Yeah, maybe the original message sort of got lost along the way. I think there is still some truth in the post when applied to the title.
I think one of the most important things I ever learned is that hard things take time. There is an obvious relationship between the effort required and the size of the undertaking, but also the worthiness of the effort. In other words: rarely, if ever, can you build great things in a short amount of time or with little effort.
And that's where this post makes sense: to build something great or to solve something hard, you have to show up every day and chip away at the problem, piece by piece. The progress will be slow and nearly invisible to you as you experience it, and is usually only clear in hindsight after a year or two (or more), when you can look back and see all that's changed -- hopefully for the better -- since you started.
I think it's more than just "hard things take time". The key sentence for me is this one:
> Kayaking taught me to be okay with repeatedly looking dumb in public.
I had the same thing when I first started running, in my early 50s. I'm sure I looked absolutely ridiculous. (I'm fairly sure I still do, I just stopped caring.) When I first started I would go out around 6am, partly because it was cooler but mostly so I wouldn't be seen. I've chatted to other runners who were the same, even keeping it secret from their family.
Getting over that has been a very positive change, and a generally-applicable one. I've just started blogging publicly, which would historically have triggered the same kind of looking-like-an-idiot phobias.
There was a post (maybe saw it here, maybe on Reddit) about sucking in public being a kind of moat for all sorts of interesting things. Crossing it gets you to places you otherwise couldn't go.
I think one of the most important things I ever learned is that hard things take time. There is an obvious relationship between the effort required and the size of the undertaking, but also the worthiness of the effort. In other words: rarely, if ever, can you build great things in a short amount of time or with little effort.
And that's where this post makes sense: to build something great or to solve something hard, you have to show up every day and chip away at the problem, piece by piece. The progress will be slow and nearly invisible to you as you experience it, and is usually only clear in hindsight after a year or two (or more), when you can look back and see all that's changed -- hopefully for the better -- since you started.