Marketing Dopamine • October 16, 2026
Progress You Can Feel
Every pattern from this week has something in common.
The new tool. The rebrand. The busy calendar. The next idea. The next course. The extra post. Each one delivers a real feeling of progress, and each one can quietly stand in for the real thing.
None of them are bad. That is what makes them so convincing. They are reasonable, even responsible choices.
They simply reward you before anything has actually changed.
There is progress you can feel, and progress you can measure. They are not always the same.
Progress you can feel arrives quickly. It comes at the moment of the decision, the purchase, the launch, the start. Progress you can measure arrives slowly. It shows up in clients, in conversations, in results that build over months rather than minutes.
Most of us chase the first kind because it is immediate and the second kind requires patience. Recognizing the difference is the beginning of change.
Acting on it is harder, and it is harder to do alone. Patterns are much easier to see in someone else’s business than in your own, which is why the people who break these cycles rarely do it by themselves.
Awareness is where change begins. Action is where it becomes real.
Seeing the pattern is the first step. The next step is deciding to do something different, and finding the people who will do it with you.
Lisa Carmichael is the author of The Marketing Dopamine Workbook: From Awareness to Action, available now, a companion to her book Marketing Dopamine: What Your Brain Is Really Doing When You Think You’re Building a Business, coming soon. Learn more at marketingdopamine.com
It’s easy to get caught up in new ideas and feel like we’re making progress when sometimes we just need to stick with something and give it time to grow.
Exactly!
Good point about recognizing the patters and taking actions to to break some cycles – it is always hard to do…
Noticing is how you start. Thanks for sharing.
Progress is good. It seems to come slowly, however. That’s especially true for the measurable progress.
So true! Sometimes we’re making progress long before we can actually measure the results. I think that’s what makes patience and consistency so important, especially when we’re wondering if our efforts are making a difference. Thanks for sharing!