The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

by Scott Belsky

A successful final mile requires letting go of what you made and returning to who you are, your values, and your curiosities that are kindling for whatever comes next.

It’s about moving on when you feel fully satiated and can therefore allow yourself to pursue something different.

When I finish a project, I aspire to feel full. And when I lay dying, I hope to look back on what I would consider a full life.

Continuing to learn is an elixir to life.

Those I know who have met Buffett talk about his insatiable curiosity.

“Read five hundred pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.”

Challenges will either depress or mobilize your efforts in new ways, but not both.

We lose time when we let others spend it for us.

when you find yourself distracted by technology or some other preoccupation while with your children or loved ones,

pretend you’re forty years older and longing to have just one more moment with these people at this time in your life. It helps.

Remind yourself that these parts of life are not meant to be sped through.

For these time-intensive, friction-filled portions of life that you chose, consider the time you spend as an effort to permanently embed the experience in your memory.

You see, life’s frictions have another purpose aside from consuming your time: They make portions...

For an experience to be memorable, it must have friction. Just as all of life’s beach vacations become somewhat indistinguishable from one another, experie...

The answer to the time equation is not as simple as saying yes to things you want to spend time o...

Some of the most important and memorable parts of life are the ones that ...

Instead, the test for time investments is whether or not the experience is someth...

Looking back at the end of your life, do you want to remember toiling away o...

Do you want to remember raising your children? Do you want to remember working on your rela...

Do you want to remember coaching people in...

If it’s something you just want to accomplish but don’t wish to remember doi...

However, if it is an experience that you wish to remember, then spend the time enduring the friction to creat...

the best parts of life have friction, and memories are...

To be done is to die.

Creativity is never finished.

When you execute and ship your creations, you should celebrate—you deserve every accolade that is bestowed upon you.

But then you need to kill the feeling of being done. Destroy it with something new.

The companies, leaders, and designers I admire most find ways to make their greatest creations obsolete.

“we like lists because we don’t want to die.” Lists keep us unfinished, and the sensation of having more to do is very much what keeps us learning and striving.

The messy middle miles that you endure and optimize your way through don’t get any easier and never repeat themselves, because they are the moat between vision and reality.

The messy middle is a life’s work, and when anyone crosses the finish line and pushes an extraordinary creation out to the world, we all benefit.

The future is created by those who endured and optimized through the messy middle to create it. For you and for the rest of us, stick with it.