The Hidden Cost of Almost There

It takes patience to boil water.

That afternoon, I found myself waiting in the kitchen, kettle on the stove, while Samuel and I prepared tea for a guest. The thermometer climbed: 70 degrees, 80, 90, 95. Then it slowed. Ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine. We stared at the numbers in frustration. Why was it taking so long? Why couldn’t the water just boil?

Then, finally, at 100 degrees, everything changed. The water roared. Steam rose. The fragrance of tea filled the air. The transformation was complete.

That one degree made all the difference.

It struck me that life, leadership, and legacy often hover at ninety-nine degrees. We are so close. So much effort has been invested. So many good things are in place. Yet the state remains unchanged. Ninety-nine degrees is impressive, but it is not transformative.

The hidden cost of ninety-nine is everything boiling was meant to create.

Home Isn’t Just Home

When people ask how I spent my long holiday, my answer often sounds uneventful: “I just stayed at home.” To most, that means passivity. To them, staying home is level one: shelter, a roof, a place of safety.

But when I say I stayed at home, I mean something else entirely. Over the last year, more than 1,000 people have walked through my doors. Friends, parents from our school, teammates, relatives, even new acquaintances who needed space to share their hearts. My home has become a place where conversations turn into community.

• Level 1: home as shelter.
• Level 2: home as connection.
• Level 3: home as blessing, a space to build people and shape legacy.

That is why staying at home for me feels like Chinese New Year, except it happens almost every week. People streaming in, conversations flowing, meals prepared, children laughing. Every visit reminds me that home is not simply a place you live. It is a place you give.

And yet, this life requires tension. Hospitality in Southeast Asia is not a hobby. It is a calling, but it also requires discernment. I vet who comes in, because every guest is also an exposure of my family’s vulnerability. Some pass the test of trust. Some I decline. That filtering, invisible to most, is my way of protecting what matters most.

Hosting isn’t about entertainment. It is about responsibility. Just like a fisherman who casts a net but constantly mends it, I must balance openness with safeguarding. That is leadership at home.

One Degree of Leadership

I often think back to a morning during this holiday. My kids asked to go to Legoland. It was a public holiday, the crowds would be massive, and my wife excluded. Instead, we chose something simpler: a grocery trip. At first glance, that sounds ordinary. But it was extraordinary.

We shopped together, laughed together, picked out coffee and hardware, and returned to cook a meal that lasted us days. The money I would have spent on a single breakfast at a café, the same amount stocked our fridge for a week of hosting. The children were present, the family intact, the guests welcomed. That choice was one more degree.

Then came my kopi obsession. At the grocer, I bought every variant I saw: white coffee, kopi-o, cham, hot chocolate. In a single day, I drank all four. I overdosed on caffeine and felt like a king. Later, when Samuel arrived, I told him, “Please, make some plain green tea. No sugar, no additives.” Waiting for that tea to boil became a metaphor for the patience and process of leadership.

From zero to ninety-nine, water remains water. It heats, but it does not transform. At 100, everything changes. That one degree shifts state.

Leadership is the same. John Maxwell’s Law of the Lid says leadership ability determines effectiveness. Many leaders live capped at ninety-nine degrees. They have vision, structure, even resources. But without that one extra degree: influence, sacrifice, consistency, the lid remains.

Science shows us the same truth. Ninety-nine degrees is heat. One hundred degrees creates steam. And steam powered the Industrial Revolution. It moved locomotives, ships, turbines. Entire civilizations shifted because water crossed its boiling point.

In relationships, the same applies. Trust is built one degree at a time. As Aristotle said, “Excellence is not an act, but a habit.” One more day of showing up for your spouse, one more meal at home with your children, one more intentional conversation with your team, that is the boiling point where ordinary becomes extraordinary.

Business mirrors it too. Research shows 90% of startups fail. Many fail not because the idea was bad, but because they stopped just short of product-market fit. They died at ninety-nine degrees: the fatigue of almost-there.

In NLP, there is a principle called anchoring. A single word, a single reframe, a single question can shift an entire emotional state. The human mind works like boiling water: most effort feels like buildup, invisible and unrewarded. Then one degree of change tips the entire system.

And in Southeast Asian wisdom, there is the proverb 打铁趁热: strike while the iron is hot. But the iron must first be hot enough. At ninety-nine degrees it resists. At 100 it yields. Transformation requires both patience and timing.

Action and Legacy

So what do we do with this?

We resist the temptation to settle at ninety-nine. We refuse to confuse heat with boil, motion with momentum, almost with arrival.

For me, this means practical disciplines:

• Recording the names of visitors who come, so their stories are remembered.
• Preparing small gifts, like festive tokens at Chinese New Year, so every guest leaves with a piece of memory.
• Choosing meals at home over outings, not to save money, but to multiply presence.
• Partnering with trusted friends like Samuel to help others chart their lives.

Each act feels small. But each is that one degree that tips life from routine into legacy.

And here is the reverse that reframes it all:

The greatest danger is not failure at zero, but fatigue at ninety-nine.

We rarely lose because we never started. We lose because we stop just before the boil. We grow tired. We assume it is enough. We confuse effort with transformation.

But legacy is never built on ninety-nine. It is born at the boiling point.

This is the hidden cost of ninety-nine degrees: everything we could have become, but never did.

Choose the one degree.