Chop Wood and Carry Water—from Japan to Colorado

My mom often reminds me of a simple phrase: “Chop wood, carry water.” It’s a summary of a buddhist proverb about presence and meaning, and the idea that life is made up of ordinary tasks and whether we treat them as drudgery or as sacred is up to us.

That phrase stayed with me this spring as I traveled to China and Japan, knee-deep in the long process of developing our MagLock Belt.

The Work in Front of You

Product development is rarely glamorous. On this trip, like so many before, I flew the long route from the American South to Hong Kong, and then across the border into Shenzhen. By the time I arrived at the factory hotel, I was jet-lagged, carrying a suitcase stuffed with prototypes, and staring down thirty days of long meetings, small adjustments and frustratingly slow progress.

Magnets are finicky things. Any tiny shifts in tolerance can affect an entire design. After at least a year of sampling, testing, and revising, we were still working out the kinks. One round of samples was too stiff, another was too weak. Sometimes the only way forward is face-to-face, sitting across the table from the engineers, pointing at the details, and working until something clicks. It’s tedious, yes, but it’s also the work. Chop wood, carry water.

Small Joys Along the Way

The days in Shenzhen followed a rhythm: factory visits, notes, emails, and more samples. In between, I carved out a routine with early walks, simple meals, and time to reset away from the normal distractions of home.

When you’re 12 hours ahead of your inbox, you can batch the email woodpile in the morning and have the rest of the day to think and do. It reminded me that caring for your body and your mind by fueling it, moving it, and resting it is part of the same discipline. Another form of chopping wood.

A Detour to Japan

In the middle of the trip, I visited my friend and photographer, Josh Kozono, in Japan. Josh and I go way back to our early design days, and he’s one of those friends who will happily debate life, philosophy, and the universe for hours. He planned a hiking trip on the Izu Peninsula: miles of coastal paths, fishing villages, and climbs that left my quads screaming.

Those long walks were a different kind of factory. They’re one of conversation, reflection, and nature’s lessons. The rhythm of hiking (like the rhythm of product development) is repetitive: step after step, hill after hill. Yet the conversations, the views, the small moments along the way—that’s where the meaning lives. Chop wood, carry water.

Returning to the Belt

Back in China, the process continued. Samples improved: the magnet strength dialed in, the print-through less visible. Other details still slipped. Frustration rose. Tariffs loomed. Costs stacked higher than ever, and honestly so many times I questioned whether or not I should continue. But what else is there to do but keep going? 

Fast-forward a few months to Colorado, where we hit the mountains outside of Denver to test out the prototypes. It was on the camping trip / photoshoot with our friend Tom McCorkle that we found ourselves literally chopping wood and carrying water.

It was then we decided it's the perfect theme for our upcoming launch—and so this daily reminder will be written inside each MagLock Belt we make. Similar to carrying a coin with the stoic memento mori reminder, we love the idea of incorporating a positive mantra into something we're already wearing:

The Lesson

Trips like this remind me that life is built on ordinary tasks. Sometimes it feels Sisyphean. The belt samples won’t cooperate, flights that wear you down, tariffs that threaten to undo it all. But the proverb insists: the sacred is in the mundane. The work itself is the path.

So we’ll keep chopping wood and carrying water by making small, steady improvements that add up to something new entirely. In this case, a belt that we can’t wait to share with you.

And through it all, I carry another phrase from my mom: “Sanity is job one.” When we’re grounded and present, we can actually enjoy the journey, even when it’s hard, even when it feels endless.