Tag: 20 mile march

Suffering from Burnout? How to Know When to Rest or Push

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Earlier, I wrote about the 20 Mile March. Today I want to expand on that idea. There is one small hiccup in that analogy that usually trips people up: how do you know when you should push, and when you’re in burnout and deeply in need of a break?

Does your life plan account for enough rest?

Rest is important. Rest is actually what we spend MOST of our time doing, believe it or not.

Even for endurance athletes and for extreme sports, they spend more of their time resting than pushing. Even if you’re an extreme athlete, working out and training for 6 to 10 hours a day, you’re not in training mode the remainder of the day, anywhere from 14 to 18 hours.

We think, at times, that a 20 Mile March means we have to be hustling and pushing and “always on.”

We don’t always spend as much time thinking about all that other time that is equally important. (Even if you’re walking 20 miles a day, at 3 miles per hour, you’re only walking 6.5 hours per day.)

The problem lies in how we think about rest and recovery.

Without adequate rest, we’re headed towards burnout.

Rest is not waste. Rest is actually quite active.

In the times we aren’t walking, marching, or making our work happen, what are we doing? Here’s some of what a well-rested life includes:

Sleep

Sleep is not a thing that you can successfully skip. You might be able to push through a certain number of years in your younger life, but most people pay the price for this decision.

Sleep is a time when we recover, when our cells map out what happened during the day. There are massive amounts of brain activity that happen when we close our eyes. We provide the foundation for insight and work when we get enough sleep — not the reverse.

Yet so often we think about sleep as something that will happen after we reach a certain point. What if it’s the reverse? What if enough sleep will lead to better breakthroughs?

(For more on this, read this extensive and useful article by Scientific American on why our brains need downtime.)

Active rest

In sports, there’s a concept called “active rest” and it’s the space between pushing on a repetition and completely collapsing on the couch underneath a pile of nachos. This is: Stepping away from your computer for a brain break during the day. Listening to music or closing your eyes for a 5-minute rest to recharge. Saying no and carving out space for recovery and rest. Taking a walking meeting.

(Hint: catching up on all the blogs and news or reading email might not be active rest.)

Active recovery

Recovery isn’t something that happens by chance. We are always preparing ourselves and our bodies for the next round of work, and recovering from the past round of work. How we sleep, how we eat, how we hydrate, how we limber up, and how we pay attention all matters for our next round of work. This means: choosing activities that refresh and refuel us. Noticing what drains us or what activities are correlated with “off” days.

Preparing ourselves and our bodies

We are constantly preparing and readying ourselves for the next moment. Elite athletes and star performers have strategies and plans that work for them, for a reason. This means: How much time do you spend linking what you do in your down time to how you perform during your on time?

Should you keep going? How to decide your next actions:

So what about today, right now? How do you know what to do next? How can you discern if you’ve put in your 20 miles, and you need to rest, or if you really need to put in more effort?

Let’s first assume that you’re not burned out, but you need a plan of action. Then, what you’ll do is take the next 20 Miles and break them into pieces.

1. Ask yourself: what’s the next step?

How can you build in a small amount of forward momentum without going too big?

On the days when you’re feeling foggy or slow, when you’re wondering if you should be pushing harder, or you’re not sure what to do—this is the time to steady the pace. Find a rhythm and a march that works. Plot out a course that is even. Line up activities that are small wins that don’t take a pile of energy.

2. Make the pieces smaller, but still take steps

For me, as one example, the idea of “writing a book” can be a terrifying construct. In order to keep putting a foot forward, I have to break things into microscopic bits. Then, when I’m having one of those days where the idea of writing a book is too overwhelming to think about, I’ll open up the queue and just do the next few tasks:

  • Research the next 5 people to interview
  • Edit and revise 3 pages
  • Read through the notes from my editor
  • Write a free-flow of a few paragraphs to get the ideas loose for the next chapter.

20 Miles doesn’t have to feel arduous and complicated. 20 Miles can be done by walking a leisurely pace in the morning for three hours, taking a significant portion of the day to rest, and doing an afternoon walk for 2 hours, followed by an evening walk for an hour.

Bonus tip: At the last startup where I worked, we used a tag called @easy and @10m in our project management software for any tasks that were easy to complete and quick. Then, on days when you need to slow down or stay steady, we’d just hit that pile of work.

3. Focus on Active Rest

Find the sweet spot where you don’t stop completely, but you ALSO don’t burn out by trying to caffeinate, push, and get into “beast mode” just to make it through the day. A clue is: if you’re going for an extra coffee, you might actually need to slow it down a bit and leave work early, instead.

But, there’s one other thing to consider. And this is when the above isn’t working, or a succession of days starts to feel sloggy with no end in sight. If that’s true, there are two possibilities:

4. You might need to adjust your goals.

If you’re feeling perpetually sloggy and burned, perhaps you’ve accidentally constructed a “60 Mile March” or a “100 Mile March” and the pace you’ve set doesn’t provide enough space for rest or recovery.

Personally, I’ve tried many times to set out on a 60-Mile March pace and realized that 14-hour days of writing is not sustainable.

The solution: adjust your plan to create a true 20-Mile March. One that doesn’t take more than 6 hours per day, maximum (and if you hustled on a great day, you could be done in 4 hours). A plan that allows for a very slow day that still accomplishes those 20 miles. Ask yourself:

On the worst day of the last few months, would I still be able to accomplish 20 miles?

That’s your pace.

But there’s one more thought to consider:

5. You might need more deep rest

Sometimes, especially in this culture, people are burned out.

You’ll know that you’re more than just sloggy if you’re feeling like you: (1) can’t hardly make it out of bed in the morning, (2) you’re getting sick, (3) you’re angry or mad or some other pent-up emotion, or (4) you can’t find a way to make yourself care anymore.

These are red-flag signals of burnout — and that you need a break, more than anything else.

There have been entire seasons in my life where the focus of the quarter is getting the minimum done, sleeping a ton, and saying no to things. Life is full of stretches when we need to rest and recover.

True rest, however, lets our brains and our minds and bodies melt down and reboot. This might mean that you take a day to binge-watch television _OR_ it might mean that you need to make some more active steps in your rest and recover:

  • Journaling
  • Taking time away from your job or work
  • Booking a massage or bodywork
  • Taking a bath, going for a soak, trying a float
  • Going away for a weekend
  • Spending quality time with friends
  • Letting the calendar or the agenda go to the wayside
  • Saying no when we’d regularly say yes (or vice versa)

It feels uncomfortable to do things differently than we’ve done them before. Things might come up that chase us back to our bad habits. Things might come up.

Where are you in your journey?

As you contemplate your journey and your 20 Mile March that you’re on, remember that this is about the long game: you’re setting up systems for health, for purpose, for your life.

You’re designing a life that takes you where you want to go, that’s steady, that’s consistent, that has purpose, that has direction.

Along the way, you’re cutting back and trimming out anything that doesn’t work for you. You’re experimenting and iterating.

And, you’ll learn when to push and when to rest.

Use the metaphor of the 20-Mile March to find a way to move forward every day.

Some 20 mile days might be a lot of uphill hiking, and some days might be filled with glorious views and vistas. Others might feel easy and light. And some days might feel sloggy and slow. We don’t stop just because one day feels off.

And other days you might get up and do the walking you need to do, slow and steady, and when you’re done walking in the early afternoon, you’ll rest, sleep, recover, and enjoy the rest of the day, because you’re not pushing further or faster or harder—you’re making progress, bit by bit.

A Look Inside My Writing Habits

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Are you optimizing your writing habits?

We have a limited amount of attention, bandwidth, and energy. There are only so many “hacks” we can take before it’s going to become ever more important to cull the flow of information and set up systems that let us optimize for our strengths and internal design.

My writing and publishing is best done on a system that allows me to have some freedom, but within a structure. When I have a structure that I no longer have to think about when or why I’m writing, I’m then free to write without spending time wondering when I’ll actually do the writing.

What is a writing frame?

Frames are incredible important for both my own practice as well as for connecting to other people. A writing frame is a pattern or schedule that you stick to in your habit or practice. Some examples of writing frames are: publishing a new blog post every Monday at 10am, writing a monthly newsletter on the first of every month, or writing every weekday at 7am.

Podcasts, television shows, and great newsletters use these schedules to stay consistent. They also use them to communicate to the subscriber, reader, or viewer (you) when new content will arrive.

Think about the newsletters that you read. Do you appreciate ones that are regular and consistent? If it’s something you’re a fan of, you might be a regular reader: you know when your latest episodes of Silicon Valley go live, and when new episodes of your favorite podcast are released.

I’ve written previously about the 20 Mile March and why it’s so useful as a set-up for getting things done. Today I want to share how I’ve broken down my writing structure and why the frames are so helpful for me.

These are my personal writing frames:

A weekly blog, delivered every Monday at 10AM.

I publish a weekly blog at sarahkpeck.com/writing, every Monday at 10AM. (The newsletter ships at 10AM, but the post is scheduled to go live by 6AM Eastern time.)

I try to maintain a queue of posts that are ready to go for at least six weeks in advance, so I’m not operating at last minute. (This doesn’t always work out, but I do my best.) When I need a break, I follow the likes of Paul Jarvis and James Clear and announce that I’m taking a monthly break (this often happens in August for a summer sabbatical and in December/January, when most people are on winter holiday).

In the past, I committed to writing once per week, but I never committed to a specific date or time. This year, I’m increasing the rigidity of the structure by adding a day and a time to it.

Every Monday at 10AM, there’s a new post.

It’s my goal with this to get into a regular habit with my readers to deliver great essays right at the top of the week, when we’re primed to take action and set ourselves up for success.

A monthly newsletter, delivered on the 1st of every month.

On the first of every month, I write a popular newsletter that’s a round-up post linking back to all of the writing I’ve created, the best blog posts, and the newest offerings. I include a monthly writing practice, a review of best books I’d recommend, and links to the best articles I’ve read and think were worth sharing.

One of the things that’s important in my practice of writing a monthly newsletter is curating and culling. Finding ways to set up a structure and add limits allows me to reach for higher-quality work.

The structure of my newsletter is loosely based on the following:

  • A short opening essay (usually personal in nature)
  • A quiz or a question (”what should I teach or write next?”)
  • A round-up of top 4 posts, visually with links
  • Monthly journal practice
  • Book recommendations of the month
  • Quote of the month
  • Best of the web: top 10 links that are worth putting in your reading queue
  • Accountability: a tracker of my yearly goals and how I’m doing with them (books, meditation, exercise, and learning)

Here’s an example of a past newsletter that follows the structure above.

Daily, public journal.

Sometimes I just need a free place to write, free-form, to work through ideas. I’ve used this Tumblr at sarahkathleenpeck.tumblr.com for years as a place to house ideas, show my process, and write out new pieces.

Sometimes you’ll see an overlap as an idea develops here, and then moves to my more formal blog. Sometimes I take years off (see: having a baby in 2016), and then return to the writing practice time and time again. This frame is more of a house, or a home, and a place I know where I can always go to write. It’s not guided by a specific time but it’s a house all the same: it’s a place I can go write when I need to write in a flurry.

The components of a great frame:

Every time we reduce the amount of thinking we’re doing about the thing we want to actually be doing, we create more space to be doing what we wanted to do in the first place. Frames create a particular quality of freedom by removing the number of times you have to make a decision about how you’re going to behave in the future.

A work schedule is a frame, for example. When you’re committed to working between the hours of 10am and 5pm, that’s a specific pattern and your behaviors fall in line accordingly. (How you decide to spend the late evenings, when you get coffee, what you wear, etc, are all influenced by the work frame.)

A habit pattern or frame consists of the following:

  • A rhythm or a pattern tied to a specific recurring day or date.
  • A frequency (daily, weekly, etc) or total quantity (I will do this 100 times)
  • A specific time
  • A place where you do the work, and show up to do the work
  • A clear, actionable, specific (SMART) way to measure whether or not you’ve succeeded.

A writing frame that’s every Monday at a specific time (10AM), delivered via WordPress (my online home), publishing via blog and email, and looks like a published, live, blog post is a frame that works for me.

Past frames I’ve given up:

I’ve tried on other frames, like daily blogging, and that hasn’t worked for me successfully. I’ve tried publishing more frequently, and that erodes my available time for other things (like book writing, or running my Mastermind, for example).

What structures do you use to set yourself up for success? How do you plan out and map your own writing or creative practice?

One of my favorite things about the word “practice,” is that it reminds us that all we have to do is keep practicing. If we can optimize for making space to practice, with weekly rituals and reminders, then we’ll be doing the work.

Because doing the work is what matters more than almost anything else.

How will you set up your own frames for success?

The 20 Mile March

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

What does it take to be great?

In the book Good to Great, Jim Collins and his team of researchers study how some companies rise to greatness and uncover a key strategy: the 20 Mile March. They asked the question, “Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not?”

They analyzed companies that were 10x better than the competition, and, across all the data, realized that they had something in common.

First, imagine, for a second, that you’ve got two teams walking across America.

The first team takes the strategy of walking 40-50 miles on the good days, and resting in between.

The second team decides to walk 20 miles every day, rain or shine, injuries or no injury.

Which team wins?

Consistent, methodical actions take you further.

The team — and the companies, and the individuals — that set up consistent, methodical, repeated actions go further. They go 10x further, in fact. The “20 Mile March” became a clear differentiator between those teams that flounder or stay where they are, and the ones that rise to greatness.

The person that crosses the finish line on a big goal or dream is the person that takes consistent action, with clear performance markers, on actions that are largely within your control.

In the book, there are seven elements of a good march, and those include:

  • Clear performance markers,
  • Self-imposed constraints,
  • Appropriateness to you (or the company),
  • largely within your control,
  • Proper timeframe,
  • Designed by the individual, and
  • Achieved with high consistency.

In my work with people in my private Mastermind, we do a three-month program where people put together a monthly goal, with self-imposed constraints, over a short enough time horizon to get feedback and learn.

Now is the time to learn.

In your own practice, what is your 20 Mile March?

For me, a weekly writing habit has been the cadre, or structure, or frame that has unlocked so much more. When I show up to write, it’s not a question of when I’ll write, or how much: it’s already pre-determined that I will write.

I’ll write {this much} at {this frequency} on {these specific days}.

What’s your recipe?

The trick to a 20-Mile March is to make it something you can do repeatedly, on a consistent pattern. Often, in my personal life, I’ll try to tackle a 60-mile march and then get frustrated when I’m tired a few weeks later and (sometimes literally) can’t get up out of bed because my muscles are too sore. A 20-Mile March is something you could do every day, easily, for a year.

Some ideas of 20-Mile Marches:

  • Writing a daily, short, free-form blog on Tumblr (here’s mine; I write a log whenever I need space to free-form think out loud)
  • Writing a weekly blog (this blog posts every Monday at 10am)
  • Writing a monthly newsletter on the 1st of every month (if you’re on my list, you’ll get the newsletter).
  • Doing a yoga practice 3 times per week
  • Simplifying to do a 5-minute yoga practice every morning
  • Emailing one new person every day for a year.
  • Weightlifting twice weekly for a year.

A 20-Mile March does not have to be a daily practice. But it does have to be a practice, and one that you dedicate to a specific time, place, and duration. The compound interest of showing up to practice with regularity is the work of mastery, and the work of moving mountains. Inch by inch, with steady practice, we become something new.

So, I’ll ask you all some of the questions I ask my Mastermind folks in our one-on-one session:

  • Are you taking clear and consistent action? Are you learning each month and building upon what you’ve learned?
  • What’s working?
  • What systems do you have in front of you?
  • What still needs to change?
  • How can you change strategies and tactics to keep showing up, piece by piece, to carve away at your dream?

PS: If you’re looking for an amazing seminar on marketing, persuasion, and creating change, I’m currently taking the inaugural session of The Marketing Seminar with Seth Godin. It’s beyond incredible; I’m likely going to take it again. The latest round of the seminar just opened for registration, July 10, 2017. Push the purple button and get a discount on the 30-day summer session.