New shoes don’t make you faster. The miles you ran in the old ones do.

Equipment is easy to acquire and the work is not, so attention drifts toward the part that can be purchased. What actually produces capability is accumulated repetition, which is slow, unremarkable and impossible to shortcut. Buying something can support that. It cannot stand in for it.

Count what you have actually done rather than what you have bought. Keep a simple record of the sessions or the miles, and let that number be the thing you try to grow this month.