Peter Bregman, in the new book I’m reading, 18 Minutes:
Like my friend Amanda Kravat, who told me she was training to run the New York City Marathon. She’d never run anything before. I asked her how she planned to tackle this herculean feat with no experience.
“I’m simply going to follow the official marathon training plan,” she said. I asked her to email it to me. Here’s what I learned: If you want to run a marathon successfully without getting injured, spend four days a week doing short runs, one day a week running long and hard, and two days a week not running at all.
Now, that seems like a pretty smart schedule to me if you want to do anything challenging and sustain it over a long period of time. A few moderate days, one hard day, and a day or two of complete rest.
But how many of us work nonstop, day after day, without a break? It might feel like we’re making progress, but that schedule will lead to injury for sure.
We had a complete day of rest Wednesday. Actually, my back aches, my feet are swollen, I have a bit of a sunburn, and I can’t get the smell of monkey poo out of my nostrils. And it’s awesome. We took the kids to the zoo. Soon, I hope you’ll do the same.
And when we do take the time to rest, we discover all sorts of things that help us perform better when we’re working. Inevitably my best ideas come to me when I get away from my computer and go for a walk or run or simply engage in a casual conversation with a friend.
It’s true. I had some great ideas there – watching the lions laze and the penguins play and the butterflies flutter by.
I’ll tell you about a big idea Friday. Really big. Elephant big.
Have a great day. Check out the book. And the zoo.
Photo credit: berriehol
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