Kevin Dahlstrom@Camp4
I recently read a biography of the Wright brothers and one obscure fact blew my mind:
In the midst of a highly competitive race to first flight, Orville and Wilbur took multi-month breaks to travel the West.
🚨 It’s a narrative violation.
The guys who invented the airplane had unlimited PTO, but you and I can’t unplug for a week of vacation. Because…
EVERYTHING IS SUPER IMPORTANT.
It’s false urgency.
We live in the weeds, but when you zoom out and gain perspective, you quickly realize…
Over the course of a year (let alone a decade), a week or two of downtime makes zero difference in the outcome.
Intensity looks sexy. Consistency is boring. But over time, it’s consistency that wins.
I’m talking about playing the long game.
On January 2nd, gyms are full of Very Committed People going hard… but the crowd quickly dissipates.
Few keep going month after month, year after year.
Here’s another mind-blowing founder fact:
Phil Knight started Nike as a side hustle and kept his day job for SEVEN years. In his epic memoir, Shoe Dog, he concludes that the only advice anyone needs is:
Never stop.
Persistent bits of effort compound in a way that heroic acts simply can’t match. You’ve probably heard the saying:
“We overestimate what we can do in a week and underestimate what we can do in a year.”
Most people live in a constant state of short-term urgency—cramming for the test instead of learning the material.
To be clear, there’s a time to sprint. But remember, sprints only cover short distances.
If you want to go far, pace isn’t as important. You can even stop for a while like the Wright brothers. You can meter it out like Phil Knight.
What matters is that you keep moving and never stop.
