It's a marathon, not a sprint...
My general manager in my company used to tell the guys "It's a marathon, not a sprint" every summer. He did that because we learned that as soon as business ramped up, if we aren't careful, we could all work fast and furious to the point of exhaustion. He was right. This is why High Performance Habits are so helpful. Yes, there are seasons for working fast and furious but when you implement high performance habits you become more aware. You learn to protect your energy enough so that you don't crash out and become useless for several days. And when you get good at it, you can keep going when anyone else would have crashed and burned giving you the upper hand and stronger results. It reminds me of the Cliff Young story. Cliff was a sheep farmer. Not a runner. Not an athlete. A farmer. There were times when his sheep would go missing across thousands of acres of rugged land in the Australian outback, and Cliff would jog for days at a time until he found them. No fancy gear. No training plan. No GPS watch. Just a man in overalls and work boots doing what needed to be done. One day, Cliff heard about the ultra-marathon — a 544-mile race from Sydney to Melbourne. The kind of race only elite endurance athletes trained for. The kind of race where people like David Goggins thrive. The kind of race no normal person even considers. But Cliff wasn’t trying to be normal. So at 61 years old, wearing boots and his farm clothes, he walked up to the starting line with all the young athletes in their high-tech running shoes and sponsored gear. They laughed at him. Reporters stuck microphones in his face and asked if he planned to actually finish. Cliff said something simple: “Well, I’ve chased sheep for two or three days straight. I reckon I can run this race.” The race began, and Cliff started running his strange, slow “shuffle.” It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t pretty. But here’s the thing: Cliff didn’t know that runners typically slept during this multi-day race.Nobody told him you’re supposed to stop. So he didn’t.