Momentum in projects never feels even. Some days drag with preparation, others rush forward in leaps. I first noticed it while building a kitchen, and later saw the same rhythm in web development and business.
Competence is what turns those uneven waves into a steadier flow.
1. From Kitchens to Code: The Same Rhythm
I didn’t learn this from a book. I learned it on the floor of a half-built kitchen.
We bought the standard Swedish setup. My close friend, a carpenter, and I installed it. He said something that stuck: There are days where it feels like nothing moves, and then there are hours where you jump forward by meters. He was right. One moment we were aligning rails, checking levels, measuring again. It felt slow.
Then a switch flipped: cabinets clicked in, fronts lined up, appliances slid into place. Suddenly the room looked finished.
Later, building websites, I noticed the same rhythm. Long stretches of prep, naming, structure, fields, content mapping, then a burst where everything snaps together. And when I built the eLearning for Koreanischkurs, it clicked again: the more competent I became, the less drag there was.
Planning didn’t disappear; it just got lighter. Doubt went quiet. Decisions got faster. The “nothing’s happening” days turned into necessary setup, not a stall, just the path.
That’s the pattern: preparation, then flow. Uneven at first. More even with competence. The work doesn’t get easier; you just waste less motion.
2. Why Progress Comes in Waves
Progress isn’t linear because work isn’t one thing. It’s a stack of different modes that don’t move at the same speed.
- Orientation: At the start, you’re mapping the terrain. Goals, constraints, sequence. It feels slow because you’re not placing cabinets yet, you’re finding the studs.
- Preparation: Tools out, materials staged, names decided, fields created. In web terms: structure, taxonomy, routes, reusable components. Still looks like “nothing happened,” but you’re removing future friction.
- Execution: Click. This is where the visible leaps happen. The pieces attach because the prep reduced resistance.
- Adjustment: Minor corrections, edge cases, cleanup. Not glamorous, but it locks in quality and prevents rework.
The wave pattern comes from context switching between these modes. Prep is quiet but compound-interest useful. Execution is loud and fast because it rides on that prep. When the prep is weak, execution stutters. When the prep is strong, execution feels like momentum.
The mistake is judging the whole project by the most visible hours. The truth: the speed you feel during execution is purchased by the time you spent removing ambiguity earlier.
As competence grows, you spend less time finding the studs and more time placing cabinets, so the waves flatten into a steadier flow.
3. Preparation vs. Doubt
There’s a fine line between necessary preparation and getting stuck in doubt.
Preparation is sharpening the axe: clearing space, gathering tools, setting order. It looks slow, but it’s part of the forward motion. Without it, execution collapses later.
Doubt is different. Doubt is circling the same decision again and again, as if thinking harder will solve it. It doesn’t. It just drains energy and stretches the pauses until they feel like failure.
I’ve seen both sides. In the kitchen, preparation meant triple-checking the levels before mounting the cabinets. That saved hours later. Doubt would have been second-guessing whether the layout itself was right, after it was already decided. In web projects, it’s the same: setting field names once is prep; constantly renaming them because “maybe it’s not perfect” is doubt.
The shift happens with competence. The more you know, the more you trust the preparation you’ve done. Decisions stick. Doubt fades. And the line between pause and progress gets clear.
4. Sharpening the Axe, Not Stalling the Work
The old saying goes: If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four sharpening the axe. The point isn’t endless prep, it’s intentional prep.
When we built the kitchen, sharpening the axe looked like measuring, marking, aligning. In web projects, it’s setting the framework, naming conventions, folder structures.
These steps don’t feel like output, but they’re what make output possible.
The trap is mistaking sharpening for progress itself. Staying in prep mode forever isn’t work, it’s avoidance dressed up as diligence. A sharp axe sitting idle is still useless.
The balance is simple: prepare until friction is low, then swing. Overprepare, and you never cut. Underprepare, and every swing glances off. Competence is knowing how much sharpening is enough, and moving forward when the edge is ready.
5. How Competence Levels the Pace
In the beginning, the rhythm of building feels lopsided. Long pauses, then sudden bursts. Preparation dominates because you don’t yet know what matters most.
Doubt sneaks in because you can’t tell if a decision will hold.
Competence changes the shape of that curve. With experience, preparation gets leaner. You know which steps are critical and which are noise. Doubt fades because you’ve already tested enough versions to trust the pattern.
The work itself doesn’t become lighter, the cabinets are still heavy, the code still needs writing. What changes is your speed of clarity.
Decisions lock in faster. Systems click into place sooner. The difference between a good day and a bad day shrinks.
Instead of wild swings between “nothing is happening” and “everything is flying,” you get a steadier current. Competence doesn’t remove the waves, it just smooths them into flow.
6. The Flow of Building: From Uneven to Steady
At first, building feels like lurching forward in fits and starts. One day you’re stuck measuring. The next day you’re racing ahead, cabinets and code snapping into place. The contrast is sharp, slow, then fast, then slow again.
But as competence grows, the rhythm shifts. The pauses don’t vanish, but they stop feeling like failure. Preparation blends into execution.
Doubt fades into decision. What once felt like two different speeds becomes one steady pace.
It’s like learning to walk on uneven ground: at the start, every rock trips you. Later, you move smoothly across the same terrain. The obstacles are still there. You’re just better at moving through them.
That’s the flow: less jerky, more continuous. Not because the work got easier, but because your own clarity made the pace more even.
7. What This Means for My Work
For me, this isn’t just about kitchens or code. It’s about every project I touch.
The lesson is simple: uneven pace is part of the process at first, but it doesn’t stay that way. The more competent you become, the more the rhythm evens out. Preparation feels lighter. Doubt fades. Execution runs smoother.
When I notice a slowdown now, I don’t panic. I ask: is this sharpening, or is this stalling? If it’s sharpening, I let it happen. If it’s stalling, I cut it short.
That shift changes everything. It means I can approach work with less frustration, more trust in the process, and a steadier momentum.
It turns big projects, whether it’s a kitchen, a website, or an eLearning platform, into something I can move through with calm clarity instead of stop-start stress.
That’s what competence gives: not speed for its own sake, but a pace you can trust.
