If you’re reading this blog, I can’t tell you how grateful I am.

I just wish there were more of you.

Look, I realize I only started this blog a couple months ago. I realize I’ve only written 60 posts or so. I realize it takes years, decades even to grow a following.

But I want more than a dozen people to read this blog every day. And I want that right now. I want it today.

I think that’s why I needed to read Jon Acuff’s latest book Start.

Jon’s book is for those of us who dream of doing work that matters. In the book Jon describes the 5 lands every dreamer works through on the way to success – the lands of Learning, Editing, Mastering, Harvesting, and Guiding.

No success story escapes any of these lands. There is no fast track to having a number one record or a number one movie or a number one blog.

What I loved most about Jon’s book was a three word phrase we should all pay attention to on the road from average to awesome:

Some beats none.

There will come a time when you fail. There will come times when you’re not so awesome. There will come times when you want to give up on your work.

In those moments, we must remember “some beats none”. If we have 10 items on a to-do list and we only get through 2 of them, that’s better than getting through none of them.

If we try to write 1,000 words and only write 100, that’s better than writing zero.

If we try to run 5 miles and only run 1, that’s a start. Some beats none.

Some beats none. 20,000 people didn’t read my blog yesterday. But 20 people did. That’s way better than zero people reading it because I didn’t write at all.

Dreams take a long time and a lot of work to come true. As Jon puts it in the book, any dream we’re not willing to work hard on isn’t really a dream – it’s just a nap.

Success shouldn’t have a timeline. Success is doing what you love to do and being happy you get to do it, regardless of the size of your audience.

Whatever it is you love to do, keep finding ways to do that. If you don’t quite hit the goal you wanted, keep trying.

Always remember – Some Beats None.

How do you apply the rule of “Some Beats None” in your work? 

(If you haven’t picked up a copy of Start yet, you can find it right here on Amazon or anywhere books are sold. If you’re looking to flip the switch on your dreams and move from being a Quitter to a Starter, it’s an honest look at what the life of a dream looks like.)