"Staying power."
Staying. As in: did not move.
People throw the phrase around like it's a compliment. It isn't. The word describes the absence of motion. You earn it by not leaving.
The thing it's trying to praise is not that.
The week someone told me I had "staying power" I rebuilt the pricing model twice. Killed a feature that took three weeks to ship. Learned I was wrong about the second-biggest assumption in my customer interview notes. Shipped a course that wasn't on any roadmap two months ago.
The chair was on fire. The plan was on fire. The metric I cared about on Monday was a different metric by Friday.
That is not staying. That is the opposite of staying.
The phrase exists because nobody has a word for the actual thing. The actual thing is closer to: keeps moving through unstable terrain without falling. Keeps adjusting the route. Keeps the engine running while replacing the wheels.
None of that fits on a Christmas card. So they round it down to "staying."
The rounding error matters.
The word frames the work as endurance. Endurance has connotations of patience. Patience has connotations of waiting. Waiting is the last thing the work asks of you.
People who use "staying power" as a compliment are quietly predicting that the next decade will look like the last one, and meaning it as a kindness.
It isn't.
A better word would include motion and learning, not endurance. Cadence works. Iteration rate works. Hit rate works for the lucky ones. "Skill at being wrong out loud and continuing anyway" works but doesn't fit on a t-shirt. Anything that doesn't share a root with "stagnate" works.
Take the compliment when someone gives it. Then try not to let the framing land.
The framing is for people who didn't move.
You're doing the opposite of that.
— Simon