Relentless doesn’t mean reckless build results with small, boring reps

When Maya started her Etsy shop, she tried to sprint. Fourteen-hour Saturdays, late-night logo tweaks, then nothing for a week when life piled up. Sales trickled in, but so did burnout. She switched tactics and defined her brick: one new listing daily, Monday to Friday. It was small enough to do before work. By the end of month one, she had 22 new listings and a wall calendar full of X’s that made momentum visible.

The second month, a few mornings went sideways. A printer jam, a sick kid, an early meeting. Instead of skipping, she opened her obstacle notebook. Printer jam? Upload a digital listing without printing. Sick kid? Draft the listing text on her phone while he napped. Early meeting? Schedule the brick the night before. The notebook turned snags into playbooks. Not every listing sold, but the catalog grew and so did her confidence.

By month three, she wasn’t thinking about a “grand opening.” She was laying bricks. On a rainy Thursday, a repeat customer messaged about a custom order because there was finally enough variety to spark ideas. Maya smiled, stirred her tea, and laid that day’s brick. I might be wrong, but the boring days seemed to matter most.

This approach leans on grit as sustained commitment, not heroic effort, and on habit formation through consistency. Visible streaks exploit the psychology of loss aversion—we don’t want to break the chain. An obstacle notebook builds a repertoire of implementation tactics, turning surprises into systems. Cadence matters because the best plan is the one you’ll still execute on tough days. Relentless is patient and specific.

Choose one goal and define your daily or weekday brick, the smallest repeatable unit that builds it. Put a paper calendar somewhere you’ll see and mark an X each day you lay a brick, keeping the streak alive even when it’s inconvenient. Start an obstacle notebook to capture blocks in real time and write one workaround you’ll try next time, so hard days cost less. Protect your cadence with an honest schedule you can sustain. Lay your first brick in the next hour and mark the calendar tonight.