In 2020, a schoolkid at the age of 14 decided that he was going to actively try and improve himself.
On the back of barely passing his end-of-year exams and nearly dropping to the bottom of his year, he decided a change needed to be made.
He needed to embark on a pathway to progress.
Progress – The movement towards a goal or to a further / higher stage. If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Pathway – a way of achieving a specified result; a course of action.
This first post is merely about definitions – what is a pathway and progress?
In the coming weeks, we will go through how to choose pathways and how to set goals.
Both of these words hold value to me. Since 2020, I’ve been trying to strive for progress, constantly trying to better myself.
Progress means that we can become a better version of ourselves. Progress requires struggle.
Struggle could be through challenges, not knowing if you are good enough, or not even knowing where to start.
We want to push our brains to their limit to improve in all aspects of life.
The definition of pathway is simple, but it’s accurate because it conveys the key theme of it being a journey for you to develop.
A Pathway is something you embark on to achieve progress.
I set these definitions to ground our conversation in realistic and measurable themes.
Let’s answer this question: What is a pathway to progress?
I want to break this down further:
- Why do we need to form our view of progress?
Understanding our view of progress is crucial because if we do not set a goal/target, how can we measure it?
Every action we take aims at some form of progress within our lives:
- Getting good grades / achieving a promotion
- Getting stronger in the gym
- Developing our skills e.g. instruments or cooking.
But to take these actions we need to identify what “better” looks like. What is it that we are trying to reach?
Without setting this idea of progression i.e. where we want to go, all this would have been useless.
So, before we start putting systems in place to achieve these goals, let’s note down what these goals are. Get your notes app or a notepad and just write down one thing you want to achieve. We now know where we want to go.
Let’s move on to the next question.
2. What can different pathways look like?
Now it is about how you are going to achieve progression. This is where your pathways come in.
Let’s take a goal I set, wanting to achieve three A* at A Level. To have a remote chance of meeting this goal, I needed to set many pathways.
This included:
- Dedicated distraction-free study time outside of school.
- A realistic understanding of the work required and monitoring this weekly.
- Different activities to balance my work.
When we set our pathways, they should be realistic but aligned with the precise area in which we want to develop.
So, when setting your routines, ensure they’re always aligned with your idea of progress.
Now let’s bring this together.
I’d argue it’s the framework for how we live our lives. Daily actions we take form a pathway to progress.
Having breakfast fuels us for the day so we have energy. Paying the bills allows us to have a roof over our heads, so we can live. Reading books educates us about our favorite interests, so become interesting.
All our pathways, in one way or another, lead towards some idea of progress.
The question is, do you have current goals that you genuinely want and if so, have you set a pathway to achieve them?
In these coming posts, I’ll try and increase the success of your pathways to progress. I want your journey to be more efficient and enjoyable!
Have a great week!
Dylan 🙂