Last week, I woke up at 5am.

I drove an hour and a half to a golf tournament.

When I arrived, I was the only car in the car park.

For a brief moment, I thought:

Wow. I’m incredibly early.

Then I checked the date.

The tournament was the following week.

Three hours of driving.

Before most people had eaten breakfast.

To arrive seven days early.

Impressive, even by my standards.

I have dyslexia and ADHD.

Growing up, this made me feel slow.

I moved through the classroom like a tortoise carrying another, slightly more tired tortoise on its back.

I was always the last person to finish the exam.

Always rereading the question.

Often turning up late, lost, or, apparently, a week early.

For years, I thought this was a weakness.

Now I’m not so sure.

Because when things don’t come easily, you learn how to return to them.

You learn to reread.

Recheck.

Rework.

Relearn.

You learn that the first attempt is rarely the finished one.

And that might be one of the greatest gifts I was ever given.

To make something good, do it.

To make something great, re-do it.

Re-do it.

Re-do it.

The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.

Most people love the idea of creating something great.

Far fewer people enjoy what greatness actually requires.

The awkward first attempt.

The disappointing second.

The 37th version that somehow looks worse than the 36th.

The long stretch where you begin to wonder whether you have any idea what you’re doing.

For the majority of the process, what you are making will not look great.

It might not even look good.

It will look unfinished.

Scrappy.

Sometimes awful.

And that is where most people stop.

Not because they lack ability.

Because they mistake the ugly middle for the final result.

But the ugly middle is the work.

I experienced this when creating Moksha and Hypnos.

They were two of the most complex products I had ever attempted to make.

For a long time, they were terrible.

The flavour wasn’t right.

The texture wasn’t right.

Something would improve, and something else would fall apart.

I made more than 100 versions of each.

There was no magical breakthrough.

No lightning bolt.

Just hundreds of small decisions that appeared to be doing very little.

Until suddenly, they weren’t.

What felt like overnight, everything came together.

But it wasn’t overnight.

It was every failed recipe.

Every tiny adjustment.

Every lesson carried from one version into the next.

The improvement had been compounding quietly, beneath the surface.

People often see the finished product and assume the person who made it must be naturally talented.

What they don’t see is the pile of terrible versions behind it.

The deleted paragraphs.

The failed recipes.

The missed shots.

The embarrassing first attempts.

The empty car park at 6:30 in the morning.

I am still making mistakes.

Whatever you are making, a product, a business, a body, a relationship or a life, embrace the scrappiness of it.

Let it be bad for a while.

Let yourself be a beginner.

Make the first version.

Then make it better.

Then do it again.

Great things are rarely made in one brilliant moment.

They are remade in a hundred ordinary ones.

Have a great week ahead

Kia kaha & love

Chris Xx