Working for inches

Growth is a process we work for, it isn’t handed to us.

• A great artist becomes that way through the thousands of bad, unappealing pieces she puts out first.
• A great mechanic becomes that way through the hundreds of questions he has about which does what and what goes where.
• An amazing photographer first learns about lighting sources and how to breathe correctly when needing to be perfectly still. ( tip: you’re the most calm when slowly breathing out — this goes for anything you need to be relaxed on [drawing straight lines, etc.] )
• A weight-trainer obtains their goals only through rigorous discipline in pretty much every area of their life (building muscle is only 20% in the gym — the rest is in our nutrition/sleeping habits)
• An awesome skateboarder first kicks the shit out of themselves through try after try, year after year.

If it were easy, everyone would do it. Sure, anything is easy to start but the real challenge comes when the newness drys up and we’re left with the question “How bad do I want this?”

“It ain’t about what you earn, it’s about what you keep.”

- mos def (hiphop artist)

Sure, there is a lot that goes into the initial gain, but holding it down? That’s a whole-nother game in and of itself. Keeping our stakes is an art.

I do my best work when I am consistently working on my craft — any craft, really. Whether it be art, the gym, skateboarding, writing — when there is a pattern to when I work as opposed to some random occurrence to picking up the pencil is when the learning process begins and inspirations come into play that never would’ve come if I hadn’t been working at it a day or two earlier.

Little golden nuggets are found along the way during patterns of putting in the work, nuggets that we literally have to dig to get to. If we hadn’t dug a day or two earlier, today’s dig wouldn’t have gotten to that tiny little nugget of inspiration/motivation/key/code/idea.

Every day we put in the work, we work for inches. Not feet, not miles, inches. Over time those inches add up into miles, but how many inches are in a mile? A lot. Just thinking about that can drive us crazy thinking about the future — so it’s best to understand that any craft being perfected is — you’ve heard it — a marathon, not a sprint.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

One of the oldest internet cliches maybe, but is it absolutely true? God yes.

In a world where we want everything now (preferably yesterday), a perfected craft takes time, blood, sweat, tears, angst, effort, discipline, throwing up, doing when we absolutely don’t feel like it, and sacrifice — all to begin to scratch the surface.

For true growth (not steroid, not store bought)…

We work for inches, daily.