On Building for a Longer Clock

Most of us are trained to build for the quarter, the launch, the applause. The metrics arrive quickly and leave just as quickly, and we mistake the speed of feedback for the size of the thing we are making.

The projects that endure — a body of work, a family, a discipline, a company with a spine — are almost always built on a longer clock than the one we are handed. That longer clock is lonely, because you cannot prove you are right yet.

Build as though the work will be read by someone you will never meet. In a sense, it always is.