week you nearly toss it. Progress has a wicked sense of timing, and it rarely syncs with our calendars.
Most of the time, what looks like being stuck is actually quiet rewiring. The role that feels like a dead end can sneakily build the skill you’ll lean on later. The hobby that seems pointless is laying groundwork for a surprise breakthrough — or teaching you what you don’t enjoy, so you save yourself a lot of wasted time further down the road. The pause might not scream progress, but it plants seeds you’ll only notice in hindsight.
If progress was truly linear, we’d all be wrecks. The flat stretches are where you refill the tank — catching sleep, reconnecting with friends, or remembering food can be cooked instead of delivered. They’re also a chance to reset your perspective: not staring forward under the pressure of what’s next, but glancing back at the ground you’ve already covered and giving yourself a quiet high-five for making it this far.
If life really was a straight line up, every gym bro would bulk until he couldn’t fit through doors, and every spreadsheet warrior would be promoted until their title needed four slides to display. Constant progress would leave us all bilingual, shredded, and running garage-started empires. Instead, we nap, burn toast, and sometimes forget what day it is — which is exactly why our friends still tolerate us. Linear growth wouldn’t make us impressive; it would make us unbearable at dinner parties.
And if taking a break and reevaluating count as regression, I’ll take regression every time.
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