[Raw] The Danger of the Invisible Phase

00:00 — Intro: People Love the Beginning and the End

Hey, welcome back to Slow Builds.

This one’s been sitting in my head for quite some time now, because I keep noticing these patterns over and over again in most areas of my life.

People love a good transformation story.

They love hearing about the addict who got sober, the person who lost a ton of weight, the broke person who suddenly becomes financially stable, or becomes rich, or the dropout who becomes extremely successful.

Just people who turn their lives around.

People love to hear those stories.

They love the beginning, and they love the end.

But it’s the middle that I think people shy away from.

Nobody really wants to hear about what happens in the middle, or how someone actually accomplished those big goals.

And I don’t even mean that in a cynical way.

I think there are probably some really good reasons for it.

Because once someone explains the middle of how they accomplished the big goal, it usually sounds way too simple.

Not easy.

Nothing’s easy.

If you’re going to do something big, it takes a lot of effort.

But it is simple.

And I find that’s what makes people very uncomfortable.

01:24 — Running and Realizing People Stop Caring

For me, I’m going to bring it back to the running that I do.

I do a lot of running.

I just got off the treadmill, really.

When I first started running consistently, I talked about it consistently.

I tracked every day.

I would tell people about my streaks, the distance I was totaling, what paces I was running at.

Because it was new and exciting, I’d naturally bring it up in conversations.

And people cared at the beginning.

They were very intrigued by it.

“Are you still running?”

“How far have you gone?”

“How often are you running?”

But eventually, all that kind of faded away.

People really didn’t want to hear it anymore.

It’s not that they didn’t care, I guess, but it’s not their life.

It’s just something I do.

Honestly, why would they care?

Obviously, when I hit milestones, like a year or two years, I let people know that.

And people were genuinely amazed at that.

It was a pretty big accomplishment.

But in the end, why would they care about the day-to-day?

Because to me, those days represent bad weather, exhaustion, stress, and low motivation.

A lot of those days, I did not want to do it.

I really did not want to get out there.

But to everyone else, it was just:

“Oh cool, he still runs.”

Over time, you begin to stop talking about it.

You’re not hiding it.

You’re not ashamed of it.

You just don’t bring it up anymore because it’s who you are and what you do.

It becomes something personal.

Eventually, it stopped becoming a story and just became part of who I was.

I run.

That’s it.

Now, weeks, months, years later, people ask me if I’m still running.

If I see them occasionally, or I drop into the office, people ask:

“You still running?”

And I’ll just say:

“Yep.”

That’s pretty much it.

Some people ask what my pace is up to, how many kilometers I got this week, or if I’m still doing it every day.

Now people are curious because I don’t bring it up anymore.

But to me, I just let it be.

I don’t need to explain anything anymore.

It’s personal.

I do it for myself.

And really, it’s a habit now.

04:15 — People Don’t Want the Daily Middle

I think this applies to almost everything.

People don’t want to keep hearing:

“I’m going to start running every day.”

Eventually they get bored of it.

They don’t want to hear it anymore.

But they do want to hear:

“I made it 365 days.”

Or:

“I made it two years.”

When you make it two years, people get pretty impressed.

But they don’t want to hear it every day.

Because if they hear about the steady consistency, the good times, the bad times, the days you want to do it, and the days you don’t want to do it, they don’t really want to hear about that.

Because really, all it is is:

Put on your shorts.

Lace up your shoes.

Run.

It could be outdoors.

It could be on the treadmill.

It could be at a track.

It doesn’t matter.

You just do it.

It’s not that complicated.

It’s pretty straightforward.

There’s no secret method.

There’s no magic sauce that makes the thing work.

05:42 — Simple Feels Worse Than Complicated

I think people almost want it to be complicated.

Because if it’s complicated, then they have a reason not to do it.

They can say:

“I don’t have the money.”

“I don’t have the time.”

“It’s too complicated for me.”

“I can’t get involved in that.”

But once they find out most things are pretty straightforward, it puts the responsibility back on them.

How did you lose the weight?

Well, I ate better.

I moved more.

I stayed consistent.

I kept doing it.

That’s pretty basic.

Watch your calories.

Move.

Eat healthy.

There’s no real secret sauce to that one.

How did you learn AI?

And I’m still learning, by the way.

I’m trying to stay up, and I still feel like I’m going nowhere.

But really, all it is is I spend time with it every day.

How did you save money?

Well, I consistently invested over years.

How did you write a book?

I didn’t write it yet.

I’m close.

It’s 140-plus pages, but it needs some tweaking.

But it’s close.

And I just kept on it.

Last night I spent an hour on it, maybe two hours.

I didn’t spend that much time, but I managed to get a lot done in that time.

So it was just consistency.

I try to carve out a certain amount of time per week for each thing.

As long as I continually stick to that, it compounds and it builds.

Those answers frustrate people because they remove the mystery.

People want to hear that there was a massive breakthrough.

Some hidden framework.

Some big life hack that no one else knows about.

Then they can say:

“Well, I can’t do that because they have the secret and they’re not going to share it.”

But really, in the end, most people will tell you it’s just consistency.

Most meaningful change is honestly just repetition.

I think people don’t realize how much success is just continuing after the excitement wears off.

That’s really it.

Even when you’re not motivated, you keep doing it.

08:47 — AI and Feeling Behind

I think AI is exposing this really hard right now.

Personally, I still feel like I don’t know what I’m doing half the time.

Seriously.

Every day I wake up and feel like I’m so far behind.

And I use it every single day.

I still always feel like I don’t know anything.

Yesterday, I built my first agent in Codex.

Only last week, I built my first skill, or two skills, in Claude.

There are a lot of things that I’m doing wrong.

I built my agent system out before, but what I was calling agents were really just scripts and cron jobs and whatever else.

Then I talked to a non-developer who helped me figure out:

“Oh, you need to hook it up to this.”

So it was a whole rewrite.

Then I thought I had it working, and then I met him again.

And he’s not a coder.

That’s what scares me.

Well, it doesn’t scare me.

It makes me happy, and it makes me excited.

Because pretty much anybody can do anything, or be anyone, at any moment.

You just have to spend the time looking at it.

You also have to leverage other people who are doing it.

In this case, he figured out another way to build an agent system that I really wanted, and he shared it with me.

Now I have that running.

And it’s very exciting.

But I didn’t figure it out.

Again, I feel like I was so far behind.

I still feel far behind.

I know I’m far behind.

But I keep at it.

I keep asking questions.

I keep trying to play with it.

10:38 — Most People Still Aren’t Really Using AI

Then you look around at other people and find out that most people aren’t using it at all.

They might be using it for work.

They might not use it personally.

If they do use it personally, they’re just using it like Google.

A couple quick questions, then move on to the next thing.

Maybe they use it for code, or to help read a document, or for basic stuff.

But they’re not trying to expand their knowledge with it.

Honestly, if somebody spent 30 minutes a day just using it, literally talking to it, typing into it, playing with new tools, and then spent another 30 minutes watching videos, reading articles, seeing what other people are building, looking at prompts, and asking questions, they would get better.

Even if it was just 30 or 45 minutes, three or four days a week.

You’re going to become familiar with it.

You’re not necessarily going to become an expert.

Maybe you will.

But you’re going to be ahead of the average person.

Because familiarity compounds.

That’s really all most of it is.

Exposure.

Repetition.

Curiosity.

Consistency.

Eventually, the unknown stops feeling scary.

12:09 — The Invisible Phase

I think the hardest phase in anything is what I’d call the invisible phase.

That period where you’re working hard, you’re showing up, you’re doing the right things, but externally nothing really changes yet.

That’s where most people stop.

Because effort and reward feel disconnected.

You save $50.

Then you put another $50 away.

Your investment barely moves.

It only moved because you put the money in.

You run for a month and still feel out of shape.

You learn coding or AI and still feel very confused.

You write some pages for a book and it feels like you’re getting nowhere.

You haven’t even gotten the introduction done.

That’s a dangerous phase psychologically.

The outcome is invisible, but the effort is very real.

People start questioning:

“Is this even working?”

13:14 — Writing a Book by Breaking It Down

I think about this a lot with the book I want to write.

I’m getting through it, but I still feel overwhelmed every time I get to it because there’s no visual.

That’s really the key.

People look at writing a book like it’s an impossible feat.

Two hundred pages.

Three hundred pages.

Even one hundred pages.

But then you break it down.

If I could write one page a day, that’s basically 30 pages a month.

In two months, you’re around 60 pages.

In four months, you’ve technically got what you’re looking to get done.

So if you took a year, you could spend four months writing the first draft.

Then another month revising and tweaking it.

Another month playing with it, getting people to read it, getting feedback.

Then you’re polishing it, publishing it, and getting it ready to go.

In a year, you could have a book around 120 to 160 pages.

That’s with acknowledgements, references, footnotes, all of it.

I think it’s a very possible task.

Not easy.

Nothing’s easy.

But things aren’t always as hard as they seem.

They just take effort, and you have to break them down into small tasks.

14:57 — Reading and Small Daily Progress

People get overwhelmed with reading too.

I read a lot, and people are always surprised by how much I read.

But when you break it down, reading a book isn’t really that much.

Reading two pages a day isn’t that hard to do.

It doesn’t take that much time.

And some days you’re going to go a little farther.

On a weekend, or in the evening when you just want to relax, you might read 10 pages or 20 pages.

That compounds pretty quickly.

Next thing you know, you’re going through several books.

Even just to learn and absorb knowledge, if you’re driving to work, use audiobooks.

If you’re working out, use audiobooks.

At work, use audiobooks.

They’re useful tools.

I use them a lot when I’m driving, working out, on my bike, and even swimming.

When I swim, I have headphones I can wear in the water, and I usually just listen to books.

It’s a way to absorb knowledge while doing something else.

You keep doing that, and it compounds.

Next thing you know, you’re reading a book a month.

That sounds daunting when you think about it, but there are some years I’ve gone way beyond that without even realizing it.

16:19 — The Big Goal Makes People Freeze

If all you focus on is the big picture, your brain almost rejects it immediately.

If you want to lose weight and all you look at is:

“I need to lose 80 pounds.”

Or:

“I need to become wealthy because I need to retire.”

Or:

“I need to write a book.”

It feels way too far away.

Too unrealistic.

Too massive of a task to even think about.

That’s where small goals fit in.

Small goals feel survivable.

Today’s run.

Today’s page.

Today’s workout.

Today’s investment.

Today’s learning session.

Maybe today I’m going to sit down and read five articles.

Maybe I’m going to play with AI for a little bit.

Maybe I’m going to learn how to code, or learn some marketing, or whatever it is.

Every small goal creates a tiny little victory.

A tiny little proof point.

It proves that you can do it.

It proves that you’re one step closer.

Eventually, those tiny victories start changing your identity.

They become habits.

And once something is a habit, it’s part of you.

17:44 — Investing Is Mostly Consistency

Investing is one of the clearest examples of this.

Most people think wealth comes from huge wins.

A lottery.

An inheritance.

Lucky investments.

Picking the right stock.

Timing the market.

Finding the next big thing and getting a windfall from it.

But for most regular people, it’s usually just consistency.

Automatic investing.

Not touching it.

Setting it and forgetting it.

Repeating the process over and over again.

The beginning feels pointless because the numbers are so small.

You put in the money and nothing happens.

Sometimes it even goes backwards.

That’s the worst.

It’s the worst when it goes backwards.

Unless you have dividend reinvesting, then there’s a little bit of a sigh of relief because the next dividend payout can buy a little bit more.

That makes it feel a little better.

But because the progress feels slow, and sometimes goes backwards, people quit.

They stop before compounding can even start to matter.

Years later, you look around and realize a lot of people never stayed consistent long enough to see the investment curve bend the way they wanted it to.

Then, when they see someone doing well financially, they assume that person was lucky.

Or intelligent.

Or picked the right stocks.

Or had secret knowledge they didn’t know about.

Because the truth sounds way too ordinary.

They gave up too soon.

They knew what to do.

They just didn’t keep doing it.

And you did.

That’s literally all it is.

That’s the middle.

20:03 — The Reality People Don’t Want to Hear

I think that’s ultimately what people don’t want to hear.

The reality is that most meaningful things are built slowly enough that they feel invisible while they’re happening.

There usually isn’t a magic bullet.

No huge cinematic moment.

No overnight transformation.

Mostly just repetition, patience, discipline, conviction, and continuing when it stops being exciting.

20:35 — YouTube, Motivation, and Showing Up Anyway

Even with these videos, today I’m kind of motivated.

This is my second one today.

I’m feeling a little bit like I want to do it, because I didn’t want to earlier this week.

But when you go back and look at what you’ve started to build, and how much is there, you sort of don’t want to stop.

You want to see it continue growing.

I’m not getting massive views.

I’m not getting massive likes.

I get some, and I thank the people who do interact with me.

I love it.

But I’m not getting those massive numbers, and I don’t expect it.

For me personally, it’s a goal to try to hit.

So I have to consistently keep at it, even when I don’t want to show up and do it.

Like I just did a run.

I didn’t want to do a run.

My hip hurts right now.

My feet hurt.

I didn’t want to get up this morning to do a workout.

I was so tired because I was up late working on my book.

I didn’t want to do that either.

But I wanted to get some things figured out and ready.

So you have to motivate yourself.

Most people don’t want to hear that.

They don’t want to hear that they have to push themselves.

They don’t want to hear that they have to continuously do it, even when they don’t want to.

21:56 — Running Outside During COVID

During COVID, my treadmill was broken, and I couldn’t get a treadmill.

I was still doing my running.

I didn’t want to run outdoors.

It’s cold up here.

Real cold.

Windy, wet, cold.

But I ran every day.

No matter how cold it was, I went out.

You start to like it, actually.

It’s not fun.

Especially the wind and the sleet.

On garbage day, we had a problem with garbage.

It was not nice.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t do it.

It was just a 30-minute run, or whatever it was.

It wasn’t the end of the world.

I didn’t have to hit massive targets.

I just had to get out, do it, get in, and be done.

Once you figure that out, it’s just consistently and continually doing it.

There’s no secret sauce.

There’s no magic bullet.

It’s just showing up and doing it.

23:04 — Still Inside the Journey

Honestly, I’m saying this as someone still inside a lot of these journeys myself.

AI.

The book.

Investments.

I still feel far behind.

There are a lot of things building up that I’m trying to figure out.

I’m trying to help other people with their work.

I’m trying to help my kids.

There’s a lot of stuff that falls through the cracks.

Even just cleaning out the garage, or getting a backpack fixed.

There’s always something.

But it’s a matter of setting those small goals, showing up, and doing it.

As long as you don’t make yourself feel depressed about it, and as long as you set small, tangible goals, it adds up.

Every weekend, a little bit of this.

A couple times a week, a little bit of that.

Then when you look back over the weeks and months, it adds up pretty quickly.

23:55 — The Middle Is Where the Real Stuff Happens

Honestly, every meaningful thing in my life pretty much came from the same place:

Small, consistent actions repeated long enough that they eventually became part of who I was.

And maybe that’s why so few people talk honestly about the middle.

Because the middle is slow.

It’s not exciting.

The middle is the boring piece.

It’s the stuff no one wants to hear because it’s repeat, repeat, repeat.

You don’t want the same rerun over and over again.

It’s slow.

It’s boring.

But it gets you to the end.

Because you have to start somewhere, and you want to end somewhere, but you have to get there.

The middle is where all the real stuff happens.

That’s where the building happens.

That’s where the change starts.

So hopefully there are things you can look at and piece by piece, brick by brick, step by step, keep moving.

It all adds up in the end, man.

Thanks for watching.

Have a good one.