What’s the secret to accomplishment? Just keep going…

It’s day 10 or 75. I have a long way to go. But that doesn’t bother me. I’m having a problem with the diet.

I’ve been on the diet for 10 days now and haven’t lost a pound… sort of. I lost 3.6 and then found it again in a week. I’m 0.9 pounds heavier than when I started. I was super excited about losing weight and was completely on board with the diet…

Now that I am back up almost a pound in 10 days is a real bummer. I almost want to quit…. almost.

But the secret to accomplishing anything is to keep going. I wrote about completing the mission on day 5. Now I just have to remind myself to keep going.

Over 20 years ago I was given the example of moving a large dirt hill. It must have been two or three weeks into Marine Corps Boot Camp and the Drill Instructor gave us all the secret to anything.

He started his story by saying it would be easy to get a large tractor and a couple of dump trucks and move that hill anywhere. But what if you don’t have that?

“If all you had was your fellow recruits and an MRE spoon, could you still move that hill?” An MRE (Meal Ready to Eat) comes with a long-handled plastic disposable spoon that will probably hold a tablespoon worth of dirt. “If you start and just keep going, eventually you’ll get it done.”

He was right. We don’t have to have everything to start. But once we start we can get inventive as we go. All I was thinking during the story is that we can start that way, but I will be figuring out a better way as we go. The secret to accomplishment, once you start, is just keep going.

If you want to get there faster, you have to iterate as you go. Moving that hill with a spoon would have taken the Platoon (100 recruits at the time) about six months. But we had to get fed. More MREs means more spoons, and bags to fill, and…

When it comes to getting out of crappy situations, Marines are geniuses. We would have figured out how to get it done fast. Let’s face it, moving a hill without heavy machinery is a crappy situation.

What thing are you in right now that you should just keep going to finish? Do you have everything you need? Or are you just going to keep going and figure it out as you go?

The people that just keep moving forward and figure it out as they go are the ones that will accomplish anything.

Are you going to accomplish a mission or complain that you don’t have the equipment to get it done?

Ben Branam

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