the zen of bridge building

Would you rather have a slow-roasted meal or a microwaved one? Good things take time.

We are often encouraged to “dream big,” but following the right path for you doesn’t have to be this big, revolutionary endeavor. Rather, it’s a series of single steps in the right direction. Whether it’s quitting your day job or training for a marathon, the process is gradual, not one grand dramatic act. I’ve been reading Jeff Goins’ book “The Art of Work.” In the fourth chapter, he says that too many people put all their energy into making the leap rather than building the bridge. The beauty of bridges is that you don’t have to see way into the distance where you want to land; you can take it one step at a time.

“First, we flirt with [our dreams] from afar. Then we fantasize, imagining what life will be like when we are united with what we love, without ever doing any real work. We wait, building up courage, and save all our passion for the big day when we will abandon everything and go for it. And finally, we take the leap.

Sometimes, though, we don’t make it to the other side. We fall on our faces. Doing our best to pick ourselves up, we dust ourselves off and try again. But if this happens enough, we begin to tell ourselves a familiar story. We remind ourselves that the world is a cold, cruel place, and maybe there’s no room in it for my dream. We get disillusioned and make the worst mistake you can make with a calling: we save all our energy for the leap instead of building a bridge.” (emphasis mine)

This idea of one step at a time coexists nicely with the kaizen mindset. Anyone who has worked at Trader Joe’s or Toyota can tell you that “kaizen” means improvement by gradual steps. Like the “work smarter not harder” adage we’ve all heard, kaizen is a Japanese philosophy that means “good change.” You can make things a little better every single day by constantly refining your process. It’s a very deliberate way of shaving off time and unnecessaries in order to optimize the things you regularly do, whittling away anything that detracts from keeping the main thing the main thing. It’s very much like a river defining its path over a once rough terrain; it may take years, but eventually the path is smooth, well-defined, beautiful, and strong. It is also not unlike building a bridge, one step at a time, to cross a river that we may not be able to jump across.

As it relates to writing, I recently learned that the famous author Graham Greene only writes 500 words a day and stops, even if it’s in the middle of a sentence. That struck me as a small number of words for a successful writer (this blog post is longer than that), but also made me feel better about where I am as a fledgling writer. Just showing up and taking a step is keeping you on the path to your dream. Every book starts with one word, then words become sentences, sentences become paragraphs, then chapters, then a whole novel. But no one writes a novel overnight. No one takes a big leap and suddenly a prolific work is accomplished. It takes time and work and a daily decision to take a step and keep going.

It’s easy to psyche ourselves out and feel overwhelmed when we dream big. That’s because we want it now and we want it so much that we start thinking about what sacrifices we can make to achieve that big dream. But if it’s a worthy dream, be prepared to nurture it with hard work and lots of time. Dream as big as you can, but take comfort in the idea that you don’t have to have every step in place right now. Just take the next step in the right direction. Repeat.

The path will more than likely change as you go, but you’ll be better for it. If a rock is in a river’s path, it doesn’t stop the river; the river goes around it and keeps going. Make your own process the best it can be every day. Great things take time, so be patient grasshopper.

What dream seems distant to you right now? What is the next step you need to take?

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