I promise I won’t turn into my Strava feed. But there’s something to be said about the similarities between running long distances and building products.

You’ve probably heard the “it’s a marathon, not a sprint” metaphor before — but I want to add one more twist.

You can approach running a marathon in very different ways. Some people go from zero-to-marathon in 12 weeks of intense training. It’s doable, but those gut-wrenching training plans… you really don’t want to go through that. And often, this results in a once-in-a-lifetime, superhuman effort. It looks hard. It feels hard. Sure, you can pat yourself on the back afterwards if you make it — but the risk of injury is high, the odds of repeating the feat are low, and the long-term benefits are minimal.

My approach — to running and to getting good at anything (whether it’s athletics, writing, coding, building a business, or any worthwhile endeavor) — is different: make the behavior you want to master a consistent habit, ideally with a built-in feedback loop. Do it over and over again. Stick with it. Improve over time.

I started running about 10 years ago and have been consistent for the last five. By “consistent,” I mean: one run per day, more often than not. At least 5–6 runs per week. Literally thousands of kilometers every year.

What does that turn running a 51k ultra marathon into? Not a walk in the park, for sure. Not “totally easy.” But absolutely doable — in a way that I could start the race confident I’d finish it… and even do it again the week after. Almost, to borrow Greg McKeown’s beautiful term, effortless.

Working on poketto.me feels the same way most days. I add features, fix the occasional bug, do some go-to-market work, write a blog post, refine the commercial model, record a demo video, … But the reason I can do these things in a way that looks “easy” from the outside is because of the years of prep work I’ve put in:

  • 5 years studying at a technical college
  • Earning a BSc and MSc in Software Engineering while working full-time at
  • Over 20 years of hands-on experience in the field

I wouldn’t have liked to hear this when I was younger, but: it matters that you put in the effort, make the mistakes, and learn from them yourself. That’s what makes the hard things look — and feel — effortless.

John L. Parker’s beautiful novel “Once a Runner” ends like this:

“What was the secret, they wanted to know; in a thousand different ways they wanted to know The Secret. And not one of them was prepared, truly prepared to believe that it had not so much to do with chemicals and zippy mental tricks as with that most unprofound and sometimes heart-rending process of removing, molecule by molecule, the very tough rubber that comprised the bottoms of his training shoes. The Trial of Miles; Miles of Trials.”