One of the most significant obstacles we face on our journey to progress is intimidation at what the progress will require.

At times, I've found myself paralyzed by the mere thought of what effort and tenacity will be required of me to achieve whatever I am striving towards:

• The number of days of consistent, deliberate effort to get my body into the physical form I want it to be in.
• The hours of writing to complete my book project.
• The accumulated minutes spent meditating, breathing, or journaling to build a warrior's mind.

It's certainly easier if you can find a process you fall in love with, but the intimidation factor remains significant. This intimidation has stopped growth in its tracks on too many occasions.

I've written in the past about my 30-for-30 Approach (30 minutes per day for 30 straight days) or the Two-Day Rule (never skip two days in a row), both of which have served me well—but they require a certain degree of upfront discipline and commitment that we may not always possess.

Sometimes the notion of needing to commit to a string of actions is enough to stop us from taking the first action.

So we arrive at the core question of today's piece: How can we get over the hump of the initial intimidation to get started and build momentum?

The One-in-a-Row Principle...

The Power of One

I recently started listening to Greenlights, the Matthew McConaughey memoir, read by the author in incredible, theatrical fashion.

In the middle of the book, McConaughey talks about his first big break in Hollywood in the movie Dazed and Confused.

Reflecting on this "lucky" break and the impact it had on his career, he formulates an incredible framework for thinking about progress and growth:

"Any success takes one in a row. Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more. Over and over until the end, then it’s one in a row again."

We can deconstruct anything to the atomic unit—to just executing once.

One-in-a-Row. Simple. Brilliant.

I've often mused on the fact that success is just the byproduct of making a large stack of individually good decisions. Imagining the large stack required to get to where you're going can be scary, but with the One-in-a-Row Principle, you never have to think about that.

You just have to think about this one decision.

In a famous interview with Charlie Rose, actor Will Smith talked about the mentality that drove him forward in his career:

"You don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t start by saying, ‘I’m going to build the biggest, baddest wall that’s ever been built.’ You don’t start there. You say, ‘I’m going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid.’ If you do that every single day, soon you will have a wall."

Don't worry about the next brick, or the last brick, just focus on this brick.

Focusing on the Present

In my baseball pitching days, I had a coach that used to say, "You're only as good as your next pitch."

The idea was that the only thing to focus on is the next pitch. No matter how good or bad your last one was—or how many future pitches you'll need to execute to win—it's only the next one that you can control right now. It's only the next pitch that has any bearing on where you'll be after it.

It took me years to realize: This wasn't really about baseball (at least not only about baseball).

• Focusing on the past is dangerous.
• Focusing on the future is paralyzing.
• Focusing on the present is beautiful.

So the next time you find yourself struggling with the intimidation of the future, change the narrative:

Just focus on executing one-in-a-row.

Do one thing well, then another, then another. Then do it again.

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