walking in a fog

In a fog you do not know you are getting wet, but as you keep walking you get wet little by little. — Shunryu Suzuki from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Real progress is slow. Brick by brick.

When it pours rain, you get soaked. When it is foggy, you get soaked but it takes a long time and you don't really notice.

This reminds me of the paradox of the heap. One grain at a time. At what point does it become a heap? No one grain makes a heap into a 'heap'.

Tipping points and thresholds are similar. There is this crossing over of critical mass. Walking in a fog is a million little drops leading to wetness.

Our brains comprehend downpours well. Tiny changes are easily dismissed as no progress. It is hard to notice the wet feeling when walking in a fog. In reality, true progress is almost always tiny changes compounded over time. The downpour is all at once. The fog requires time.

We can say either that we make progress little by little, or that we do not even expect to make progress. — Shunryu Suzuki from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Learning is one grain at a time. Eventually you have a heap of knowledge if you stick with it long enough. The downpour method rarely leads to long-term memory of whatever you learned. Remember cramming for exams in college? Can you remember anything? Compare that to something you learned over a decade.

All in all, don't get discouraged if you are not making progress at the speed that you want. You probably are doing it the right way. You are probably making more progress than you realize.