Sprint, Rest, Sprint

You ever try to learn something new, like juggling or speaking Mandarin, and think, “This is it. Today I’m gonna be a prodigy. Watch out, Cirque du Soleil”? And then five minutes later, you’re dodging beanbags like they’re heat-seeking missiles or yelling at your Mandarin app because it said you’re pronouncing “hello” like a drunk pigeon.

Improvement—it’s like watching grass grow, but the grass is your skill level, and the gardener is a sloth who works part-time. You think you’re gonna wake up tomorrow shredding a guitar solo or parallel parking like a Formula 1 driver. But nah, buddy. Tomorrow you’ll still be strumming something that sounds like a cat fight or parking like your car’s got stage fright. The only difference? You’ll suck slightly less. And that’s the magic.

Getting better at stuff is like filling up a bathtub with a teaspoon. You’re sitting there thinking, “What’s the point of this? I could fill this faster crying over my failures.” But one day… after days of teaspoon dumps, you’ll look over and realize you’ve got a dang swimming pool. A dolphin just moved in. All because you kept at it with your teaspoon.

Here’s the secret sauce: you gotta sprint each day. Not an actual sprint—unless you’re training for the Olympics, in which case, why are you reading this? I mean sprint as in practice like your life depends on it. If you’ve got the energy to study Mandarin for two hours, go hard. If you can only juggle for five minutes before chucking the beanbags at your dog, that’s fine too. Just give it whatever you’ve got. Make it weird if you need to. Practice while wearing a sombrero. Nobody’s judging.

And then… here comes the hard part… chill out. Let the teaspoon do its thing. Improvement isn’t like a drive-thru where you order success and get it in five minutes. It’s more like building a pizza oven out of marshmallows. It’s slow, sticky, and nobody believes it’ll work. But it will. Just trust the process.

A year from now, you’ll look back and laugh. Not just any laugh—the kind of laugh that’s a little evil because past-you was so bad at this thing. You’ll say, “Man, I used to think juggling two oranges was hard. Now I’m juggling flaming chainsaws while reciting Shakespeare. What a flex.”

So go ahead. Sprint when you feel it. Let time do the heavy lifting. And remember: the sloth gardener works slow, but when he’s done, you’ve got a jungle. Or a chainsaw juggling act. Whatever floats your absurdly patient boat.