Most growth are non-linear. But we humans struggle to think about non-linear things because we use linearity as a simple, short term approximation, just as a tangent is a suitable estimate of the trajectory of an object in the air for a tiny moment despite it being affected by gravity. Nature is kind of discontinuous, and also if you consider fractals, you’ve seen how a lot of nature unfolds non-linearly even though in smaller steps, they do seem somewhat linear.
And because of that, we cannot always measure our actions against the results immediately and directly. We cannot get the full measure of results from the work that we put in at any point of time. There’s the dimension of time that we have to consider. The exams that we sit for by no means measure the full extent of our learnings in school! And we all know that even though we imagine our assessments and measures are perfect, they cannot be.
The important thing is that we must not be caught up with trying to make measures perfect, but to go back to the root of things that helps us growth. It will be lumpy but just trusting in the practice, in the small steps, seeing that you’re putting one foot ahead of another is enough. The distance you eventually cover will be more phenomenal when you don’t take too much effort to figure out how far you’ve come.