If we’re lucky, 1 out of every 100 days is a home run.

On that one random day – usually when we expect it least – everything seems to magically fall into alignment perfectly.

I had a moment like that last month. It was the day our new feature film Teacher’s Pet was released, which alone would have been enough.

But for whatever reason, the universe was feeling generous that day.

Totally unrelated, I also got a call to produce an exciting new project, landed a guest on the podcast I’d been hoping to book for a long time, and had a surge of new users flooding my Cinecolor website.

Each of the above were weeks, months, or years in the making – but they all came to a head at the exact same moment on the exact same day.

We’ve all had these experiences, when everything seems to go right all at once. And it’s an incredible feeling, because most days are the very opposite.

But there’s a catch with having those rare exceptional days. It sets the bar impossibly high, and makes your average day to day grind feel insignificant in comparison.

Going back to a normal day almost feels like something is wrong. You just hit a grand slam, and anything short of that is like taking a step back.

But that’s a dangerous emotion to have.

Because those 1 in 100 unicorn days when everything goes right are not a representation of what you did on that day. They are a result of what you did on the other 99 days. Some of which inevitably were filled with setbacks and frustrations.

Success is built in tiny daily steps. Sometimes we have little wins along the way. Other times we stumble and need to start over. 

When we have a string of bad days in a row, it’s easy to start thinking about quitting.

We mistakenly take bad days as a sign that we’re doing something fundamentally wrong – when in reality, we just haven’t given it enough of a chance.

We haven’t let those bad days accumulate and compound and transform into what will inevitably be a very good day. A 1 in 100 unicorn day that will come eventually if we just stick with the plan.

It’s not enough to understand this on a logical level either. We have to put it into practice by changing our behavior.

Doing so is the only way to turn our bad days into leverage for better days to come, rather than letting them gently nudge us into oblivion.

In other words, to get to your most incredible outcome, you need to have the capacity to sustain the choppy waters along the way.

And here’s a trick I use to do that, which I can’t recommend enough:

On your truly bad days, when you are stuck the most – Focus entirely on restoring your headspace and building runway.

Example: Last week I burned myself out working on an edit late into the night, and thanks to the blue light from my screen and the caffeine from my iced matcha, I didn’t sleep more than 30 minutes that night.

The next day, I was a zombie. Some people can function on no sleep, but I am definitely not one of them.

And this was a day I was supposed to complete my edit, among a slew of other work for my website, clients, and the usual daily grind.

In years past, I would have been naive enough to try to force myself to work at full capacity, no matter how tired I was. I would push myself through it, and get a fraction of the work done at a much lower level of quality than I was capable.

This time though, I treated things differently. I didn’t attempt to do the work itself, I prioritized giving myself headspace to come back to it later.

I had a slow morning. Went for a walk. Cleaned the office. Thought a little bit about the edit, but didn’t touch it. Then later, watched a movie and went to sleep as early as I could.

The next day, I woke up like a freshly charged battery. I was able to knock out that edit in record time, and even borrowed some ideas from the movie I had watched the night before.

Over that 48 hour period, my average productivity was as good as ever – even though the first 24 hours were not traditionally “productive”, they supercharged the next 24 hour cycle, which made them just as valuable.

It was a good reminder that everything in life and art and business is a marathon, not a sprint.

Some days you wake up and have all the ideas and energy in the world. Other days you have nothing in the tank.

The key is going all in when you have it in you, and building headspace when you don’t. Whether that means organizing your kitchen, cleaning the car, buying a new hard drive, or just going to sleep.

Taking that approach is what gets you through those 99 “average” days. During which, some will be good, others no so good, but all will lead toward that one random day #100 when it all clicks.

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