The Mindset of "Work in Progress"

Work in Progress is a very useful mindset to adopt in terms of both training our clients, and also our own training and skills acquisition. We live in a results-oriented world of instant success, instant gratification, and very often these days the judgement of whether something is working is far too premature. The resulting action is usually to scrap it, abandon it, and start something else....in the almost clairvoyant knowledge that a few weeks further down the line we are going to abandon that as well.
These are the enduring reasons why people give up on new year resolutions, diets fail, exercise plans collapse through non-attendance etc.
Its very easy to justify our inadequacies to ourselves by being perennially judgemental and perfectionist - and out of those "failures" comes lower self-esteem, depression, lack of motivation, and a miriad of negative emotions.

So part of our inter-client communication should be the preframed understanding that our clients are on a journey of rediscovering themselves, and that this journey is dynamic and progressive...and that judgements at any stage are not going to inherently benefit this progress.

As an illustration, here is a coaching article I wrote about "Work in Progress" as a mindset:-

Its a simple enough phrase..."Work in Progress"...

And yet I've discovered that when using it with sportspeople (especially the younger ones), that it actually liberates them from any performance shortcomings where (more often than not) they would hang their heads, beat themselves up, and all the other attributes that go with our culture of instant success, instant gratification, instant...you name it!!

So what is the power behind these 3 words?

1. Well, have a look at the presuppositions when the player hears my response to their assessment of how they've played.
PL: "It went X, I did Y, I didn't do Z, I forgot to do M and I made a mistake with N."
PW: "Yes - and lets be realistic now. These parts of your game - it's work in progress."

What is it? It's work > which presupposes they are putting some effort into the activity away from competition. Which means they are motivated and active towards getting to grips with these parts of their game.
What's happening to the work? It's in progress > which presupposes its on the move from A to B and is improving, getting better. This implies positive and purposeful outcomes are already taking place.

2. Liberating emotional possession of competition errors.
What is the work in progress? IT is! (a nice little impersonal IT) > which actually puts a space between (1) the errors and imperfections of the performance and (2) the player themselves, by introducing that neutral and unemotional wedge (3), IT (ie the work being done to improve those particular parts of their game).

3. No impatient time constraints.
There's no start or finish to Work In Progress either - just a plan, programme and record of improvement, accelerated or organic. These are process goals related to levels of competency, for which the acquisition timescale has never been set.

Part of the difference between my approach to young players and say those of the non-coaching fraternity (ie just adult players etc) - is this very point of detaching the emotional effect of errors of performance from the players themselves. When players are bombarded with a continual chorus of "You should do X" and "You mustn't do Y" and (perhaps the funniest of all) "Don't forget to remember to do Z" - heavens, how confusing is that - these remarks are miles away from my "Keep on with the Plan - because this is all Work In Progress."

Try it on yourself, or with the next client you see displaying "perfectionist" symptoms - and notice the effect this mindset brings about.....