Every summer, our family takes a trip across the ocean, to Australia.
In total, our travel time is about 22 hours. That’s made up of a five-ish hour flight from Toronto to Vancouver, a two-ish hour layover, and finally, a 15-ish hour flight from Vancouver to Brisbane.
You would think that a journey like that—across most of a very large country and the world’s largest ocean—would be exhausting for two adults and two kids under 12.
It’s not.
The exhausting part actually begins as soon as we land in Australia.
There are a total of seven flights landing within the hour of us landing, each carrying an average of 250-300 passengers.
All of these passengers have to be channeled through a single Duty Free shop into the customs area, then go from customs to baggage pick-up, from baggage pick-up to Australia’s uber strict biosecurity process, and finally ... the waiting line for a rental car (well, the last part was just a few of us, but still).
On average for our family, after that 22 hour journey, we have another 2-3 hours of waiting in lines.
Those 2-3 hours, are the last 10% of the journey.
**
On an average night at home, I start the getting-ready-for-dinner process around 5pm.
Cooking, eating, reminding kids to stay at the table, eating again, and trying to connect as a family, takes us until about 7pm.
Then there’s either a last-minute request for ice cream, the park, or some random video that we all enjoy, and finally there’s shower time and slowly but surely, bed.
It’s now about 8pm. The last three hours have been a journey.
At this point, my wife and I walk downstairs, and see the one thing that’s left.
Dishes.
Doing all of them, vacuuming the random Cheerio crumbs from breakfast earlier, and tidying up the droppings of clothes (including lone socks that are missing their partners), this will take about 15-ish minutes.
This is roughly the last 10% of the journey.
**
There’s a saying in software engineering, framed in the form of something called the ninety-ninety rule. It goes like this:
The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.
— Tom Cargill, Bell Labs
Of all the obstacles you encounter along a journey, the biggest one is often at the end.
You have to face it when your energy reserves are low (or empty), and when your desire to finish is at an all-time high.
If this is a first-time journey for you, encountering the last 10% can feel like facing an immovable obstacle.
If it’s a repeat journey, then the obstacle is a familiar, though somehow always surprising foe.
It’s perfectly normal for any momentum you’ve gathered up to this moment to come to a screeching halt, while you process the reality of what’s ahead.
Then, you have to somehow do what you’ve done this entire time.
Keep going.
Because you’re almost there.
So, so true Shum.