There's a scene in Margin Call where John Tuld, the CEO of an investment bank, says,

"There are three ways to make a living in any business: be first, be smarter, or cheat."
We heard it too! Most picked first, mistook it for fastest, and ran with it. It’s easier to measure, after all.
You can't always tell if you're smarter than the competition. Cheating has consequences. But being first? That's about moving fast. So everyone started sprinting, moving at 100 mph with no destination in mind.
We convinced ourselves that speed is the strategy.
We’re addicted to movement because movement feels like control.
What if you’re _stuck in motion! _
Here’s the collective delusion:** being busy means you're making progress**. _Not always, dear mates. _The truth is, busyness hides in the tiny cognitive load of remaking small decisions. Individually harmless. Cumulatively brutal.
It means you're afraid to stop and figure out what progress even looks like for you.
We have met founders who have built businesses that diverge without profits. Individuals who've optimized themselves into burnout. Teams that hit every deadline but can't remember the last time they made something they were proud of.
That’s not progress.
Most work splits into two types.
Reactive work. The stuff screaming for attention. It feels productive because it's immediate, loud, and someone's waiting on you.
Compounding work. The actions that build. Systems. Processes. Relationships. Content that doesn't die in 24 hours. It feels slow because no one's breathing down your neck about it.
Reactive work leaves you exhausted, and exhaustion feels like proof you did something important. **Exhaustion isn't progress. **
You can run on a treadmill for an hour. Legs burning, sweat dripping, chest heaving. You didn't go anywhere.
Most businesses operate on treadmills. All that effort, same spot.
Which is why so many “systems” end up as alibis.
There's a concept in manufacturing called "poka-yoke," mistake-proofing. The idea is simple: design the process so the mistake can't happen.
You don't train people harder. You remove the opportunity for error entirely.
James Clear wrote:
"You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."
The hard part isn’t building a system. It’s admitting you’ve been avoiding it. Building one forces you to choose what matters. Choose wrong, and it shows.
Good systems aren't always organized, documented. It's solving a problem. Fix it properly. Move on.
That's how progress compounds.
Go. Solve the boring stuff so you don't reinvent the wheel every Monday.
The treadmill's optional.