if you're a millennial like me you remember a time when downloading anything took forever
downloading music downloading tv shows and downloading movies
computers weren't that powerful back then the bandwidth if it wasn't still connected by dial-up
was overall pretty weak occasionally a large file like an hd movie would take hours if not days to
complete i would sit at the computer and stare at the progress bar and watch it slowly edge along
telling me how many percent was left and how many kilobytes it was receiving per second
looking back i wonder how many cumulative hours i've spent sitting there watching that bar
now and then it would move so slowly that i would have to put my mouse cursor right by the edge just
so i could see if it was actually moving even by a pixel it's an old technique you can use it too
the most infuriating part which happened more often than not
is when the download would be going really fast reach 98 percent and then stop i felt so helpless
still i was always grateful for the existence of the progress bar because even though it was
sometimes glitchy and inaccurate it kept me from canceling my download a progress bar
is a good design it helps you see how much has been done and how much is left to do
it works brilliantly for downloading software but progress bar works for other things in life too
if you are painting a room the progress bar is a paint on your wall if you are reading a book it's
the proximity of your bookmark to the back cover these are things that tell us great job you're
doing it keep going but what about things that don't inherently have progress bars for example
writing a book writing a book is a multi-step task that doesn't have a clear progression
is finishing the outline one percent or two percent of the project is finishing the first
draft fifty percent done you don't know with creative projects you can often feel as though you
like my download went really fast at the beginning and then got stuck at 98 complete you've been at
98 complete for months now on that novel what the hell while progress bars are great for measuring
projects with completions creative projects aren't always clear especially if they are more personal
projects so you as the creator get to decide where the end is and to avoid ending up stuck in 98
for infinity it's actually good to create this progress bar from the very start of your project
actually draw where the 25 line where the 50 line and where the finish line is for example
let's say you're working on a novel great you could just start writing and see where it all
ends up but god knows where the i'll take you instead let's break it down we could even do
that with the different stages outlining outlining first act will get me to 25
outlining second act will get me to 50 outlining third act will get me to 75 and reviewing it three
times will allow me to complete the outlining stage progress bar for outlining is filled then
we can move to drafting drafting writing the first act will get me to 25 act 2 will get me
to 50 and so on like that then there's editing publishing and marketing all these sections can
have their own progress bars so even when your larger progress bar feels like it's stuck on 98
you can look down at the smaller ones and see what actually needs to be done and work on it until you
reach the next milestone whenever you're stuck on a project or feel unmotivated to continue think of
your task in relation to a progress bar if you at least know where you're going then when your work
and effort are only delivering minuscule improvement 0.001 percent of progress each day
at least you know you're still on the right track and that even though you may be stuck at 98 you
know you're not completely frozen and progress is still happening we live in a time where a lot of
things are instantaneous tv shows movies and music to name a few i haven't downloaded anything that
took over a few minutes and years yet creating meaningful work still takes time and the result
might not be visible if you've been staring at the progress bar for so long but as long as you
keep moving towards the next percentage point as long as you know where that is then eventually you
will be done keep going before you hit cancel look at the progress bar it might not look like it each
and every day but you are making progress thank you for watching if you enjoyed it please give
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