Progress Counts From First Steps, Not Gaps
Created at: September 23, 2025
Measure progress by what you began, not by what remains undone. — Paulo Coelho
Reframing the Scoreboard
At first glance, Coelho’s counsel redirects our eyes from the abyss of what is missing to the spark of what has begun. By valuing initiation, we recognize that momentum arises the moment we cross the threshold from intention to action. A rough draft, a first prototype, a single outreach email—each marks a tangible shift from zero to one. Consequently, the scoreboard changes: instead of tallying deficits, we honor beginnings that compound. This mental reframe does not deny the remaining journey; it simply refuses to let the unfinished eclipse the courage required to start. In doing so, it preserves energy for the work ahead.
Why the Unfinished Looms Larger
Psychology helps explain our bias toward what is undone. The Zeigarnik effect (1927) shows that incomplete tasks cling to memory more stubbornly than completed ones, nudging attention toward gaps. Likewise, research on negativity bias finds that bad or missing outcomes weigh more heavily than equivalent positives (Baumeister et al., 2001). With this in mind, Coelho’s advice becomes a corrective lens. By intentionally measuring what we began, we counter a predictable cognitive skew. We still acknowledge outstanding work, yet we anchor morale in evidence of movement, not the shadow of absence.
Motivation Through Small Wins
Building on that insight, Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer’s The Progress Principle (2011) documents how small, visible wins fuel motivation and creativity. Even modest forward steps improve what they call inner work life, sustaining effort on complex, long projects. Thus, measuring beginnings is not mere optimism; it is a motivational strategy. When you mark starts—first experiments, initial interviews, early pages—you create a feedback loop: progress begets mood, mood begets more progress. Over time, those small starts accumulate into breakthroughs.
Measure Leading Indicators You Control
Translating this to metrics, it helps to privilege leading indicators over lagging ones. Inputs like hours of deliberate practice, customer conversations initiated, or experiments launched are controllable and immediate. Outputs—awards, revenue, citations—arrive later and can distract or demoralize when used too early. Management thinkers have long warned against vanity metrics that look impressive but do not guide decisions (Ries, The Lean Startup, 2011). By tracking concrete starts instead, you illuminate the next right action. In effect, the metric becomes a compass, not a scoreboard.
Beginnings That Changed Outcomes
History often hides the modest beginnings behind celebrated peaks. Before their 1903 flight, the Wright brothers spent years piloting gliders and running wind-tunnel tests, counting trials to learn from rather than failures to lament (McCullough, The Wright Brothers, 2015). Their starts—test after test—built the knowledge that made powered flight possible. Similarly, Florence Nightingale’s early sanitation measures during the Crimean War began as practical interventions—clean water, ventilation, data collection—later visualized in her polar area diagrams (1858). Those starts reduced mortality and reshaped public health. The pattern is constant: beginnings create the conditions for outcomes.
A Practical Ritual to Track Starts
To bring the idea home, adopt a start ledger: at day’s end, list what you initiated—drafted an outline, scheduled a user interview, set up a dataset, shipped a tiny feature. Each entry must be concrete, time-stamped, and within your control. Over weeks, the ledger reveals a narrative of momentum, not just a mountain of remaining tasks. Pair this with tiny-habit design—lowering the bar to a five-minute start makes initiation far more likely (Fogg, Tiny Habits, 2019). As starts become routine, the undone loses its sting, and progress becomes a practice rather than a verdict.