The Increment is the Way
Stop reaching for someone else's summit
When I was 17, I was struggling through a couple of A-levels. My Dad and I were sitting in the coffee shop of a local garden centre and he let me know it was OK to quit.
I should have listened, but I just didn’t know which path to walk if I didn’t walk that one.
Knowing I was hungry for a sense of direction, he handed me a flyer for a charity mountain climb: Mount Kilimanjaro. It was expensive, and sitting with this memory now, I’m not sure how we put the money together. But we did. And we raised £3,000 for charity.
Every day, I would strap on my egregiously heavy walking boots (they were absolutely the wrong boots for this climb) and I would jog around the park. Then I would jog to the hospital for my cleaning shift, and up the nine flights of stairs to the ward.
On the 21st of June 2001, we rose at midnight for a fifteen-hour trek and the final climb. It was -15°C and I had been sick for days. My memory of this is fragmented, but I do remember the moment of collapse, and the absurdity of my request that the group push on without me and pick me up after I had a nice long bath. A hot vitamin C drink snapped me back into the real world. Later, my hands went completely numb; the middle layer of my three-glove system had become damp and turned to ice without me realising.
My symptoms on the descent revealed the toll altitude sickness had taken on my body. It had been begging me to turn back. But I just couldn’t face that path either.
For the young man who felt adrift, this summit was symbolic.
And when I reached it, it wasn’t special because the view was out-of-this-world. It was special because of what it cost me to see it.
My group reached the same summit, but experienced a very different view.
What kind of climber are you?
Our journey exploring Presence hasn’t been about discovering which mountain to climb; it has been about noticing what kind of climber you are.
Up to this point, you’ve named the weight you’re carrying. You’ve discovered that your mess is actually your qualification. You’ve orientated yourself as a servant, choosing to look at the people around you rather than the peak above you.
And in the last chapter, you asked the people who know you best to hold up a mirror. To reveal the actual equipment and character you have at hand, alongside your shortcomings and blind spots. That wasn’t just an exercise in self-awareness; it was preparation for the climb. Because knowing exactly where your footing is likely to slip is just as vital as knowing where your footing is sure.
My dad had stood alongside me to say it’s OK to stop. And if I’d had the maturity to notice, I would have quit my A-levels, and I probably would have called time on the climb too. I could have turned back before the top and still taken what I needed from the mountain.
Truth is, I rarely think of the view from the mountaintop, but I often talk about that final ascent: eyes down to the dirt as I begged Jesus to help me take one more step. The only thing I had agency over as my lungs burned, my legs failed, and my hands froze.
The summit wasn’t the lesson. The steps were.
I now understand my identity as a climber is caught in a constant tension between two realities. Part of me still gazes at summits, wondering how to get there, dreaming of sudden success, and feeling jealous of what others have and I don’t. But the other part of me simply focuses on my feet, trudging onward, trusting that the climb itself will reveal the path, good people to climb with, and new peaks that are actually worth what it costs to reach them.
This book exemplifies that tension. I’ve decided it will be a book, and I hope that it is successful. But each chapter is a single step. And as I write, some people unsubscribe, and some people write ‘serve the work, not the outcome’ on their fridge doors.
From time to time I glimpse the vista. The view is worth the cost.
If I just said “goals are bad, never look at the mountain,” you’d rightly reject it. You need to pay your mortgage. You have a project you want to complete. Having a direction is deeply human.
Look, I didn’t accidentally ‘serve the work’ all the way to Kilimanjaro’s summit. I chose the mountain, booked the flight, and packed the stupid boots. The mountain gave me a heading and got me out the door.
But on that final climb, the summit stopped being useful. The sheer scale of the remaining distance would have frozen my feet to the spot. The only way to survive the climb was to stop looking at the mountain and take one… more… step.
The mountain isn’t the enemy, but gazing endlessly at the summit while you walk is. If your attention is up there, you can’t be present right here, noticing how the landscape shifts and responding appropriately.
The mountain gave me my heading. But the increment was the way.
The Tyranny of the Gap
Knowing that, however, doesn’t diminish the summit’s pull. I still look up at the mountain, and then down at my heavy boots. I open my phone and search ‘how to climb’ and the internet does what it does best: it gives me the highlights reel of people who’ve already made it to the top.
The algorithm notes my search and sends me an endless stream of people broadcasting from the highest peaks. Retailers try to sell me boots I don’t need, and influencers offer me shortcuts to the top.
The gap between where I am and where I should be is clearer than ever.
This is where the mountain becomes a tyrant instead of a calling. We take that distant summit and we use it as a way to grade whether today has been a good day.
And measured by someone else’s showreel, it probably hasn’t.
That feeling can create one of three responses: panic, paralysis, or procrastination.
You already know about my panic-mode: the courses, the templates, and the playbooks. But I’ve faced paralysis too. I have left wonderful books unopened because starting would remind me of how much I still need to learn. I didn’t retrain or go back to school because I believed I was already too late.
The belief that I should be ‘up there’ kept me frozen in the dirt.
I stayed busy. It felt like progress, but really it was just procrastination. I found ways to make as much noise as possible whilst going precisely nowhere. I spent 18 months creating content that nobody asked for and forcing audience growth, avoiding the incremental work that actually makes a difference.
Imagine if I’d sent just two messages a day to people I could genuinely help instead.
But I didn’t.
It was easier to create and hope, than invite and experience rejection.
We rarely avoid our true practice out of laziness. Whether we realise it or not, it’s the visceral terror of exposure that stops us. We don’t paint because the canvas proves we haven’t mastered the brush. We don’t press record because the lens captures our awkwardness. We don’t write because the blank page confirms we haven’t figured it all out yet. Even playing a new video game feels fraught, because being a beginner requires us to admit we are bad at something.
So we need to set a new standard for success, because the challenge in front of all of us isn’t the mountain.
It’s the next step. Unsteady and uncertain.
Make it good and enough
Right now, my son is 9 months old. He doesn’t crawl, he sort of rolls around, reverses, sits up, and flops over as his brain desperately tries to coordinate the motor skills for movement. Suddenly he’ll be up, and he’ll get faster and faster. The result of endless incremental learnings that will suddenly look like massive progress. For Laura and me it will feel like he’s taken a giant leap, but for him, it will feel like the summit of a hard-fought climb.
Of course, we don’t wait for the moment of success to celebrate his progress. If he rolls over or pushes himself up, he gets praised for it. We recognise the achievement because he’s a baby. It’s good AND enough.
The path you’re taking today doesn’t demand perfection. It only requires you to reach that standard.
Good enough is a shrug of the shoulders. But good and enough is the choice to balance your effort with the grace to stop. To make the unvarnished attempt. To opt into the exposure we need to grow by observing what we’ve created and being present to the step we’re taking today.
It’s an act of quiet social rebellion. The active choice to silence the summit when the world demands success stories.
A line in the dirt that declares ‘that’s enough for today’.
To the moon and back
Good and enough isn’t a quaint philosophy for small things; it’s how all meaningful progress happens.
From the outside, progress can feel sudden; it can look like a giant leap. However, it’s always the fruit of years of incremental investment that we never see.
In 1969 Armstrong took one small step off a ladder onto the surface of the moon, ‘a giant leap for mankind’. The world witnessed a moment of massive, sudden progress that forever changed our relationship with what was possible.
The moon was NASA’s mountain.
And that single step wasn’t a giant leap at all. It was the evidence of millions of incremental, unremarkable learnings working together. Decades of failed tests, unglamorous mathematics, tiny engineering adjustments, and daily frustrations.
Uncharted territory. No one showed them the way. They learned to climb.
Reading this book may be helping to reveal your moon, your mountain. Something that’s worth working towards that aligns deeply with your Majesty.
Sure, you can find shortcuts: templates, funnels, and playbooks that promise a cable car up the mountainside to bypass the messy, incremental middle. But when you reach someone else’s summit you might find you lack confidence in your own feet.
You risk creating like Canva when we need you to be Picasso.
The world might see a masterpiece. But you know the million brush strokes it cost you to paint it.
The increment is how we learn the art of the climb: where learnings compound. Where each small reflection, action, observation, and each unvarnished attempt becomes the solid ground for the next step.
The altitude builds. Slowly. Until one day you take an ordinary step and realise the landscape has completely changed.
Screw the summit
Think back to Robert Raikes. If he had the tools at hand to search ‘how to educate children’, he would have been shown the summit: how to scale programmes, how to shape an institution. The sheer scale of the gap between the children he felt called to serve and the definition of what success looked like would have either killed the vision, or he would have been lost to building a system instead of meeting an immediate need.
Instead, he reflected on the immediate need (rich kids got an education, poor kids worked). He took action; not by trying to smash the system, but by creating opportunity through teaching them to read. He observed what happened, others did too, and each step became a stride.
That’s The Rhythm: Reflection > Action > Observation.
The summit the movement reached was discovered, not decided. Not through an extraordinary act of sudden progress, but an ordinary act on repeat. He didn’t weigh himself against an imagined, scaling ‘Sunday School’ brand. He just looked at the children around him and took an incremental step. Good and enough.
Simply put, we don’t climb the mountain, we only take the next step.
We don’t build businesses; we choose someone to serve.
We don’t start movements; we choose a need to meet.
We don’t try to go viral; we build trust with one person.
We don’t try to be an artist; we choose a theme to explore.
We don’t aim for a legacy; we do the work right in front of us.
When you reach your summit it won’t be special because of the view.
It will be special because of what it cost you to see it.
A note to my Dad: I hope as you read this that you know deep within your bones how grateful I am for the endless unnoticed hours spent thinking of me, planning what I couldn’t, and the grace to let me resist lots of sound advice.
Practice Note
Three questions to carry into this week.
Is this good and enough? Release one of today’s tasks from perfection.
What does easy look like? Ask that question of whatever’s in front of you.
What can The Rhythm show you? Use Reflection > Action > Observation to inform your next step.
No summits, just small honest steps.
Where We Are:
This is Week 11 of a year-long practice.
Movement 1: Presence - eight weeks, eight stanzas, exploring how to show up as yourself.
The Increment is the Way ← You are here
Invite Like an Artist
The World is Abundant
From there we’ll explore Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.
Mine too. And I am totally stealing that panic, paralysis, procrastination formula!! This book is evidence that this chapter is full of truth.
My favourite chapter so far ❤️