The Gap and the Gain: How to Recognize Your Progress

Did you know you’re more successful than you let on?

Yes, you! If you are like me, annual reviews in your business life, whether giving or receiving, were painful. Now there is a better way! Enter the book The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy. This is a book that sets out to use the GAIN method to help people shift their mindset and work toward their goals.

The core idea of the book is that progress can be measured by looking backward from your current position rather than forward toward an ideal. When you measure backward, you look at the GAIN: what you have learned and how far you have come toward your goal.

If you measure forward into the future toward an ideal, you look at the GAP, which is how far you are away from your ideal. Unfortunately, many business reviews are based on measuring the GAP. The result can be that we fail to recognize our progress.

Wants Versus Needs

The book starts by laying out the concept that we should look at our goals as WANTS versus NEEDS. By doing this, we can stay motivated without becoming so focused on an outcome that we feel desperate to achieve it. The authors use several examples to illustrate this concept.

• A need can create an unhealthy attachment to the outcome, making the goal feel dependent on outside circumstances and therefore harder to control.
• A want is something that we aspire to and can place us more in harmony with the goal. By their nature, wants can be intrinsically motivating.

The GAP and GAIN

In both GAP and GAIN thinking, we aspire to meet a goal, whether it is a business or personal goal.

When we measure through the GAP, we look forward to the goal and see how far we still have to go to reach it. GAP measurement supports the need state. We set an ideal and focus on how far away we are from that ideal rather than how far we have come.

With GAIN thinking, we still have an ideal or goal, but we measure our progress backward to see how far we have come. GAIN measurement supports a wanted state. We recognize that we have not yet reached our ideal, while also celebrating the growth we have made along the way.

We do not need to rely entirely on outside validation because we can develop a powerful source of internal motivation.

From Losing Team to Winning Team

The book covers much about how to stay in the GAIN and how quickly we can fall back into GAP thinking when things do not go well. There are many examples throughout the book. One I wanted to share with you is about a university soccer coach who had a team of novice women players.

At the start of the season, they lost their games—badly. Needless to say, the team was very discouraged. To counteract this, the coach instituted a GAIN approach. After each lost game, the coach would set the timer for five minutes and allow the team to sulk and feel bad—in other words, be in the GAP. Then the team took ten minutes to talk about what happened that was good—to be in the GAIN. Then, the team would take 20 minutes to talk about specific good things that another team member did. After that, the team would let the loss go.

While the team lost most of their games in the first half of their season, they started to win in the second half. By the end of the season, they were at the top of their league. It is a great example of how focusing on the GAIN helped shift the players’ attention toward what was working and reinforced their progress.

The book offers some basic starting points for measuring GAIN versus GAP:

• Your ideal should be inspiring and measurable – This is similar whether you are measuring forward or backward.
• Start by measuring how far you have already come – Consider where you were 10, 5, or 3 years ago, even if only in general terms. This can be personal, such as your knowledge, finances, or family relationships, or professional, such as learning and your span of responsibility.
• Commit to a GAIN attitude toward measuring on a regular basis – Start with monthly, then weekly, and eventually daily reflection. By reviewing your progress regularly, you can recognize what you have learned, even when something does not work out, and use that insight to make course corrections.
• Look at what you can GAIN from the experience – Even when something goes wrong, ask yourself what you can learn from it.
• Move toward everything that is growing – A powerful reminder from the book.

LifeShiift Application

While this is technically a business book, there is much to learn about life from it. As we age, if all we see is the GAP between where we are and what we consider an ideal, rather than recognizing how much we have gained, we can lose sight of the progress and experiences that enrich our lives.

So many people see only losses as they get older; they do not always measure their growth in areas like wisdom, relationships, and love. By focusing on what we do not have, we can miss the opportunity to savour all that we do have. How can you practice being in the GAIN today?