What Tectonic Plates Taught Me About Moving Mountains
The entrepreneurSHIP lesson hiding beneath your feet
I was watching a documentary about tectonic plates the other night, called Voyage of the Continents, and something clicked. These massive slabs of rock that make up Earth’s crust have been drifting across the planet for billions of years. Seven major plates, plus a handful of smaller ones, all moving at speeds of just a few centimeters per year. That’s slower than your fingernails grow.
Our planet is about 4.54 billion years old. For most of that history, it was one giant clump called Pangaea. Then, around 200 million years ago, it started to break apart. The continents drifted. Oceans became deserts. Deserts became oceans. Mountains rose where there was nothing but sand. And we didn’t even understand how it was happening until the 1960s, when plate tectonics finally became accepted science.
We didn’t figure it out till the 1960s? That was just crazy to me. Then I thought about it. It’s easy to not notice something when it’s moving so slow you don’t notice. Just because movement was too slow to see, does not mean there was not movement.
Earth moves. Yes. Especially when you feel an earthquake and suddenly you know the earth is alive, shifting beneath you. But most days? Nothing. You move on with your day, never thinking about the invisible work happening underneath.
That’s the exact feeling I get watching entrepreneurs build their companies. People grinding on their side hustles. Shipping their MVPs. Participating in a business competition. Writing their first book. Building the personal brand.
I see people working on something every single day that nobody else can see moving.
Not yet.
But tectonic plates remind us of something important: motion compounds. Small, steady, relentless movement over time, literally moves mountains.
Learning about tectonic plates got me all pumped up. And for a couple days afterwards, I was telling everyone about it.
I was inspired by them, and reminding people that just because you don’t see something moving, does not mean that it’s not on the move. You just might not see it. And how could you.
So, here are some of the things that tectonic plates can inspire you to do:
Do something for 15 minutes every day.
You don’t need hours. You need consistency. Fifteen minutes daily beats three hours once a month. Your neural pathways strengthen with repetition. Your rhythm builds. Your tectonic plates start to move.
Set short, aggressive goals.
Don’t aim for the finished book. Aim for two pages this week. Aim to code one feature. Aim to reach out to five people. When you hit those small targets, something happens in your brain: you believe progress is real. You see momentum. Aggressive short goals let you prove to yourself that the mountain is moving.
Celebrate the small wins, even if nobody’s there.
You vibe coded your first prototype to get it out of your head and into the world?
Nobody has to see it. You have to see it. You have to know that your plates are moving.
You shipped your first MVP? You led your first workshop? You published your first article in a series you’ve been wanting to start.
Celebrate. There is enough work in building something new. When you celebrate along the way, it’s more fun. I’m always celebrating. There’s plenty of it to go around.
And celebration over time creates continents that you enjoy living on.
Document your ideas and progress.
Document things. I have ideas all the time. If I don’t write them down, I forget. Write things down. Take notes. Make lists. Doodle. Sketch. Even if you can’t read it later, scribble it out. Not for anyone else. For you.
When I fill up a notepad, it feels like an accomplishment. I thumb through the pages, of notes from all sorts of projects, meetings, and ideas.
One page at a time, it adds up. And it’s proof that you are moving.
Tell people you’re on the move.
When someone asks how you’re doing, don’t give the polite noncommittal answer, “I’m busy.”
Share what you’re building. Share the small progress. Let them see the plates shifting. Some of them will care. Some won’t.
But you’ll be surprised how many say, “Oh, I’m working on something too.”
Suddenly you’re not alone. You’re part of a whole world of people moving mountains one pebble at a time.
It’s kinda like crossing an ocean under sail. The destination, thousands of miles away, might feel impossible. But you don’t sail an ocean all at once. You sail today’s miles. Then tomorrow’s. You track your progress on the chart, celebrate each degree of longitude you put behind you, and keep your heading.
Before you know it, land appears on the horizon. Not because of one heroic push, but because you kept moving.
Your entrepreneurial journey works the same way. Just like the Voyage of the Continents.
The earth has spent billions of years proving something simple: if you keep moving, even at a snail’s pace, you will get somewhere.
Commit to your own continental drift.
Move for ten years, twenty years, fifty years.
Do the work when nobody’s watching.
You will create new mountains.
Just. Keep. Moving.