Nothing Real
Was Built in
One Pass
Micro Tests and Iterations
Someone I recently worked with used to get frustrated with iterations. She wanted the first version to be the final version and seemed irritated any time I wanted to adjust copy, or imagery based on testing and feedback.
But that’s simply not how things work online, or when creating something from nothing whether it is a brand, a business, or really, anything in life.
James Clear spent years quietly publishing essays and testing ideas with readers before Atomic Habits existed. His book, which of course is about small incremental changes, has sold over 15 million copies and changed how the world thinks about behavior. He calls habits the compound interest of self-improvement, meaning the magic is never one grand gesture. It is in the thousand small ones that stack.
Reid Hoffman, who co-founded LinkedIn, has said that if you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product you launched too late.
Sara Blakely cut the feet off her pantyhose and sold the idea out of her apartment for years before Spanx became a billion-dollar company.
Amazon’s first website might be the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. The point of all this is that many of the products we use today, or books we read, or websites we visit, are the result of a whole bunch of iterations behind the scenes.
Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.” — Epictetus
Brand and Bodies Are Built In Time
I was thinking a lot about this quote I read, “Well-being is realized by small steps, but is truly no small thing,” by Zeno of Citium, as I was creating the umpteenth version of my stealth started coming soon page.
Like building a brand, building a body also comes in small steps.
It’s something most people forget, and in this world of GLP-1s, we now expect our body to respond to one heroic effort, one brutal week, one perfect month, or a few weeks on a prescription.
Good things take time. I’ll post another blog about the recent studies about GLP-1s, how, (and I’m sure this does not shock anyone) the moment you stop taking them the weight comes off. But the scary part is that the cardiovascular benefits not only disappear, people can experience massive heart issues.
“Compared to continued use, they found that stopping or interrupting GLP-1 treatment for as little as six months was linked to a significant increase in the risk of major cardiovascular events. The longer the gap in treatment, the bigger the jump in risk — up to a 22% increase for heart attack, stroke and death after two years off GLP-1s, largely erasing the cardiovascular benefits gained during treatment.”
“Well-being is realized by small steps, but is truly no small thing.” — Zeno of Citium
Progressive Overload
I’ve never believed in shortcuts, but I understand how infuriating it can be to put effort into something for weeks and months or even years to (what seems like) no avail.
And there are legitimate reasons to go on drugs when things really aren’t working—or in my case, my weight gain didn’t go away until my 16cm fibroid was removed.
However, if you have checked out your labs with a doctor, and weight gain that doesn’t budge isn’t linked to a chronic illness or tumor, most people can lose weight with consistent effort, over time.
Many, many, iterations.
When we talk about longevity and reversing biological age through exercise, any telomere lengthening or increased oxygen capacity is not because of one sprint. It’s because of an accumulated signal you send your body over months and years.
Increasing muscle mass, or hypertrophy, is never done in one session. In fact, it’s the result of tiny tears in muscles, recovering from them, and rebuilding on top of it over and over again.
You see where I’m going with this?
I reversed my biological age by 15 years not through a single protocol but through a series of small deliberate practices that I built one on top of the other, starting with what I could actually sustain.
Progressive overload. It’s not glamorous, just like 25 iterations of one headline on a website is not glamorous.
Here’s Some Ideas How to Crawl, Walk, Run Your Way to Greatness
Start Small
Pick one thing you can do in under ten minutes and do it every day for two weeks before adding anything else
Measure What Matters
Stop measuring progress by how something looks and instead by how it performs
Be Consistent
Treat consistency as the goal—small increments each day matter
Don’t Let Setbacks Set You Back
When you miss a day, return the next day
Keep Going
Keep going even when there are no signals.
Perfection is the Enemy
Let the first version of anything be imperfect.
TRUST THE PROCESS
Plant the Seeds
The people who insist the first pass should be the final pass are not saving time.
They are avoiding the discomfort of not being good at something yet, which means they are also avoiding getting better.
Plant seeds and trust they will grow.
