Most things in life are like a marathon..

..they say at least.

But I think that’s fundamentally wrong. Sure to everything that has some kind of outcome worthwhile, consistency is key. There is no doubt bout that. Even coming back to the marathon, how good will you be, if you did it once in a lifetime, unprepared?

For sure you have to train consistently. But how do you train? Low intensity every day for an endless amount of time? I‘m not big on running but I suggest there is some kind of periodization, starting low volume low effort and peaking with maximum effort and huge volume, before some days of rest towards your competition.

So I would argue everything worthwhile in life is like training for the 100m dash. High intensity, for short total daily duration over the course of a lifetime. Take rest before burning out, the ease back into the grind and give it your all every day for extended amounts of time.

Be it a FIY project at home, crammed into a weekend or over the course of a vacation week. Be it the big project at work, the presentation you have to give to a customer, your sales pitch, that you have to deliver. You take spurts of deep focused work on the topic for some limited amount of time. Then your competition, evaluation, talk or whatever rolls around, you perform to the best of your abilities and your done, decompressing and resting before taking on the next major thing.

This applies to mostly everything, think relationships, what’s more sustainable and will foster the deeper relationships? Small daily bursts of complete focus on the other person, or some shallow clinging to each other, while mindlessly scrolling the gram oder watching Netflix?

And of course, more is oftentimes better, until it stops working or even backfires. Think minimum effective dose in training. Same principle can be used with everything you do. The meal you prepare will not be tasting better if you cram too much sophisticated sounding ingredients in it. Have some fat in it to carry the taste, some protein for being satiated and some seasoning/ spices and your good.

Next time you start doing something, think of the sprint vs marathon analogy and then give it your all for a pre defined period. Afterwards give it your all to recover, rest or selfcare and then start refreshed into the next task.

And please, don‘t take things too seriously!