500 Words a Week - Activity or Achievement?
I read Peak Performance by Steve Magness and Brad Stulberg a few years ago, but a post I seen recently reminded me of some of the central tenants of this book.
When we think of anything sport or fitness related, we try to push the body to stimulate changes to occur. We then give the body time to rest and recover from this stimulus, before we perform another hard training session. The rest and recovery are as paramount to the development of the fitness quality we are looking to improve as the training stimulus is. If we mess up the recovery aspects, we push again too soon or we wait too long before applying another training stimulus, unfavourable things might happen. We might get injured, we might not enjoy the process as much, our motivation to continually push ourselves may dim.
We need to apply this to our own personal and professional endeavours also. We need to alternate between pushing ourselves to progress, and rest and recovery. This can be hard. We see those who have become successful, and we heard most of them preach just work more. Just do nothing besides work. Leave no time for family, friends or loved ones. Sometimes this approach can be glorified. Sometimes we’ve glorified it ourselves by trying to be the first person in the building and the last person to leave. Unfortunately, sometimes this can have benefits. As if someone doesn’t truly understand what you do, nor have you clarified with them what you do, you being the first one in and last to leave gives the image of a hard worker. However, the saying of “Never mistake activity with achievement - John Wooden”, rings through here. Like the above analogy of a training stimulus. The training stimulus doesn’t go on all day, it’s well managed to be intense. It’s supposed to be efficient and direct. We must apply this to our work, by trying to be efficient and direct. If we find we’ve switched off a bit, maybe it’s time to rest and recover. The most important thing around this is that we mustn’t feel guilty for doing this. We mustn’t feel guilty for finishing work, heading home and watching repeats of “The Office” for an hour. We need that time, in matter of fact that time is probably required for us to then be able to get straight back on it the next day and be direct and efficient again.
Social media probably hasn’t helped us in this regard. When do we most look at social media? Probably while we are resting, like the above, watching Netflix after getting in from work. What do we see or stumble across on social media? People working of some sort. Causing the guilt to re-surface. We feel we haven’t done enough. Rather than simply allowing ourselves the down time and enjoying it, we are in a state of flux. Our mind is telling us we need to be doing something, ruining the rest and recovery aspect for us. We end up in a vicious cycle of working during the day, then in the evening while we are supposed to be relaxing, we are worried we aren’t working enough. We need to be comfortable with taking it easy, we need to be comfortable taking the foot off the gas every now and then.
