From SIP to SIR

My friend Nathan has developed an acronym to help him get going on projects—SIP: Start-Improve-Perfect. He tells himself that he'll get there "one SIP at a time."

I like his acronym and the slow and steady manner of making progress that it suggests. But in recent years, I've come to chafe a little at the idea of working towards perfection. If perfection is the goal, we're never arriving at that place. Perfection takes years!

So I made a modification to Nathan's acronym for myself—SIR: Start-Improve-Refine.

I like refine instead of perfect because if refinement is your goal, then you're reaching it anytime you practice the skill you're after.

To refine is to become more sensitive.

Increased sensitivity allows you to catch what slipped by you before. You make a small adjustment. You try again. And then, because you've changed, you notice something else.

This is part of what we're exploring in Micro Macro, my new class this summer.

We take a single movement and return to it again and again. We reduce the number of variables so that we can increase our capacity to perceive.

At first, you might notice the part doing the moving. If we're making a circle with the head, you notice your head moving. Or if we're opening the arm, you might notice that one arm opens more than the other.

But as you stay with it, your perception begins to sharpen and you begin to notice shifts further away from the center of the action.

You might notice the exact moment your shoulder drops as you circle your head. Or a tiny change in the space between your ribs that influences your breathing as you open your arm.

A movement suddenly feels easier—not because you tried harder, but because you noticed something you hadn't noticed before and adjusted accordingly.

One participant described what this kind of refinement felt like:

"We've done this movement many times before but not with so many variations. After getting off the floor at the end, my body felt so open, my ribs turned, and I noticed all these muscles between my ribs. I felt lightness and ease, almost like levitation in the rib area." —Dirk

The movement hasn't necessarily become perfect.

You've become more refined in your ability to perceive it.

And that, to me, is a different kind of progress.

Maybe this is why I prefer refine to perfect. Perfection asks us to arrive. Refinement invites us to keep discovering.

Start.

Improve.

Refine.

Then start again.