How to Really Own Your Progress

For a long time, New York City had a huge graffiti problem in their subway system. Cars would get covered with spray paint, at which point they would be taken out of service and thoroughly cleaned—only to eventually become completely covered in graffiti once again. The cycle continued, until in the mid-90s, Mayor Rudy Giuliani set up a task force with a special mandate.

As part of the new program, the subway cars were cleaned again, except this time they were not allowed to accumulate more graffiti. As soon as a car was "tagged" once, the paint would be removed immediately. Eventually the graffiti artists mostly gave up and the problem of graffiti in New York subways was basically conquered.

Preserving Progress in the Practice

To me, one of the biggest lessons we can take from this is how important it is to preserve any progress you make, so you can keep moving forward instead of constantly cycling back. You know what I mean: You go to a workshop, you come home eager to implement new ideas, and sure enough you start to see some progress. Little by little, though, old habits come creeping back and eventually you realize your progress has been lost. So you announce that things are going to get back on track and you re-implement those strategies that brought you progress the first time. The cycle continues.

The solution to maintaining this progress is to fully commit to moving forward—once. That means having the discipline to keep going when the initial natural momentum starts to fade, and to jump on any incidents of backsliding right away. It will also mean carefully monitoring your results and working with your team to ensure a shared mindset to that commitment.

Don't let inertia take back any of your achievements, ever. Stake your claim to your improvements in unconditional terms, and use that success as a momentum builder to keep moving forward.


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