I take the notion of the ‘grind’ as a mechanism to survive the distance between ‘start’ and ‘achievement’ . We typically start a venture already looking ahead to see how far again we have to go. Seeing the vast distance yet to be covered is sometimes discouraging, even disheartening, especially living in a world gripped by immediate gratification. But with the grind we set the goal, we line ourselves up, we put our heads down and then we work. We focus on putting in the time, the effort, improving on skill, acquiring knowledge…defining and refining ourselves and our processes, all the while putting that one foot in front of the other hitting milestone after milestone. Before long when we do look up we would have almost made it. As opposed to constantly lifting our heads to be reminded of just how arduous the journey is and will continue to be. This, “Are we there yet?!”, mentality begs for early defeat. It’s a matter of perspective making the distance irrelevant. It all comes down to grinding it out … breaking that distance into shorter lengths that we can only see a few steps ahead at a time until, hey! … We made it.
