You sometimes hear motivational phrases like “It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.” They’re referring to things like a diet, or parenthood, or your career, or some other large aspect of your life. The well-meaning advice is that you can’t try to do it all at once; you need to pace yourself.

Sure. But sometimes, it’s a sprint!

Some things you really do need to do in short bursts, and some things you need to do in longer campaigns, and sometimes you’ll need to do the same thing in different modes at different times. So it’s important to know how to do both!

Take work, for example. There will be times when you need to approach a project as a marathon – pacing yourself to avoid burnout, keeping yourself focused and productive over long periods, and maintaining integrity over the scope and focus of the project. And there will also be times when you need to get a lot of stuff done in a short window, and those are different skills and mindsets.

Most people’s struggle comes from determining which is which, and in switching between “modes” when they need to. If you pace yourself for a marathon you’ll lose a sprint, and vice versa.

Sprints are goal-oriented. You’re starting with the end in mind and doing what it takes to get there. Process improvements can be made later; right now, you get across the finish line however you have to. Marathons are process-oriented. Small improvements can have big impacts, so you should make those adjustments as you go and care deeply about how you’re working.

My biggest piece of advice is simply don’t mix and match. If you have a sprint task in front of you, then don’t work on your marathon tasks until the sprint is over. Whatever modes work for you will rarely work together.

A wise mentor once told me that attitude isn’t a static quality. You don’t just “have a good attitude.” Your attitude is a resource that can be shepherded, attacked, depleted, and replenished.

On top of this astute observation, he offered me actionable advice. In order to show up as your best self whenever it’s important, you need to protect your attitude. You’re going to need that resource to be a great partner to your family, or to nail the big presentation at work, or to finish the grueling race, or to make it through chemotherapy. Big things need that resource.

Little things don’t, but it’s very, very easy to “nickel and dime” away our attitude.

His advice centered around recognizing which actions and situations would deplete your attitude for no benefit, and refusing to engage despite whatever other allure they offered. Arguing with people unnecessarily, whether online or in person, was one of his favorite examples. Banging your head against a brick wall was another.

That can be a tough one for a lot of people. There’s such a thing as quitting too early, but there’s definitely such a thing as quitting too late. People rarely have a good sense of where the sweet spot in the middle is. Which makes sense, because it’s different from task to task and person to person, but here are some guidelines:

1. Two is generally the bare minimum number of attempts if you’re serious about trying to do something difficult. If you try once and fail, you’ve just wasted time – you’ve gathered no data, given yourself no opportunity to learn and adjust, etc. At least with two attempts you can make a comparison between two outcomes. If I try to throw a ball at a target and I overshoot it, my second throw – made with a little less oomph – will give me at least some idea of how my adjustments affected the results.
2. If you’re approaching a task with the mentality of “it’s okay to fail X number of times because I’m gathering data,” that’s healthy and good. At a certain point though, X+1 isn’t gathering you any more actionable data. This isn’t necessarily an easy thing to determine – in fact, a huge field of mathematics is dedicated to studying exactly how many examples of something you need before you can reasonably infer something about future incidences. And unless you intend to become a mathematician, you might just have to do some rough guesses. But a good way to approach it is this: after a number of attempts that you still feel good about (i.e. you’re not frustrated, you feel like you’re learning, etc.), pause and write down your theories, plans, and thoughts so far. Then, do another set of attempts, maybe half again of the original set. Then pause for reflection again – has anything changed about your thoughts? Have you revised your theories? If not, then that’s probably a large enough data set to make an educated guess about what to do next, and it shouldn’t be “keep trying the same thing that isn’t working.”
3. The cost and risk of each attempt matter a lot. The cost and risk of trying to crochet a hat when you don’t know how to do it are pretty low. The cost and risk of attempting to climb a mountain when you don’t know how are very high. When the cost is high, you need to adjust your strategy accordingly – and I’m talking about the entire cost.

And that last point brings us back to protecting your attitude. Banging your head against the wall costs you your attitude. When you send out the same resume to a job board for the 801st time, you are banging your head against the wall. It feels low-cost because it’s a click of a button, but the real cost is your attitude. It’s draining your self-esteem, it’s frustrating you, and it’s depleting the very resource you’ll need to actually succeed at the next steps in that process – or do you want to have your job interview when you’re at your most frustrated, depressed, and exhausted?

If something isn’t working, you need to stop. When you don’t know what to do as an alternative, it’s hard to, I know. Plus, the sunk cost fallacy is real, and we end up feeling attached to the thing we’ve already tried just because we put so much effort into the attempts that we don’t want to feel like it was all wasted. But it wasn’t wasted – if you learned something. Including (often especially!) that you shouldn’t do that thing anymore.

It’s time to figure out a new thing to do. That’s hard and scary, I get it. But it’s necessary. Go out and talk to people, start doing some research, consult experts. Compare what you’ve already tried to other options. Be realistic with yourself about what you can change. And above all: Protect Your Attitude.

People who overcome a particular hardship become excellent guides for the inevitable hardships of the future. Having survived something terrible is a tremendous skill that’s – by definition – hard to get, and yet we often don’t recognize it. “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” may or may not be true. But it certainly makes you a commodity.

The next time you’re doing a little self-inventory of your skills and the contributions you could make, don’t just think about the abilities you specifically tried to cultivate. Think about the trials and traumas you’ve endured. Think about what took a swing and you and couldn’t keep you down. Dig the bullet out of your arm and realize it might be made of gold.

Other people want to avoid those hardships, and your lessons can be invaluable to them. Still others have recently suffered similar fates and want a map of the road to recovery. There’s a big market for people who came out the other side. And it can be a great way to resolve some internal conflict, too – helping others is a great way to release a burden on your soul.

There is a simple trifecta of ingredients for all success. If someone has the skill for the task, the tools to complete it, and the effort to drive the endeavor, then they will – eventually – succeed.

So if someone doesn’t succeed, and it’s your job to figure out why and correct it, then your job isn’t actually all that hard.

You can usually figure out which one(s) of the three is missing via process of elimination. Start with what you know to be true: Have they done this successfully before? Then they have the skill, and likely the tools unless something has changed. So they’re lacking the effort – and addressing their motivation is different than trying to upskill them. Or, do you see them putting in consistent effort but not realizing the goal? Then you don’t have to motivate (or intimidate) them; you need to get them what they’re lacking.

Make that your checklist, reinforce it constantly. It will solve most of your problems!

My son, two weeks shy of his sixth birthday, broke his collarbone today.

For such a painful injury, he’s doing amazing. He’s tough, brave, and gracious. And even at his young age, he’s mature enough to take the lesson that previous injuries – things he once thought were so dire – really pale in comparison.

I don’t wish misfortune on anyone. But sometimes the aftermath of misfortune can really teach us some gratitude. This isn’t his first major injury (though it is his first broken bone), and he gets tougher – and wiser – each time.

May we all learn such grace from our trials!

Go back in time to a moment when someone truly had a positive impact on your life. Think about when a mentor, leader, or other inspiring figure went above and beyond to really affect your trajectory in that way. A moment that might have resulted in an entirely different present for you had it gone differently.

Now imagine that person decided that they weren’t ready to help you and stayed home instead. Or they didn’t speak up when you asked for help because they weren’t sure if they were the right person to be there. Maybe they didn’t think they deserved the chance, so they waited for a “better time.”

That’s you, right now. That’s you every time you don’t go out and be the leader and mentor the world is calling upon you to be. You have gifts to give the world, and you’re hoarding them instead – worse than hoarding them, squandering them. And it isn’t about your gain, it’s about theirs.

The future versions of you, all over the world. The people that need their moment of inspiration, their spark of purpose. They need it from you. It’s not about what you deserve, it’s about what they need.

To be selfless is to step out of the shadows. Stick out your chin, squint your eyes, and don’t let those moments pass.

I’ve never been much of a gadgeteer. New technology doesn’t excite me in that “new toy” way; I’ve never been an early adopter of new phone models or anything like that. In fact, I had to be forced into owning my first cell phone by parents who were tired of not being able to find me while I was living mostly on the road.

This persists to this day, and as a result I’m usually several years (if not more) behind in awareness of the current level of technological convenience. So instead of constantly keeping up with the latest incremental improvements in… well, anything, instead every once in a while I just take a huge leap forward.

Usually something breaks or finally becomes completely obsolete and I’m forced to replace it, so I figure I might as well grab a new whatever – television, laptop, phone, whatever it is that finally crapped out on me. Alternatively, sometimes it’s just time for an upgrade due to me engaging in some project that’s beyond the capabilities of whatever bronze-age technology I’m currently using.

And WOW when that happens! It’s a rush getting all this future all at once. It’s like I’m watching the Moon Landing.

The point is, sometimes you don’t want your improvements dripped down to you in the tiniest and rapidest increments. It can be really worthwhile to save up a little wonder so it can rush over you all at once. Lets you really enjoy it. Plus, it gives it time to settle; a lot of “new improvements” turn out to be trash, and the early adopters are canaries in the coal mine. My method means I almost always end up with something viable.

Viable and awesome.

I strongly dislike feeling rushed. I want to have time to do things right, and according to schedule. I’m careful about how I schedule things, and have learned after many years of trial and error how not to overload my calendar. I also have, by now, a solid sense of how long things will take me by default.

But if I have to be somewhere at 10 and it’s 40 minutes away, I’m definitely the kind of person who will leave by 8:30. I’d rather have the option to take different routes, stop for coffee, or even just arrive extra early if I want to.

The thing is, that kind of “setup time” requires guardianship. Doing things this way lowers my average stress level enormously, but it can be hard to maintain. People and tasks constantly want to encroach on that time, even unintentionally. Sometimes I have to justify my choices; more often I simply have to be firm on them.

The point is this: if you have a method of doing things that causes you to live a happier life but that sometimes isn’t what others want, make the low-stress choice. Know your bandwidth and capacity, and know how much of it can go to others. Stay strong on that line, and your life will be immeasurably better.

To me, at least, there is a huge difference between “not taking something seriously” and “doing something half-assed.”

I am very much a “Yes” kind of person. I will go try just about any activity you ask me to do. I will generally not take it seriously (I take very few things seriously), but I will give it 110%. A lot of people have a hard time reconciling those two positions.

A friend once asked me if I’d like to go on a fishing trip with her. I hadn’t fished in about 30 years (not since going with my father as a young lad), but I had no reason to say no, so I agreed. And I did everything I could to be a great companion for it! Early morning drives to the shore with a smile on my face and coffee in my hand, all the rented gear I needed, and a cheerful curiosity about technique. I even caught the first fish of the day! Then I just sort of played around on the boat, trying all sorts of weird, different stuff – stuff that probably would have made a professional fishing enthusiast cringe, but that’s what “not taking this seriously” looks like. Jokes and experiments and laughter.

As we were driving home, the friend commented that she assumed I had a terrible time. I was shocked. I told her I had a wonderful time, and I meant it. It had been a fantastic day. And I commented that I had been laughing, smiling, having fun, etc. all day, so what gave her the impression that I hadn’t enjoyed myself?

She said that it didn’t seem like I cared if I caught any fish.

I had to laugh. Of course I didn’t care if I caught any fish! I couldn’t even imagine caring about whether or not I caught fish. The point wasn’t to catch fish – it was to go fishing. I gave 110% to the act of going fishing. I gave zero percent of my emotional state to the result.

That’s the difference. Probably lots of people aren’t wired like that – if they don’t care about catching fish, they can’t bring themselves to enthusiastically go fishing. Maybe it’s a special power of mine, but I certainly enjoy being this way. I like being able to enjoy doing things without caring about the result of those things. Caring about the result of every little meaningless thing in your life sounds exhausting.

So go fishing. Sing karaoke. Try that weird restaurant. Do whatever! Just try not to take it – or yourself – so seriously.

Want a great way to give impactful feedback? Pick something that someone did that’s a “Keeper:” a high-impact, positive thing. Something really good. Then, match it with something else you think could be improved, and use their own “Keeper” as the example.

“Joe, I think you crushed the intro to that presentation for the client. They were really captivated right away. In fact, I think if you look at your mid-presentation slides, they could even be improved by using some of those same methods. What you did in the intro would be great all the way through!”

It’s a high-trust feedback method. You’re using their own successes as the model for improvement, rather than imposing your own views. And it forces you to dig down for a compliment before you can criticize, which is always a worthwhile effort.