I'm writing this from a hotel room in Kamloops at 6am.

Yesterday was the first day of the trip. We left home at 8am, made the early ferry, drove four hours through the mountains, and pulled into Kamloops in the afternoon. The kids found a hotel pool. My wife and I found out exactly how much instant coffee a 24-foot van can hold (the answer is more than you'd think). Everyone slept hard.

Today we're heading to Jasper. There's a wildlife sanctuary on the way, full of rescued bears, cougars, and other animals that didn't make it in their original lives and got a second one here. The kids have been asking about it since we mapped the route last month.

But here's the part of yesterday I want to tell you about, because it's the part nobody talks about when they tell you about taking a month off.

The first day of a 30-day trip is harder than people tell you.

Not the logistics. Those were handled. The van was packed. The route was mapped. My wife had the snacks organized into a system I'm still not allowed to question. The hard part was around three hours in. Somewhere in the middle of the mountains, my oldest stopped asking "are we there yet" and started asking the real question, which was "what are we actually doing for the next 30 days." I didn't have a clean answer ready.

The trip had been an idea for so long that I hadn't fully processed what doing it for real would feel like.

Here's why I'm telling you this, because it applies to what's happening inside the sprint right now.

Everything that's worth doing has a moment around hour 3 where it gets harder than you expected. The trip is a 30-day version of that. The sprint is a 5-day version. Whatever you're working on right now, it has its own version somewhere in there. The pattern is the same.

Most people quit at hour 3.

The ones who don't are the ones who already decided, before they started, that hour 3 was going to be the easiest part to keep going. They knew it was coming. They didn't pretend it wouldn't happen. So when it showed up, it didn't surprise them, and they didn't treat it as a sign they should turn around.

The members inside the sprint right now are somewhere around their version of hour 3. Day 1 was the decision day, which most of them got through. Day 2 is the build day. The build day is where most people start "researching" instead of building. Where the templates start looking like suggestions instead of instructions. Where the urge to make it perfect overrides the goal of making it work.

If you're in there right now, this is your hour 3. Don't optimize. Don't redesign. Build the thing the way it's already built. The pre-built version works. That's why it's pre-built.

If you haven't joined yet and you've been on the fence about it, the door is still open. The sprint is happening live in the community. Members are posting wins, asking questions, getting feedback. You're not late. You're walking in mid-momentum, which is the best time to walk in.

​Join the live round and skip the empty-room phase →​

The kids are starting to wake up. The bears are calling. We hit the road in about an hour.

Talk soon.

Adam

P.S. The "are we there yet" count for Day 1 came in at 17. I had set the over/under at 30 and lost a small bet to my wife. She is taking this seriously.