The Dote: Good things take time

Life is not a race...or is it?

Hey friends!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I had an amazing time hanging out with friends and family, and I even squeezed in some unexpected, yet productive handyman work over the weekend.

The first thing I did was finally replace our over-the-range microwave. Our old microwave had been dead for months and it was finally time to get a new one. The second, more unexpected bit of work was to diagnose and repair a broken pump in our washing machine. We bought a five year old used washer and dryer nine years ago for $300 on Facebook Marketplace when we moved into our first apartment. We’ve never treated them delicately, but they’ve served us well until Saturday when the washer stopped draining and gave us an “OE” error.

I went to ChatGPT to tell me what to do, and after going through a troubleshooting list it suggested replacing the pump. I told it the washer model number and it told me the exact part to buy. I found it on Amazon, had it delivered the next morning, found a YouTube video, and replaced it myself for $30. ChatGPT strikes again! My favorite part about it this time was that I did almost all my chatting via audio messages. GPT transcribed it all perfectly.

This post isn’t going to be the business update just yet—I’m hanging onto that one for likely another couple weeks until I can make sure I’m solidly ahead of any potential competition. But THANK YOU to everyone who read, responded and interacted with my post last week.

Writing about a decision as big as leaving my job, then coupling it with sharing some of my deepest fears and insecurities was…terrifying. I don’t even post about simple stuff on social media, so publishing an essay about one of the biggest decisions of my life felt uncomfortably vulnerable.

I could have kept my thoughts to myself, but I believe writing is social. The best ideas and relationships come via a connection to the world, not by retreating into perpetual solitude. I read hundreds of self-help books and articles for years before gaining enough confidence to bet on myself (btw that’s not a brag because I haven’t even done anything noteworthy yet, I am just saying I’m in a more fulfilled mental state). I wonder if I would have taken action earlier had I read something from someone I’m closer to.

My hope is to be a magnet and attract like-minded people who aspire to bet on themselves despite their own fears or insecurities. So many of you responded with support, encouragement, and stories of facing your own fears, that it was clear I’m doing just that.

I’m competing in a CrossFit competition this weekend, so I’ll try to not die and report back how that goes next week! In the meantime, here’s a short essay about something that’s been on my mind.

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Good things take time

I had a personal mantra in college that I used to tell myself when I felt like I wasn’t measuring up. “Life’s not a race.” It started during my freshman year while I was considering putting a pause on literally everything in my life to commit to a two-year, full-time mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was worried about falling behind my high school peers who would practically be finished with college and onto their careers by the time I got back. I had church peers who had decided to serve, but that didn’t help much either since I was scheduled to go almost a year after them. I felt like I was always going to be playing catch up.

I chose to serve a two year mission—it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made—but it didn’t get rid of the feeling that I was behind. I found many ways to compare myself to others. I took an extra year to declare a major, which meant I was late to start the undergraduate business program. Other students my age were flying out to New York to secure prestigious investment banking internships before I even knew why I wanted to study finance.

Fast forward to my first job as a management consultant and I found myself behind coworkers who were getting better projects or earning promotions faster than me.

A few years later I threw myself into the tech world and was inundated with stories, both mainstream and locally, of founders building successful companies in their early twenties and becoming millionaires by thirty.

The only race I’ve come close to winning is having six kids by age 32 😂 But even then, I know people who have done it faster.

My understanding of that mantra has changed since college. Maybe life is a race. Maybe we’re all just racing to make our lives feel meaningful the best we know how. Someone will always be running faster or farther than you in some area.

What I’m learning is that even if life is a race, I’m not running the same one as anyone else. Everyone’s format is unique. We don’t all have the same starting point, we don’t all have the same finish line, so we definitely don’t need to be holding the same pace. A four-minute mile sounds impressive unless you’re running a 40-yard dash at the NFL combine.

I paid for two five-week writing courses this year. They both had similar promises: get better at writing online, but their approach was completely different. The first course focused on utilizing templates, formatting, and other hacks to go viral on social media. The second was about becoming a better writer. They both had clear agendas, useful frameworks and strategies, and a community of other course members, but that was where the similarities ended.

The first course made me feel like I was behind. “Thousands of people have gone viral with this very template!” was the constant marketing, but the voice in my head always followed it up with “so why haven’t you figured it out yet?” The teachings felt cookie-cutter and transactional, meant to create a fear-based hype about what achievement should look like. I drained my energy worrying about proper formatting, spacing, and character counts.

The second course taught me to write with abundance. The lessons were about writing with life and making it flow. I learned that good writing starts from truth and grows with the heart. The course filled me with energy and enthusiasm because it gave me permission to wander and discover myself.

The contrast between courses helped me find a new mantra: “Good things take time.” That’s right, my new mantra is a basic, vanilla cliche. I like the word “good” because it’s simple, but I consider it catch-all for words like quality, fulfilling, meaningful, impactful, transformational.

I internalize most of life’s most important principles via the midwit meme

Life shouldn’t have to feel like a race—at least not one that you’re competing against others in. Making lasting change in yourself takes time and effort and there’s no way around it. The time and effort you give to an endeavor are more correlated with fulfillment than the actual outcome. Stop comparing yourself to an artificial stopwatch and start enjoying the journey of becoming more than what you were. Get after it!