Cherishing the Emotions of Doing the Work When You Feel Alone in Your Quest
One of MANY failed pull-up attempts
Estimated read time: 3 minutes, 40 seconds
If you don’t want to read the whole thing (but I really hope you do), scroll down to the bottom for the “Proud Auntie” moment.
Embracing the grind
As both an athlete and a leader, I talk about putting in the work when no one is watching. It could be about posting your PRs (personal records) or product launches on social media. This is as opposed to posting about the “shitty-shit-shit” parts of what goes into achieving those milestones.
In my experience, you have many more of those moments than successes. By pushing myself to be uncomfortable, I have learnt way more from my failures than I have from my successes. Everyone is different. For me, this has led to more personal fulfillment.
In fact, moving to Seattle was not my 1st foray living on the west coast. A couple of years prior, I had tried it in the Bay Area and it failed on almost every conceivable level. BUT had that failure not happened, it never would have made me a very happy resident of Seattle for 20+ years. That’s a story for another day.
When I started running 18+ years ago, this concept of putting in the work when no one is watching really hit home. Up until that point, I had never trained long-term with a specific goal in mind. I went to soccer practice and played matches. Or I went to the gym and worked out without a purpose. I hadn’t trained with a goal in mind other than to win a game or lose weight.
Fact: The amount of time you put into training outweighs the amount of time you actually race by orders of magnitude. If you run a 4-hour marathon, you typically have trained for months, if not years, to build up your body for the effort.
This means you’re doing 99% of the work outside of race day. Think about that. No crowds. Maybe you and your training buddies, if you have them.
In the business world, this means no customers using your new feature or product until you launch. But then launch day is over and the buzz wears off. Now you have to go find the next thing to build by spending a significant time on research and then building it. The cycle repeats itself with a focus on all the “behind the scenes” work. You need to focus on the details that matter to your users and those may have changed since the last time you asked.
The Rule of Thirds
In both scenarios, you have to love the grind even when you have a shitty day (or week/month) of training or at work. You have to want to achieve the greatness that you have defined for yourself.
One of my coaches taught me the rule of thirds and it mostly holds true:
1/3 of your workouts are going to be awesome for any number of reasons. Celebrate these. Don’t overanalyze.
1/3 of your workouts are going to be good enough to get the job done. Note what happened and figure out how to fine tune.
1/3 of your workouts are going to suck. These happen. Learn from these and check if your workouts fall into this bucket for a sustained period of time.
There more to crossing the line
Time and time again, I have encountered people who only want to “cross the finish line” and get the finisher’s medal. Or they are seeking a mention in the product launch without getting their hands dirty.
That’s nice and all, but I feel bad for those folks.
Why?
You’re going to fail. See pic at the top. I have many of those. I worked on getting that 1st pull-up for months and it felt amazing when I was able to finally do one. But no one saw the accessory work my coach programmed for me to get that pull-up.
When I was running, I rarely crushed a race without some kind of adversity. I almost always figured out a way to push through and finish with a time I was happy with. You learn that through getting the reps in.
You need the ups and downs (aka the “shitty-shit-shit”) to understand the magnitude of your accomplishment, whatever that is.
When you have a true coach to partner with to help you understand the highs and the lows that go into the “unseen” work, it puts things into perspective. It helps you see the positive when you can’t see it for yourself.
If you want help finding a coach that will help you achieve your goals, whatever those may be, get in touch.
PS — As I was writing this post, I found out that my niece went from struggling in math to receiving a mathematics achievement award yesterday at school. She did the “unseen” work outside of school in order to get better. A lesson for us all.
