Recently, I stumbled across [Dance in a Year](http://danceinayear.com), an awesome single-page site from designer Karen Cheng. Atop the page, a video chronicles Karen’s dance skill progress over the course of a single year, from “embarrassing even alone in your room” to “ready to hit the club”.

Below the video, Karen shares her secret: practice every day, setting small goals along the way.

Or, in other words, the same advice that pretty much everyone ever gives on learning or doing anything at all.

Still, obvious isn’t the same as easy. Incremental progress is, by definition, slow. And daily hard work takes, well, daily hard work. So, instead, we Tweet and Facebook and Foursquare and Instagram our way through the day, chasing minor instant gratification, the sudden small changes that yield immediate inconsequential results.

And it seems we’re getting great at doing that! Problem is, it’s precisely the opposite of what it takes to actually be or do the things most of us really want out of life.