Peter D. Kaufman

I use it as a lens on my own life now asking myself, where am I being intermittent and not constant?

The workout routine that doesn't stick, the journaling habit that fills pages in January every year and goes silent by February, the book you were definitely going to start or finally finish, the language that you were absolutely going to learn and get better at before your trip.

Each one of those is like a boulder partway up the hill that you walk away from.

And then what happens?

Well, what's humbling is that we know the math.

We understand compounding.

We can explain it to others.

But knowing isn't the hard part.

Being constant is the hard part.

The line is haunting because it references success.

It's not about intensity.

It's not about that big push, that heroic effort, that all-nighter.

It's about the thing you did yesterday and the day before and the day before that.

It's all about what you'll do tomorrow and the day after that, mostly with no fanfare and no applause.

You'll be doing it alone most of the time.

Here's the key lesson.

Intensity is overrated and consistency is underrated.

Peter also believes that all humans are fundamentally identical in what they want.

He asks his audience, how many of you want to be paid attention to, listened to, respected?

How many want meaning, satisfaction, and fulfillment, the sense that you matter?