I was digging out egress windows in very rocky soil on a supremely hot day. This was like no other digging I had done. I had been a professional landscaper after college for two years and this was a clay gravel mix that was not yielding to my increasingly sweaty efforts. I caught myself sitting in the shade, just ruminating. There has to be a better way.  Dynamite?  Hiring an excavator? Buying a spade to round out my shovel and pick? Add water? Wait for a drier day? Finally I came to my senses. I was going to get 2 egress window holes dug, today, myself, with what I had.

There is no silver bullet other than focused effort.

I finally reached the conclusion that as long as I was in motion, I was making progress. Even if there was no visible progress.

Sometimes, it took 30 minutes or longer to fill a single wheelbarrow while prying out wedged in rocks and other aggregate.  However, if I stopped and allowed the lie that this wasn’t working to creep into my head, I was failing. If I was in motion, doing something, shoveling out a small handful of hard packed gravel, I was making progress. If I was getting a drink, I was making progress, I was keeping the machine of me lubricated, the way I would add gas to a digging machine.

If I was sitting and hoping for the hole to dig itself, I wasn’t making progress. So I kept on sweating and moving. The first hole took 4.5 hours. The second, after the formulation of my rule to just keep moving and do anything that is marginally productive took only 3 hours. I got done just in time to shower and run to a bbq where I got to make up for all the calories I lost.

Where can you just get back to movement, to doing little things? Those things will create more progress over time than you realize. It’s like the teenager who is growing. They don’t realize their growth, but everyone who hasn’t seen them for a week or two says “Wow, look how you’ve grown!”

Now, go grow, go do something!