The man who fished with a giant hook

A young man in the state of Ren made a hook so big it could hold fifty oxen. He used a black rope and cast it into the Eastern Sea, sitting on the cliff at Kuaiji.

Then he waited. Every day he cast and waited, and for a whole year he had nothing.

Eventually something took it. A great fish struck, and the line went down, and the fight dragged the man's energy through the water. It churned the waves and shook the sea, and the noise of it could be heard a thousand miles away.

By the time he pulled the fish in, it was so large that everyone in a thousand miles east was still eating it for months.

Zhuangzi's point: most people make small hooks, take their rods to small ponds, and keep the guard, and they complain that nobody notices them.

I read it more practically. The size of the ambition and the length of the waiting are the same number. If you've set a large goal and you're four months in, with nothing biting, the honest reading is often that the line is still out.

You can always choose a smaller hook. That's a legitimate choice. But don't choose a small hook and then be angry at the size of what you're catching.

MOJOWAY works on a long line. One client, one conversation, one honest look each month. Progress that survives is usually slower than the version you were promised.