“There was joy in effort, and the world resisted effort to just the right degree, and yielded to it at last. People cut Mount Rushmore into faces; they chipped here and there for years. People slowed the spread of yellow fever; they sprayed the Isthmus of Panama puddle by puddle.
Effort alone I loved. Some days I would have been happy to push a pole around a threshing floor like an ox, for the pleasure of moving the heavy stone and watching my knees rise in turn.”
— An American Childhood
Recently, several friends have commented how much my writing has improved in the past year. It’s very kind and very appreciated. Especially as some days I feel utterly incapable of putting together a decent sentence.
But why it has improved, I have one, boring, answer: I work really hard. I write early every morning for three or four hours, anywhere from 1,000-5,000 words. I cut almost everything. By the time you see a sentence, it’s been rewritten dozens of times over. Away from the keyboard, sitting by the fire or on a run or in the shower, essay ideas are always constantly clicking away in the back of my brain1. Often I’ll race to my phone to furiously record a fleeting thought before it fades.
Strangely, it’s almost embarrassing to admit.
The fact I published every week for two and a half years, before I wrote something I was proud of. The meandering sentences and directionless paragraphs and shitty first drafts, before I can craft something worth reading. The pit of despair I have to claw myself out of, through sheer sweat, each piece.
It’s almost embarrassing to admit that I work really hard. That I have to work so hard.
But I don’t want to pretend I’m too good for effort when I know it’s the price that must be paid to create anything beautiful in this world.
~~~
They say if you study any overnight success story, you’ll find a decade’s worth of hard work and perseverance beneath the surface.
Here’s the thing: Effortlessness is a myth. No one becomes great by accident. Behind any effortless, elegant result is a large volume of effortful, gritty practice. Intention. Repetition. It’s natural to underestimate the amount of work someone had to pour into their talent in order to develop it. But it’s very hard to make something look easy.
Look for effort anywhere and you will find its fingerprints everywhere. Any tidy farmhouse kitchen on Pinterest, or embarrassingly lush landscape photo, or velvety smooth sentence.
There’s a rule of reality that I believe in, that I’m building my life on: Effort will always be rewarded. Perhaps not when I expect, perhaps not how I want, but it will always add up to something. The gods love action2. Devotion never goes unrecognized.
Effort is almost a form of sacrifice: offering up the hours to the heavens, even though the payoff is inherently uncertain.
I’m learning to cultivate a love of effort. To not be ashamed of trying. I think success is almost always a result of trying more. So much of getting good is just pure labor. Sustained tenacity.
I wrote on a sticky note: My allocation of effort determines my reality.
~~~
So you embark on the long and quiet and arduous trek with no promises, no recognition, no obvious return.
Those days you show up. With all your glorious flaws and mediocre talents and unbounded earnestness.
Those days you dig into the work. You try, you fail, you learn, you grow. You put your soul into it all. Despite the formlessness. The uncertainty. Despite the mountain of doubt and all the moments of despair. Not knowing if you’ll ever become the person you so desperately envision. You work, you wait, you are patient. You hope.
Those days are sewn into your heart. Those moments are your becoming. They make you who you are.
The years of struggle, in retrospect, will strike you as the most beautiful3.
~~~
Once I read a story about a farmer who was moving dirt piles in his field. When he went to move one of the piles, in the middle, he found dozens of bulbs of purple crocus flowers, buried in the dark dirt but still waiting for the sun.
~~~
“A new generation owes a measure of thanks to every member of the previous generation. Our elders planted fields and fought in wars; they advanced the arts and sciences, and generally made sacrifices on our behalf.
So by their efforts, however humble, they have earned a measure of our gratitude and respect.”
— A Gentleman in Moscow
I admire the hard-working. Those unafraid to roll up their sleeves and sweat and get their hands dirty. Those who try things. Who find joy in the attempt. Effort is attractive. I have no interest in laziness.
Across history, it’s the people who exerted effort that built the world we inhabit. We live off the efforts of our ancestors4. The roads and neighborhoods, the literature and music and works of art, the infrastructure that puts food on our plates, the healthcare system that heals the sick, and the laws that keep us safe.
Nothing is here by accident. Everything looks like magic, but nothing is magic. Everything was built by effort. And nothing made out of halfheartedness will truly last.
Life is a search for meaningful places to exert effort. Your gifts are yours to develop but, in the end, not yours to keep. You must make an effort, if only to set an example5.
~~~
Effort is the duty of today.
Both to yourself and to the world.
Got to run,
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👋 what i’ve been up to:
I’m back to my ideal 9pm-5am sleep schedule. There are few things I cherish more than the quiet stillness of the early mornings.
Hobbling around after running a 10km Spartan Race last weekend.
Making things. Making bagels, making scones, making soup. Perfecting fire-building, building shelves, cutting branches, hanging a bat box. Carving a wooden handle for my Moka pot. Moving rocks and digging up soil to create a new garden bed to plant roses.
✍️ quote i’m pondering:
Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges on the raw material of life:
“A writer—and, I believe, generally all persons—must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”
📸 photos i took:
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As Paul Graham wrote: "I realized recently that what one thinks about in the shower in the morning is more important than I'd thought. I knew it was a good time to have ideas. Now I'd go further: now I'd say it's hard to do a really good job on anything you don't think about in the shower." (The Top Idea in Your Mind)
“Hunger is the natural companion of the utterly idle man,” Hesiod wrote almost 3,000 years ago. “Both gods and men begrudge helping such a man who is idle”.
paraphrasing Sigmund Freud here
There's an old idea in mythology we are born out of the corpses of our ancestors. It's a tad grotesque but more than a tad true. Our world functions (and functions pretty well, all things considered!) off of their efforts. Culture is old and corrupt and dead, not because it's evil but because it was built by dead people. The job of youth, of the hero, is to revivify culture. Breathe life into it. It must be perpetually regenerated by the efforts of the new generation. We seem to have forgotten this.
The Buddha: “You must make the effort yourself. The Masters only point the way.”
Tommy, "improved" doesn't do justice to describing the evolution of your writing. It is deeper. More heartfelt. Rife with meaning. Alive. Warm. Authentic. Vulnerable. Personal. Wholehearted.
Another year from now I'll have new adjectives. You tough my heart weekly. I'm grateful.
"The Gods love action," "offering up the hours to the heavens" — this context is such a beautiful counterpoint to your previous confession about obsessing over work. And both have truth. I love that you are so eloquently honoring the transcendental potential of getting down in the mud of effort. I've always felt this in your writing, that it speaks of craft, which is a step beyond mere sharing or expression. Authenticity is not natural, its buried beneath layers of the false, and to get to it, one truly has to dig.