If you want to progress you have to go where play is found.
Play is the place between newness and familiarity where progress can happen.
You can’t actually progress very far by working at the edge of your ability.
It’s occasionally useful but tears you down and requires too much recovery time to create consistent growth.
And you can’t progress by repeating something you already know robotically and mindlessly. Progress and play happen in between those points.
You can play by doing something that you know in a repetitive way while including improvisation. In other words, repetition with slight changes. This is what a game with known rules is. And this is what iteration is.
Progress and play don’t come from the absolute known or unknown. It comes from a place that you know well enough that it’s familiar so that you feel safe experimenting with it enough to create new discoveries.
You can watch the TikTok version below: