The Needle And The Leap

Blood, Thread, and Flight.

The Needle And The Leap

Stallone didn’t sleep for 3 days until he wrote Rocky.
Broke, hungry, sold his dog and bought it back 10 times more, after his “overnight” success.

Grover’s first athlete to train with was Michael Jordan in his prime.

Clear’s first book, Atomic Habits, became an international bestseller with millions of copies (25,000,000 and counting) sold.

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We love the leapfrogging.
The overnight.
The viral.
Big, bold steps in short bursts that trade time for extreme effort and explode into remarkable results.

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But once we start waking up from the dream, reality hits back.
Because everyone needs the reps.
You need to sew the fabric of your reality.
Stitch by stitch.
Inch by inch.

Everyone has to invest these 10,000-ish hours into crafts and meaningful work.

Pressfield went broke, lived in his car, and still wrote. Got his much-deserved recognition in his mid-50s.
Colonel Sanders after a series of “failures” did the delicious colossus of KFC in his 60s.
Edison failed 2,700+ times (or in his very words, found 10,000 ways it didn’t work) until he created the lightbulb.

We fail to see the rest of the iceberg:

Stallone didn’t just write Rocky. Rocky was Stallone. That wasn’t luck. That was blood turned into ink. That film was a confession of a man who, despite all odds, wanted his chance.

Grover was aspiring to become an NBA athlete. After injuries and misfortunes, he transitioned to trainer to stay close to what he loved.

Clear wrote for years in his blog before writing Atomic Habits. He also had a serious head injury that got him into small improvements and habit systems.

Everyone pays the toll.
Time. Pain. Repetition.
You either pay in public or in private.
But you still got to pay with your crafts.

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The bad news?

Your crafts will suck.
You know they suck.
They know they suck.
And the worst part? You know the next craft will probably suck too.

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The good news?

All your sewing prepares you for the leapfrogging.
Even when you have no clue about it.
Doing the work hones your skills in a cross-training mode.
When you write, think, plan, sell, create there’s a system of skills upgrading in the background.

Just think Mr. Miyagi. He knew.
Wax on. Wax off.
The chores were the training.

Because everything connects.

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So sew.
Sew when you are tired.
Sew when you are bored.
Sew when no one’s watching.

Craft things you know will suck.
Not for the sake of spending time, but for investing time on getting better. Sometimes the reward is the action itself.
Other times, it is the person you become after it.
As long as you flow, you’re golden.

If you keep sewing, the leap becomes inevitable.

If you don’t sew enough, or you do it half-heartedly, you waste your time and effort.

Do the work. It compounds.

And if you are brave, do the leap too.