The middle is the job

After we stopped recording, Elena said something that didn’t make the episode but has been rattling around my head all week:

“I used to think the middle was the price I paid to get to the good part. Now I think the middle is the good part. The good part is just where you find out.”

I’ve been turning this over. We build our whole story of work around beginnings and endings — the spark and the launch, the first page and the standing ovation. Both are over in a flash. The middle is years. And we’ve decided, culturally, that the years don’t count.

A small reframe

Try this: for one project, stop measuring progress by distance from the finish line. Measure it by whether you showed up to the middle today. That’s it. The finish line will take care of itself; it always does. The thing you actually control is whether you keep returning to the unglamorous, unwitnessed center.

That’s the whole letter this week. Go do the middle.

— Nadia