You’ve heard it before: It’s a marathon, not a sprint. That’s true for almost everything worthwhile—learning a new skill, building healthy habits, nurturing relationships… and yes, building, maintaining, and growing something like poketto.me, even if it's “just” a side project.
Psychologist Angela Duckworth frames this through the lens of grit—not sheer willpower (which is fleeting and highly dependent on external factors), but the combination of passion (what gets you started) and perseverance (what keeps you going).
For me, poketto.me began with passion—the “joy of building.” It felt like play. Quick feedback loops, visible progress, flow states, and the simple fun of making something from scratch. That passion got me to start—but couldn’t carry me all the way. Eventually, building features turns into refining, debugging, documenting—aka, “real” work.
That’s where perseverance kicks in. And here, my experience with habit-building helped a lot. Over the last ten years, I established healthy routines that integrate so seamlessly with the rest of my day that they feel “effortless” (to borrow the term recently coined by Greg McKeown).
🏃♂️ I run every morning, before even looking at my phone.
📚 I read at least one hour a day.
🧘 I meditate 15 minutes in the morning and at night.
None of these require motivation or willpower—they’re just part of the day. Likewise, I made it a rule to work on poketto.me at least 30 minutes a day. Some days I only tackle a low-hanging fruit (see TIL #51), but most days, that small momentum leads to more.
You don’t always need fire. Sometimes, routine is the fuel.
As they say: It’s a marathon, not a sprint.