My uncle was a crucial part of my operating system in my early years. He was in his late 50s when I was 10.
After a long day exploring the city or visiting construction sites, he would always ask me: "Are you exhausted?" Upon a cheerful "No!" he would point to the staircase and say: "Good. Then let's take the stairs."
One day I asked him about the system design behind his logic. He dropped a mantra that became embedded in my core mental model:
"Kiddo, whenever you can and have the energy, take the stairs. It builds your resistance for the future slowly and consistently. Someday, the elevator might be broken, and you'll feel exhausted, but all those climbed stairs on your good days will still carry you to the top."
It took me years to compile what he was really saying. But once I did, I started applying that "Staircase Logic" to everything:
- π Sports: Still have energy after training? Run 10 more sprints.
- π» Coding: 6-hour flow state ended? Read one more chapter on architecture.
- π¬ Social: Energy left at 8 PM? Go see that friend.
In the professional world, I see this as the difference between "Tenure" and "Mastery." As a junior, I hunted for the "stairs." I took the deep-dives into ExtJS weirdness. I refactored the screen nobody wanted to touch. I wrestled with compression algorithms to save us some money.
I didn't do it to show off. I did it because those tasks are where you learn what the elephant in the room actually looks like. And it's paying so many dividends now, years later, in every single System Design interview or architectural debate that I have.
The Leadership Reality Check
The tech industry has been in a weird "easy mode" where the elevator was working. We saw promotions based on tenure, not impact. We saw rewards for minimal effort.
πͺ¦ That era is deprecated.
The market is correcting. It's pivoting back to rewarding the builders. The ones ready to elevate their knowledge, to do the grunt work, and to take the stairs even when the elevator is working perfectly fine.
Those consistently developed muscles are the invisible force that propels your career when the "easy path" is closed.
Inspired by a great introspective talk with Lucian RoΘu and Endi Ungureanu during a morning run. We realized that grit is what pushed us step by step until, when we took a break, we could barely realize how far we'd come.