You may be smart. You may be intelligent. You may be creative. Yet to really achieve something meaningful, to make a real change, you need to do what the title suggests.

I like words and these three did something to me. There are other good words to describe this but these three are special. For me.

Continuously, is probably the most misspelled word in the agile jargon. “Con” means together, the Proto Indo-European root “ten-” meaning “to stretch” (source: https://www.etymonline.com), the same root of the french tenir, to hold. Literally, meaning “to hold on, together”. To persist.

Relentlessly. The recent meaning is “to melt, soften, dissolve” (same source as above.) Add the “less” and you get exactly what we’re looking for: “showing no lessening of severity, intensity, or strength” (source: https://www.merriam-webster.com).

So far we had two adverbs, telling us that whatever it is we’re doing, we need to hold on and show no change in strength or intensity.

And now to the thing that we’re actually doing – persevering. “to persist in a state, enterprise, or undertaking in spite of counter influences, opposition, or discouragement”  (source: https://www.merriam-webster.com). Not only do we need to hold on and show no change in intensity, but there is also something active we need to do: to persist, in spite of any opposition.

Making a change, and making a difference is very hard. Taking a geeky metaphor, the difference between doing something and actually making a change is like the difference between writing a piece of code and actually delivering it. You need the proper framework to make something happen. You need to continuously and relentlessly persevere.