In defense of tinkering: the most effective mindset for personal growth
Samantha, Eldest & Co founder, here. I have spent a lot of years of my life trying to “self-improve.” Obviously, this is now a big part of my job, running a company to help women improve their confidence and hit their goals, I was already deep in self-help books and “how to build the right habits” and testing to do list apps and productivity systems.
And in all these years of trying to use all the tools available to me in order to make myself happier, more confident and more productive, I have realized that I picked up a philosophy that extends far beyond each of the individual areas I was focused on that is so powerful for determining the difference between self-improvement feeling like “there’s always something wrong with me I need to fix” and “I am getting better month after month.” (Notice the difference in the energy between those two sentences? Which woman do you think feels better about herself?)
The philosophy that I want to talk to you about today that’s been so powerful for me is…
Tinkering.
Why tinkering is the best way to approach personal growth
Before we dive deep into why tinkering works so well for eldest daughters specifically, let's get clear on what we mean by this approach. Tinkering isn't about half-hearted attempts or giving up when things get hard. It's actually a sophisticated mindset that treats personal growth like an ongoing project rather than a problem to be solved once and for all.
Think about that person you know who has the most beautiful garden. They didn't plant it perfectly in one weekend and then never touch it again. Instead, they're constantly observing, adjusting, trying new things, and circling back to areas that need attention. Some seasons they focus on the roses, other times they're redesigning the herb section. They celebrate the blooms while also noting what needs more water or different soil. That's tinkering.
What Makes Tinkering Different from Traditional Self-Improvement
Traditional self-improvement operates on what we call the "fix it and forget it" model. You identify a problem, find a solution, implement it, and expect it to stay solved forever. This approach treats personal growth like assembling IKEA furniture: there's a right way to do it, and once it's done, you're done.
Tinkering, on the other hand, recognizes that we're complex, evolving humans living in a constantly changing world. It embraces the reality that growth is ongoing and cyclical, not linear and finite. When you adopt a tinkering mindset, you're not trying to "fix" yourself because you understand there's nothing fundamentally broken about you in the first place.
When you tinker, you are always circling back to the project at hand to see if you can find a way to make it 1% better. You often are rotating between a handful of progress in order to keep things interesting or from getting redundant and will return to a previously started project after some period of a break.
Tinkering allows you to move on to another part of the project or a different area entirely before you’ve fully completed anything because of a continuous commitment to improve and a knowing that you’ll eventually circle back to those projects if they’re important.
For me, this has popped up in areas like my productivity system (my system of to do lists, notes, how I motivate myself to get things done, habits, etc.) or healing anxious attachment.
In terms of the productivity system, I am always asking myself if there are ways that I could be more efficient or make it more enjoyable to get my work done. This has looked like testing different systems of managing email, using different to do list apps, goal setting differently and so many other things. But I haven’t tackled these all at once - I will often circle back to actually thinking about this system on about a quarterly basis (but in a very unstructured way - basically whenever it comes to me or I notice a problem or an inefficiency).
As a result, over the last 10 years, my system has gotten more and more robust and effective and now I’m able to tackle big projects without overwhelm, rarely get stuck with that “I know I’m forgetting something” feeling and feel like I’m squeezing the most juice out of my hours. But that has built up slowly over time.
Similarly, as I set out to heal my anxious attachment style, I understand that this isn’t the sort of thing you do overnight so at any given point when my attachment style is being triggered, I focus on what I can do in that moment to make myself 1% less triggered. I don’t belabor the fact that I haven’t fully healed it, but rather celebrate me putting one more penny in the piggy bank of healing and trust that I will circle back to do more when it is next relevant.
So why do I believe that we should all adopt this tinkering approach?
Why Eldest Daughters Struggle with Traditional Self-Improvement
As eldest daughters, we've been conditioned to be the responsible ones, the problem-solvers, the ones who get things right the first time. We're used to excelling at school, work, and relationships by following the rules and meeting expectations. So when we approach personal growth, we naturally try to apply the same perfectionist, achievement-oriented mindset that served us in other areas.
But here's the thing: personal growth doesn't work like a school assignment. There's no rubric, no clear deadline, and no gold star waiting at the end. When we try to approach our inner work with the same energy we brought to getting straight A's, we set ourselves up for frustration and burnout.
The Three Core Principles of Tinkering for Personal Growth
Principle 1: Progress Over Perfection Instead of waiting until you've completely mastered something before moving on, tinkering celebrates incremental improvements. Made your bed three days this week instead of zero? That's progress worth acknowledging. Had one difficult conversation without completely shutting down? That's growth.
Principle 2: Cyclical Rather Than Linear Tinkering recognizes that you'll circle back to the same themes and challenges throughout your life, and that's not a failure. It's human. Your relationship with confidence, money, or intimacy will evolve as you do, and that's exactly as it should be.
Principle 3: Curiosity Over Judgment When something isn't working, tinkering asks "What can I learn from this?" rather than "What's wrong with me?" This shift from self-criticism to self-compassion is crucial for sustainable growth.
Why tinkering is a more helpful mindset for to self-improvement
As I mentioned above, in self-improvement, I find that you can be working on the same area, say losing weight or your approach to dating, and have two very different experiences truly based on your energy.
One approach emphasizes that you still have areas to improve, implying that as long as they exist, you have not completed what you set out to do. Said simply, if you’re not at 100%, you’re at 0%.
Obviously thinking about the human experience, none of us will ever reach 100% of who we want to be because when we improve in one area (or all areas) then we’ll see the possibilities to go even further.
So this endless striving to improve, but telling yourself that you haven’t done enough is a recipe for continuous disappointment.
On the other hand, the second approach (tinkering!) emphasizes the continued commitment and celebrates what you have already improved on as motivation for the next stage. Said simply, if you are are 50% of the way to where you want to be, you’re 50% further than when you started!
Now this may sound like a semantic difference but this philosophy has made such a difference in my life and there’s a reason why I think it’s beneficial for you to implement it in yours:
Motivation.
When you are enjoying the process of self-improvement, not just the outcome it gives you way more motivation to stay at it, which ultimately leads to greater and faster results.
When you love or enjoy the process, you stay more committed because there’s more natural motivation. When you are constantly focused on the outcome, or the fact that you’re not yet there yet, it saps your motivation. Not what we want.
So let’s dig in a little further to why tinkering is so beneficial…
3 reasons why you should tinker:
Tinkering cultivates mindset of celebrating progress
If we think back to the alternative to tinkering, what I’d describe as the “black and white” approach, you are also aware of something that you want to improve on, but the moment of celebration in this approach is on completion.
We identify a problem or an area for improvement, focus in on finding a solution, implement it and then don’t think about it again.
On top of the fact that this philosophy is unrealistic, it puts the enjoyable part of self-improvement in the part of the process that’s almost by definition unachievable.
If you only allow yourself to celebrate when you have 100% achieved what you set out to do, you make it very very rare for you to every get to celebrate.
The majority of the problems that we tackle or the areas of our life that we want to improve are not resolved in one fell swoop. They take days, months, even years of consistent effort to yield results. But if we address something, and we try to implement a solution, and we check back in and we noticed that it isn't fully solved, and that makes us view it as a failure (if we’re in black and white thinking), it’s natural that we’d feel bad about ourselves of feel discouraged. Which discourage us from first of all tackling the problem again, and getting closer to the desired outcome. So we stay stuck in the place of incomplete or in this school of thought: “failure.”
Now in comparison, in tinkering, if you have made an improvement, brought yourself closer to your ultimate goal in any way, then you have cause to celebrate because you are emphasizing the progress not the completion.
Tinkering encourages us to improve where we can and consistently circle back to find ways to improve. But each time you circle back to a topic you’ve already worked on, the focus is on the progress you’ve already made as proof that you can make more, as opposed to the areas that haven’t yet been improved as proof that you’re likely to fail.
Which sounds more motivating to you?
It’s easier to work through smaller components of an area of life over time
Whether you’re interested in making more money, improving your confidence, finding a long term relationship, there are a lot of parts that go into achieving those outcomes.
It’s obvious that if you want to go from making $50k a year to $250k a year, there are going to be a lot of steps to get there, some of the practical about how you’re earning money and the rate you’re making it but others more mindset-oriented, like addressing how you feel about having larger amounts of money flowing through your accounts.
If we start to tackle an area of our life, like making more money, it can easily be overwhelming all the things that we will have to do in order to make the shift. And if we let that overwhelm stop us from starting, from beginning to make progress, we will stay exactly where we are.
This is the most frustrating pattern, self-sabotage - where you are the one holding yourself back.
We cannot control the number of steps it will take to get to our ultimate goal but we can choose our mindset in how we think about the process. And it behooves us to choose a mindset that makes it easier to achieve our goals than harder.
Which is where tinkering comes in.
When you are consistently thinking about your self-improvement from this tinkering mindset, it’s okay for you to jump in and tackle one small component of the project to make progress and not have to bite off a huge chunk. This is still worth celebrating because it’s a step in the right direction.
This might sound self-explanatory but how many times have you looked at something you want to do - maybe get a new job - and thought to yourself, “ugh, I probably won’t get that job, so it’s not even worth putting in the effort to update my resume.” In that moment, you were black and white thinking. Because you couldn’t achieve the ultimate goal (which is an arguable conclusion anyway!), you don’t start at all.
If we were comparing two options objectively, having done nothing to get a new job and having updated your resume, which actually puts you closer to finding a new job?
Obviously having completed one of the steps! Yet, so often we don’t do the little steps if we can’t complete the task (and get our rush of validation) and in doing so we keep ourselves stuck.
Tinkering is the opposite, in that it gives us permission to celebrate each incremental step of progress, making it easier to start to begin with!
Tinkering Forces You to Identify What's Working and What Isn't
Here's something we've learned the hard way: not all self-improvement advice is created equal, and what works for your best friend might be completely wrong for you. But when you're in "fix me" mode, it's easy to keep trying new strategies without ever pausing to assess what's actually making a difference.
Tinkering requires regular check-ins with yourself. Because you're approaching growth as an ongoing process rather than a one-time fix, you naturally develop the habit of asking: "What's working? What isn't? What do I want to try next?"
This self-awareness is crucial because it helps you avoid the trap of endlessly consuming self-help content without ever implementing or evaluating it. Instead of collecting strategies like Pokemon cards, you become discerning about what actually serves you.
For example, maybe you've tried morning pages, meditation, and gratitude journaling as ways to start your day with more intention. Through tinkering, you might discover that meditation makes you more anxious, morning pages feel like homework, but writing down three things you're looking forward to actually energizes you. That's valuable information you can only gather through experimentation and honest self-assessment.
How to Shift from All-or-Nothing to Tinkering in Your Personal Growth
Start by Auditing What's Already Working
Before you add anything new to your personal growth toolkit, take inventory of what's already serving you. This might seem obvious, but we're often so focused on what we want to change that we overlook the things we're already doing well.
Grab a journal and spend some time reflecting on these questions:
What habits or practices make you feel most like yourself?
When do you feel most confident and grounded?
What patterns or behaviors have you successfully shifted in the past year?
What compliments do you consistently receive from others?
This isn't about patting yourself on the back (though that's nice too). It's about building your growth strategy on a foundation of what already works rather than starting from scratch every time.
Break Big Goals into Tinkerable Chunks
Instead of setting a goal like "be more confident," try something like "notice when I dim my light in conversations" or "practice taking up space in one meeting per week." These smaller, more specific goals are much easier to work with and give you concrete ways to measure progress.
The key is to make your chunks small enough that they feel doable even on your worst days. If your goal requires you to be at 100% energy and motivation to succeed, it's probably too big.
Create Systems for Regular Check-ins
Tinkering requires ongoing reflection and adjustment, which means you need some kind of system for checking in with yourself regularly. This doesn't have to be complicated or time-consuming.
Some ideas that work well for eldest daughters:
A monthly "growth review" where you assess what's working and what isn't
Weekly voice memos to yourself about what you're noticing
A simple rating system (1-10) for how different areas of your life are feeling
Quarterly "experiments" where you try something new for three months
The goal isn't to create more work for yourself, but to build in natural pause points where you can course-correct before you get too far off track.
Make the Process More Enjoyable
This might be the most important piece of the puzzle. If your personal growth feels like punishment, you're not going to stick with it long-term. Tinkering works because it's inherently more enjoyable than the "no pain, no gain" approach to self-improvement.
Look for ways to make your growth work feel nourishing rather than depleting. Light a candle when you journal. Listen to your favorite playlist while you clean. Reward yourself with a fancy coffee after a difficult conversation. The goal is to associate positive feelings with the process of growth, not just the outcomes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How is tinkering different from just being inconsistent or giving up easily?
A: Great question! The key difference is intentionality. Tinkering involves deliberately choosing to work on something, experimenting with it, and then consciously deciding to shift focus based on what you've learned. It's strategic rather than random. You're not giving up; you're gathering information and making informed decisions about where to direct your energy next.
Q: How do I know when to stick with something versus when to try a different approach?
A: This is where those regular check-ins become crucial. Generally, if something feels hard but meaningful, that's worth sticking with. If something feels hard and empty, that might be a sign to try a different approach. Also pay attention to whether you're seeing any progress, even if it's small. No progress after a reasonable amount of time might indicate you need to adjust your strategy.
Q: Won't this approach take longer than just committing fully to one thing?
A: Important clarification - tinkering is not in opposition with having one priority for a season. You can fully lock in on one goal and feel comfortable that your other goals will get attention when there’s time for it. You can tinker with them a little in your free time, while holding yourself accountable to the main priority. In our experience, tinkering actually leads to faster, more sustainable results because you're less likely to burn out and give up entirely because you’re trying to be all in on every goal. When you try to change everything at once, you often end up changing nothing. Tinkering helps you build momentum through small wins, which compounds over time.
Q: How do I deal with the perfectionist voice that says I should be doing more?
A: That voice is probably never going to disappear completely, and that's okay. The goal isn't to silence your inner perfectionist but to develop a different relationship with her. When she shows up, you can acknowledge her concerns and then gently redirect: "I hear that you want me to do more, and I appreciate that you care about my growth. Right now, I'm choosing to focus on this one thing because I know that's what will actually create lasting change."
Q: What if I'm working on something really important, like healing trauma or dealing with anxiety?
A: Tinkering absolutely applies to deeper healing work, but it might look different. You're not tinkering with whether or not to address these issues, but rather with how you approach them. Maybe you try therapy for a while, then add in somatic work, then explore medication. The key is staying curious and flexible about what combination of approaches serves you best, rather than thinking there's only one "right" way to heal.
The beauty of tinkering is that it meets you where you are and grows with you over time. It's not about finding the perfect system and sticking to it forever. It's about developing the skills to continuously adapt and evolve in ways that honor both your growth and your humanity.
As eldest daughters, we've spent so much of our lives trying to be perfect that we've forgotten how to be human. Tinkering gives us permission to be both: to care deeply about our growth while also being gentle with ourselves in the process. And honestly? That might be the most radical act of self-love we can practice.
