Chipping away

"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before." -Jacob Reis

Most days aren't the splitting-in-two days. Most days are the "all that had gone before".

Big projects are immediately filed in the "chipping away" category for me. The planning is easy, the dreaming is enjoyable. It's the work that's the work. So, might as well get to work.

Not only does this help me manage my own expectations, when the end seems farther away each day, but it helps me to communicate to others. When someone else does not appreciate the work, or expects more than is reasonable, I don't react, I just tell them the truth. "I'll keep chipping away."