Meat, Momentum & Mountains

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I am currently buried.

Fully submerged beneath a mountain of Google Docs, Slack pings, AI experiments, half-written decks, half-read emails, half-assed ideas, and an ever-growing to-do list that has officially morphed into a sentient being. And yet, despite the chaos, I can just barely see the light: Summer.

In exactly four weeks, I’m escaping. One and a half glorious months out of NYC, parked between the North Shore of Boston and Nantucket. It’s so close I can taste it—and it tastes like briny ocean air and Bud Lights at the Chicken Box.

But until then? Mount fucking Everest.

There’s so much to do that it feels physically impossible to start. You know the feeling. That mix of dread and paralysis where every task is important, every item is urgent, and somehow your brain short-circuits and decides to scroll Zillow for homes you absolutely cannot afford.

Starting sucks. It’s intimidating. It’s not “step one” that’s hard—it’s “step zero.” It’s opening the doc. Creating the spreadsheet. Sketching the wireframe. Saying “yes” to the blank page. That’s where the resistance lives. That’s where people quit.

And this is where I offer you a deeply profound, highly intellectual analogy:

You can’t eat an entire Faccios Italian hoagie in one bite.

If you know, you know. That thing is a meat torpedo. You can’t just jam it in and hope for the best—you’ll end up choking or worse, embarrassing yourself in public.

The only way to eat a Faccios is one bite at a time. Respect the hoagie. Take a bite. Chew. Swallow. Repeat. That’s how you conquer it. That’s how you enjoy it.

Same goes for the work.

Whether you’re launching a new product, rebuilding your ops, onboarding a hire, or trying to scrape together something resembling a business plan—the only way through is small, chewable pieces. It sounds cliché, and it is. But it’s also true.

When I started Trust Fun, I wasn’t trying to build a brand—I was just trying to write one newsletter that didn’t suck. When I started Steam Room Etiquette, it was “Let’s do one rehearsal.” Then one show.

One bite eventually leads to one sandwich.

And when I feel overwhelmed, which happens more than I’d like to admit, I always go back to this: Do the next bite.

Don’t worry about the hundred things ahead. Pick one. Write the intro. Book the call. Make the list. Build the skeleton. Whatever it is—do it, chew it, and move on to the next bite. Productivity isn’t about doing everything. It’s about doing something, then another something, then another.

Momentum is the secret. But you don’t find it by thinking big. You find it by starting small. Because starting small is starting, and starting is everything.

So if you’re buried like I am, let’s make a deal: We take today’s bite. Not the whole sandwich. Not even half. Just one goddamn bite. Unfortunately for me tho, I’m on my summer diet so no delicious sandwiches - gross salads only.

Anyways, eventually, that to-do list gets smaller. The pressure eases. The air gets lighter. And before you know it, you’re on a beach in Nantucket with nothing to do but chew slowly and smile.