Give it three years
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Read time: 4 mins Hi Reader, 2025 feels like the year we all finally know why social media sites are so addictive. Today's newsletter isn't about that. But, this same thing is also the reason we abandon our projects and goals that require time. From the experts "When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before." – Jacob Riis This is pointless I keep coming back to the image in recent weeks. It made me laugh because I’ve said that exact sentence in my head more times than I’d like to admit. Not out loud. Quietly. Usually, on a normal day, when nothing dramatic has happened, that’s the problem. You do the work, you show up, you try to move something forward… and the day still feels the same. That feeling has been sitting with me a lot this month because I’m finishing my first year of being self-employed. There were so many moments this year that felt strangely… invisible. You set up a website. You decide how to explain what you do. You try to be careful with your words. You hit publish. Nobody really notices apart from your cousins in London. And then you sit at your desk and realise there isn’t a bell that rings. No one sent an email asking for your service. Nothing in your life looks different just because you made something. The silence is what messes with you. Not even criticism. Just a lack of signal. It’s very easy, in that kind of silence, to start questioning whether you’re building something real or just entertaining yourself. Around six years ago, I watched a video from filmmaker Matt D’Avella where he shared a rule that stuck with me: Give it three years. Three years of making an effort. Not waiting. Not being passive. Three years of staying in motion, making small decisions, adjusting, learning, talking to people, shipping things, getting better. I didn’t take it as a productivity hack. I took it as permission. Permission to be in the “this is pointless” phase without panicking. It helped me a lot when I was growing as a photographer. At the beginning, the status quo literally blocked my view. Access, positioning, networks… there were so many moments where I felt close to the action and still not inside it. If you’d taken a snapshot of my progress early on, it would’ve looked like nothing was happening. Over time, the picture changed. I started covering important sports events for the press. Copa del Rey matches. International tournaments. This year, I was two minutes away from covering the Champions League final! (If Barça had won, I was going with an agency that wanted to document the fan journey.) That line still feels surreal to write. Not because it’s a fairytale, but because it came from so many unremarkable days stacked on top of each other. I’ve been thinking about the same idea with Focus Positiu. We’re entering the third year now, and participation is doing what it always does in the build-up to the deadline: it starts slow. I notice the old reflex in me when things are slow. The part that wants a quick scoreboard. The part that starts doing maths in my head and trying to predict outcomes. And then I zoom out. Year three feels different because the foundations are real now. The decisions we’ve made are real. The relationships around the project are real. The energy that’s been built over time is real. So I’m not judging Focus Positiu on a single moment. I’m watching the longer story unfold. That’s what I’m trying to teach myself in my work too. A lot of the work I did in 2025 won’t pay off immediately. Some of it will pay off in ways I can’t predict. Some of it will simply teach me what not to do next time. That’s part of it. What I don’t want to do is make short-term decisions based on delayed feedback. So I’m carrying one simple thing into 2026: A longer time frame. If you’re entering the new year with a project, a goal, or a habit you care about, and you want a rule you can borrow, I’ll share the one that keeps me steady: Give it three years. Not as a promise. More like a container. A way to stay in the work long enough for the work to start speaking back. It's hard to know to what degree what you're doing right now is contributing to what you'll be doing in the future. Keep going. Before you go If you want to support two things I'm actively building right now:
If you got this far, you're part of 69% of subscribers, so thank you, Reader. If a section has particularly interested you, click the link of the corresponding section. It helps me prepare future newsletters. If this email was forwarded to you, please consider subscribing. Happy New Year. Peace, Has |
