Raising the progress bar

Linear is so yesterday, today and tomorrow

Progress / noun - movement to an improved or more developed state

Progress / verb - to improve or develop, to continue

I asked Google “what is progress equivalent to in physics”, it offered accumulation, revolution, increased power and finally… momentum.

Sometimes I wonder about AI overviews, an accumulation of knowledge or a revolution of thinking are not in themselves physics.

Momentum though… that is what Finn the Human would call “mathematical”

Math is one of those things where beauty is truth and truth is beauty so lets do some equations and make some art…

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Momentum = mass x velocity - or if you like it in math - P = MV

Mass is a complicated concept for humans - it is not weight even though weight is how heavy mass is under gravity… theoretically then, the best diet is to leave earth… but only if you are specious.

When you pass a certain age your body may enter a mass accelerator - for men this is called entering the dad bod. Its like a reverse black hole as all those cream cakes scoffed freely as a young adult rapidly appear around your accretion disk.

Yet there is a time in our life where our increase is mass is not only celebrated it is totally expected... often, we start measuring mass before birth. Well not us personally but your mum certainly was taking note.

In NZ we have a society dedicated to caring for children under the age of 5 called The Plunket Society. Each child gets a small book which notes their growth progress and any medical milestones they have. Height, weight are all compared against averages for age groups. Our mass is effectively not our own - it is the measure of others that is compared against us, do we fit the norms…

Momentum is mass multiplied by velocity.

Velocity = displacement/time

Displacement is the change in position from a starting point to an end position - normally measured by the shortest straight line from start to end. It can be zero if the object returns to the start.

In the totality of our lifetimes our displacement is zero, as it was so eloquently written from dust you were taken and to dust you will return. We go from a state of inactivity to a state of inactivity however, in the between of life forming and ending each of us will have unique displacements.

Displacement is the direction taken and the distance traveled and while measured linearly I doubt many of us have linear lives despite many cultures trying to create cookie cut lives of their populations.

Velocity is our displacement divided by time which we typically measure in a linear way. Unless you are traveling away from Earth in which case time becomes less relevant or relative according to Einstein. He realized gravity slows time and being free of gravity will allow time to go faster. Astronauts actually age faster than we do, no daylight savings for them.

Time is considered linear by western civilizations but not all civilizations do so. Some view it as cyclical, spiraling or even vertical. Chronemics is the study of how time is perceived, coded and communicated across a given culture.

I live in the South Pacific and amongst Pacific people there is a concept called Island Time. It is a non-literal interpretation of time, enjoys the moment and doesn’t worry about rigid deadlines.

Compare that to the time understanding the US and many western countries, like Germany in particular, perceive time as - monochronic time. Monochronic time systems expect things are done one at a time and time is segmented into small precise units. Does that sound familiar? Fred Taylor espoused this in The principles of Scientific Management - focusing on one best way to do things. He probably never went on holiday at the beach.

However the whole world is not monochronic in their perception of time nor everyone in the US. Many cultures enjoy polychronic time systems where several things can be done at once and time is not seen as small units but rather large fluid sections.

Not sharing the same concept of time leads to many frustrations and misunderstandings.

Neela 🌶️wrote a piece recently on being in the moment with someone we love - people in polychronic time value relationships and being with others is the task not the activities they do together. If we are monochronic we tend to keep track of the minutes passing and consider the next task not the moment we are in.

So perhaps our velocity will be dependent not just about the distance and direction we move in but also how we perceive time

Parves, author of the the seductive stack Unfinished, wrote about a man who discovered the world, only to return home and find his family had passed away. The person he wrote about came from a polychronic culture - and if we view the person’s story through a monochronic lens then perhaps we judge them more harshly than their culture would.

I wonder if the difference in time systems is not just culturally located but also by individuals - perhaps square pegs are chronologically wired differently rather than those who are round…

In business and actually life… I see the difference between people who can see far into the distance and position themselves in realities not here - they then displace themselves to reach those times. Leaders see time differently from managers.

🔓This next section is for all readers - yep, absolutely free! - If you like it please go to my YouTube channel and comment on a video - 🤗☕

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Well we’ve covered some physics of velocity and discovered it is not as simple as dividing direction by time as we have to agree on how the time will be measured. Which means time is not always a good measure for progress, it is a component but maybe the wrong one to focus on.

Which does raise the question of what is progress? Who sets the standard of what progress should be?

Some measure their progress materially.

Some by their relationships.

Some by their connections or how well known they are.

Some by what they produce.

Some by measuring themselves against others.

Actually that last one is a bit tricky, its really measuring the progress of others and not ourselves. I used to say that I’m happy being a B student if everyone else is a C, these days I’m more interested in helping those who want to be more than average find their own potential.

One job I had, I really exerted myself and went for A+ progress. Many of my co-workers laughed and told me there was no point as I wasn’t getting paid for that effort. 3 months later I was their manager.

Perhaps my square peg concept of time accelerated my displacement, certainly I had a different concept of time from most on that project. KPMG audited the site and said there was no way the team could displace the work in the time required… they didn’t say displace because they didn’t understand physics but if they did they still probably wouldn’t have said that.

Within 3 months that project had tripled their displacement and the project finished ahead of the scheduled end point.

Let’s consider displacement again - here’s a lovely diagram to show it not being linear.

Rjlarso, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

This is a dragon curve and while fractal in nature it is the repetition of the same process over and over - just like folding a piece of paper in half.

Is it linear?

Is life linear?

Once we develop into an adult - then what?

It used to be that we could become slotted into careers. Career comes from the Latin word carrus which means chariot and carraria - a road for vehicles. In the 16th century the French used carriere to mean a racecourse or to gallop.

So perhaps a career was a charted course - in displacement terms the shortest distance between entering the workforce and retiring.

I don’t meet many career people now, it seems the roads are all jumbled and people lurch from company to company looking for fulfillment or money or both if they’re lucky, all the time knowing it could end before they wish.

Do we still have progress then amongst a working population?

That depends on who defines what the progress should be.

And really what does momentum mean for each one of us.

Momentum in physics is mass x velocity. In business I recognized that to transform businesses I would need critical mass to achieve velocity. Critical mass was normally selling a vision to staff and getting enough buy in to that vision that their combined support would create the energy to push through the productivity barriers.

Politics depends on critical mass and fears critical masses.

What about personal momentum?

I would suggest that it depends on your mass - what makes up your mass?

Now we can circle back to Google’s AI overview of accumulation.

We are the sum of our memories, our memories are our perceived experiences both the ones we lived, dreamed, and shared with others. Shared memories is more often referred to as knowledge but yesterday’s knowledge may not be the same as tomorrow’s understanding so we really rely on a memory of what we heard, read or saw of someone else’s experience.

The more we accumulate the more mass we have to play with. They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing in which case is a lot of knowledge super dangerous? Knowledge is just information. Knowledge tells you that the sound you hear behind you as you walk along the tracks is a train coming. Wisdom tells you to get off the tracks.

A lot of knowledge is a critical mass that can enable you to achieve desired momentum.

I did a lot of work in quality control - to improve quality we just had to improve shared knowledge and the desire to implement that knowledge.

Desire… hmm… what is the physics of desire… is it attraction? Maybe we won’t go deep into desire in this article except to say desire is an accelerator for progress. And if you are still interested in physics, acceleration is the rate of change of velocity over time.

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Lots of people can measure your progress or momentum against their own values - only you can determine if you want momentum or are happy with where you are.

Momentum if linear can be either exhilarating or frightening depending on how in control we feel.

As an artist I continually question myself if I have momentum and if that momentum is going forward or sideways.

The dragon curve goes all over the place and yet it grows into something wonderful.

The act of painting can be like folding the paper again and again. Make the marks, believe in the process, yet the vision is unfolding the paper - the vision emerges as long as we keep progressing.

For example here’s some progress on a work I’m still displacing.

As the painting emerges I gain more knowledge mass… so… as the weeks go by am I losing time in the effort it takes to do the painting?

This is the bit most managers don’t understand about productivity and why performance reviews are a waste of time and can and do reduce momentum.

What people achieve in the past is not an indication of what they are not going to achieve in the future. It’s a misunderstanding of mass, time and direction.

Its like trying to drive a car by only looking in the rear view mirror.

Momentum requires mass and the more mass you gain the bigger the momentum is going to be.

The mass in progress is the knowledge we have gained, therefore…

Knowledge enables us to find a shorter distance between where we want to go.

Quality management does this by giving knowledge to reduce rework - the same effort is applied the piece of work but a shorter distance is required to finish it.

If we are gaining time by increasing our mass does this mean we are freeing ourselves of gravity?

The evidence would say yes but friction might like to have a word about it later.

Hmmm… there are at least 2 reasons why progress or momentum is worth pursuing, with the first one being time.

There’s only so much time available before our displacement returns to zero. Progress enables us to find more time, to use our time differently - perhaps less in a monochronic way.

Which is all very well if you want to achieve things… otherwise procrastination is always an option.

The other reason is the joy of growth, babies are wonderful but we want them to grow up and have life experiences. Talk Talk sang, life’s what you make it. Momentum carries us through life, to new places, relationships, experiences and emotions.

Happiness is the journey.

May you enjoy the time you have available to you and find joy in your momentum without worrying about the physics of it all… unless you really enjoy the physics and want to get more done in less time.