02/03/2025
Establish a steady pace to create effortless results
Greg McKeownLinkedIn Influencer
Bestselling Author | Podcast Host | Public Speaker
One of the reasons that otherwise insecure overachievers burn out before they've achieved the result that really mattered most to them is because they take, unintentionally, a boom and bust approach to ex*****on. Come with me to the age of exploration, when the whole world seemed to be fascinated with the race to the poles. Who would be the first to get to the South Pole? There were two teams that set out on almost the same day with the same goal in mind. The British team took a certain approach. Their captain said, "We're just going to go as far and fast as we possibly can," but without meaning to, what that meant is that on the good weather days, they pushed forward 20, 30, 40, sometimes maybe even 50 miles. On the bad weather days, they were so exhausted they ended up stuck in their tents, bemoaning their situation, feeling that no one had been as unlucky as them to have the worst whether of anyone who had ever made the attempt. As it turns out, they had better weather than others that had tried before, but it felt like they had worse weather. They thought, "Could any team make progress in weather like this?" but one team could, the Norwegian team. The expedition leader had set a different rule. He said, "15 miles a day. On good days when we could go 20, 30, 50 miles, we'll still limit and go 15 miles." Then on the bad weather days, they had energy and resources to be able to challenge themselves to get to that same standard. They kept an effortless pace. The plot thickens when that team got within 45 miles of the South Pole. They have perfect weather conditions, perfect sledding conditions. They know that in one big full effort, in one day, they can be at the South Pole, and to make it even more complicated, they don't know where the British team is. For all they, know the British team is ahead of them. Seriously, what would you do if you were in that situation? I know that I would be tempted to just push it. Just give that final umph to get to the finish line, but still, the expedition leader said 15 miles a day. They averaged 15 miles a day for the next three days. So what happened? They arrived at the South Pole some 30 days before the British team, and that's so counterintuitive, isn't it? Isn't what we've been taught, isn't what we've learned that the way to be faster is to push to the edge of exhaustion or even way beyond it? That's not what they found in this case. It's a counterintuitive point, but it's a really important one. If you go back and read the biography, as I have, you'll find an unbelievable phrase in it. The biographer described this team's success this way. He said, "They achieved their result without particular effort." What a thing to say. It's an outrageous thing to say. This was the most physically arduous task or challenge anyone in the world could even imagine, and yet they achieved it steadily, using this pace approach to be able to far out-execute their boom and bust competitors, and not only that, not only did they beat them to the South Pole, they also had sufficient energy to get back the 16,000 miles back to Norway safely, which is nontrivial because the British team, all of them, died on the way home. So for us, here's a rule that you can use. Do not do more today than you can completely recover from by tomorrow. That rule will keep you safe now, will give you energy for the long run. It will help you perform well now but also medium term and also for the next 10, 20, 50 years. Don't fall into the con of thinking that you have to use all your energy today, right now. What you want is to be able to execute again and again and again on the things that matter most and to do that without burning out.
