It takes a lot of flying time to become a certified pilot. It takes years on stage for a comedian to learn how to command an audience. It takes time to get sober, time in therapy to heal a marriage. No book is written overnight, and few fortunes are made in one swoop. No, they start small and accumulate, the power of compounding interest working on them.

All great things take time. You know this. You know where you want to end up, and yet, and yet still you have not started the clock.

The Stoics say it’s foolish to expect figs in winter. More foolish is expecting outputs without the inputs, final results without basic beginnings. The Stoics say that if you don’t know what port you’re sailing for, no wind is favorable. If you never get on the boat, if you never leave the harbor, no port is possible.

It’s going to take a while–to lose the weight, to acquire the mastery, to turn things around. It’s probably going to take longer than anyone would like it to. You don’t control that. You do control whether you add one more day to that tally. You control whether you push the ETA back unnecessarily. You control whether you start the clock today, whether you stop putting stuff off and get after it.