Before the Pop

Before the Pop

I didn’t know you could make homemade microwave popcorn until about a year ago.

My husband’s company is always sending logoed mugs and water bottles to our home, and one day we got this odd-looking rubber bowl with a plastic lid. Turns out, it was for making your own microwave popcorn. You toss in a few tablespoons of butter and popcorn, pop the lid on, set the microwave for three minutes, and voilà! The most amazing popcorn on earth.

Well, the other day I was in the process of making some. I grabbed the butter, the corn, the salt and tossed it all into the bowl, slapped on the lid, and set it for three minutes. Then I moved on to clean the stove under the microwave.

A minute or so later, I glanced up. The timer read 1:42.

I did the math—1 minute and 18 seconds had already passed. That’s 43.3% of the total cooking time. And there had not been a single pop. Not even a hint of progress.

It struck me: nearly halfway through the cooking time, and there was no evidence that anything was happening.

Popcorn has to heat from the inside out. Each kernel contains a tiny bit of water locked inside a hard shell. As it heats up, the water turns to steam, and the pressure inside the kernel starts to build. And build. And build.

Until suddenly—pop—it explodes into something totally new.

But all that pressure-building? It’s completely silent.

It made me think about our goals, our habits, and the slow-burn work we do. Sometimes we’re in the middle of doing the right things, like making calls, writing the words, building the business, showing up day after day, and it feels like... nothing’s popping.

I once heard about a financial planner who made 100 cold calls every day for six months with not a single yes. His friends thought he was nuts. But then, one day, a business leader he had persistently followed up with called back and asked for help with a significant sum of money. Fast forward 10 years; that planner now manages billions.

Just because you don’t hear the pop yet doesn’t mean the heat’s not building. That little yellow seed is getting ready.

And when it bursts it might be something delicious.