Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is that discipline is as much about restraint as
Speaker 1: it is about persistence. When you've got a big project,
Speaker 1: work in a slow and steady way, you can always
Speaker 1: sprint at the end. I have long loved the section
Speaker 1: in Jim Collins' book Great by Choice where he talks
Speaker 1: about how explorer Rolled Amundsen reached the South Pole ahead
Speaker 1: of his contemporary Robert Falcon Scott. While Scott had his
Speaker 1: men marched to the point of exhaustion and good weather
Speaker 1: and stayed in the tent when it was terrible, Amundson
Speaker 1: pursued a steady pace of fifteen to twenty miles per day.
Speaker 1: On good days they could have gone farther, but by
Speaker 1: leaving something in the tank, they were able to maintain
Speaker 1: that pace on bad days too. By pursuing this strategy,
Speaker 1: they made it to the poll and they made it back.
Speaker 1: Collins likens this steady sustainable strategy to how the best
Speaker 1: companies manage growth. Southwest Airlines expanded carefully over the years.
Speaker 1: During one year in the nineteen nineties, Collins writes, Southwest
Speaker 1: had one hundred cities clamoring for service. Southwest looked at
Speaker 1: that demand and elected to add flights to four new places.
Speaker 1: By leaving something in the tank with growth, Southwest could
Speaker 1: be quite sure that each new city would be a success,
Speaker 1: which was no doubt motivational to the people staffing those
Speaker 1: new routes. You are probably not racing to the south
Speaker 1: Pole or expanding an airline. But I think this policy
Speaker 1: of the twenty mile march, as Collins calls it, has
Speaker 1: a lot going for it. If you want to finish
Speaker 1: any big project, you need to break it down into
Speaker 1: small enough steps that you can reliably do each one.
Speaker 1: Then when you reliably do each one over and over again,
Speaker 1: you will finish on schedule. That makes sense. But where
Speaker 1: people go awry are in those situations where the sun
Speaker 1: is shining in Antarctica, or you really could add a
Speaker 1: fifth city pretty easily. Think about how wasteful it must
Speaker 1: have felt to only walk twenty miles on a beautiful day.
Speaker 1: I'm sure plenty of folks felt it would be silly
Speaker 1: to pass up potential airline profits too. But here is
Speaker 1: where we get to the idea that discipline is about restraint.
Speaker 1: If you break the promise to yourself by sprinting when
Speaker 1: times are good, you might break the promise to yourself
Speaker 1: about persisting when times are bad. I mean, you're ahead
Speaker 1: of the game, right, why not take some time off?
Speaker 1: You deserve it. But then all of a sudden the
Speaker 1: schedule is off, and a second bad run of things
Speaker 1: means you are behind and you have to push harder
Speaker 1: than you feel you can, and the whole promise of
Speaker 1: reliability disappears. You no longer know for sure that you
Speaker 1: will make it, and that lack of certainty is demoralizing.
Speaker 1: So if you are undertaking a big project, save the
Speaker 1: sprints for the very end. I have been reading all
Speaker 1: the works of Jane Austen this year at a steady
Speaker 1: pace ten pages per day. I could read more, for sure,
Speaker 1: but keeping at that pace means I stick with some
Speaker 1: of the books when they are a wee bit less exciting. However,
Speaker 1: when I was less than an hour from the end
Speaker 1: of both Sense and Sensibility and Pride and prejudice, I
Speaker 1: decided I would go ahead and finish the books and
Speaker 1: see what happened. By then, I knew I would finish,
Speaker 1: just not before elite marathoners know to stick with their
Speaker 1: pace until close to the end, when they give whatever
Speaker 1: is left. If you give what is left at mile six,
Speaker 1: you aren't going to make it to mile twenty six.
Speaker 1: Around mile twenty six, though, you know that there is
Speaker 1: no mile twenty seven, so you may as well go
Speaker 1: for it. Those who have stuck with their paces probably
Speaker 1: have more to give at that point than others. Use
Speaker 1: restraint to keep a steady pace until you absolutely know
Speaker 1: you will finish. Then anything goes. No need to camp
Speaker 1: two miles from the south Pole, but fifty miles that
Speaker 1: is a different story. In the meantime, this is Laura.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
Speaker 1: our time. Hey everybody, I'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: You can send me your tips, your questions, or anything else.
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Speaker 1: Before Breakfast Pod. That's b E the number four then
Speaker 1: Breakfast pod. You can also shoot me an email at
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Speaker 1: is spelled out with all the letters. Thanks so much,
Speaker 1: I look forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is
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