032 • Focus on the gain, not the gap

We're surrounded by other people almost all the time.

Now this can be great, but unhealthy levels of connection to other people can put us at a disadvantage.

My friend gifted me a book a while back, called The Gap and the Gain. The topic in this book was that whilst people tend to focus on the gap between where they are and where they want to be, it's more important to look at the gain. This gain is how far they've come from a previous point in life.

This idea seemed to resonate with people when I happened to tweet about it recently...

Focusing on the gain brings more motivation as you can see how far you've come. More motivation means more drive to work, meaning that in the long run, we do work more and get more done.

Although looking to where you want to be can be good for aligning yourself (as we have all been doing in the new year), it's not a useful permanent state. Too much time here and you'll end up wallowing in the incompletion of goals you still have yet to reach.

It doesn't help that we're forced into a mindset of comparison by the accessibility of social media.

We see someone doing amazing things on the timeline and feel as though we should be doing the same too. Our brains conveniently forget that what that person has chosen to display probably took months or years of persistence, not to mention the sacrifices in other areas it takes to do something great.

With our own lives, we're forced to look at the whole package - what we do well and what we do less so. We see where we could have tried harder, causing us to aim further and further into the future, fixating on what we could do and not what we have done already.

Regard your life as an unfinished product (because it is) and learn to appreciate what you've accomplished up to the point you're at. Before you know it, you'll be another year or two in the future with a lot more to look back at and feel proud about.

I'll see you next week!

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This week’s updates…

This week, again, I've not been writing much in favour of getting ready for PARAZETTEL V2's launch in seven days. However, I've still been reading, for relaxation after I’ve finished working.

Today's recommendation is something that I don't read all that often - a piece of fiction, no less.

I had the book Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield in my Kindle library for a long time without reading it, but recently picked it up and gave it another crack. This time I loved it, devouring the story in a matter of days.

It's all about the battle of Thermopylae, where a force of Spartan warriors, 300 strong, held back the multitudes of the invading Persian army.

They were hopelessly outnumbered to the point that the campaign was considered a suicide mission (the 300 warriors were all fathers, selected seeing as they had living sons to maintain their bloodline).

In battle, the Spartans fought valiantly and deterred the Persians enough that the remainder of the Hellenic armies could ward off the invaders when the Persian army advanced past Thermopylae, deeper into Greece.

Thoroughly enjoyed. I'll be checking out Pressfield's other historical fiction work now too.