So, for the last couple weeks I’ve been doing an interval training to burn off some fat.
If you’re not familiar with interval training, it’s short periods of high intensity/speed
workouts, followed by intervals of rest. This can be intervals of weigh lifting and/or
intervals of sprinting and running.
In doing some sprints, it got me to thinking a bit about how they relate to life and
business.
If you’re running a long distance at a regular pace, your body tries telling you all these
things like, “my knee hurts”, “my back hurts”, “I’m getting tired”. But in an all-out sprint,
you don’t have time to think about that, you just exert a lot of energy and get it over with.
You just run!
But you can’t sprint forever. That’s what makes it sprinting. The brief duration of it is a
key part of why it works.
In your life, your business, the best way to overcome deadlines, fear of creativity, intelligent
risk taking, brainstorming, or working through a tough situation just might be to sprint!
Here’s what author Seth Godin has to say of an example of how sprinting helped him.
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“Quick, you have thirty minutes to come up with ten business ideas.”
“Hurry, we need to write a new script for our commercial… we have fifteen minutes.”
My first huge project was launching a major brand of science-fiction computer adventure games (Ray Bradbury, Michael Crichton, etc.). I stopped going to business school classes in order to do the launch.
One day, right after a red eye flight, the president of the company told me that the company had canceled the project. They didn’t have enough resources to launch all the products we had, our progress was too slow and the packaging wasn’t ready yet.
I went to my office spent the next 20 hours rewriting every word of text, redesigning every package, rebuilding every schedule and inventing a new promotional strategy. It was probably 6 weeks of work for a motivated committee, and I did it in one swoop. Like lifting a car off an infant, it was impossible, and I have no recollection at all of the project now.
The board reconsidered and the project was back on again. I didn’t get scared until after the sprint. You can’t sprint every day but it’s probably a good idea to sprint regularly.
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You can find out more about Seth Godin at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
To Your Success,
Brent Wehmeyer
http://www.ILoveThisEconomy.com
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