September 21, 2016

“You can’t break tackles at marathon pace” (Blaise Brosnan)

Yesterday I was on week 2 of Blaise’s 10 week Advanced Management Development Programme. He dropped so many nuggets in the three hours. This particular nugget resonated with me as I’ve always thought business was more like sprinting than running a marathon, where we get into a rhythm of going flat out and then recovering/resting. Yet we keep hearing the adage “It’s a marathon not a sprint”. Thanks Blaise for clearing that up for me.

It’s not a marathon, it’s a series of sprints.

Don’t feel guilty about changing pace.

You need to stretch, and recover.

TRANSCRIPTION

People say business is a marathon not a sprint.

What they mean by that is that you got to be in it for the long haul, but as Blaise Brosnan said, “You can’t break tackles at marathon pace”.

You have to go flat out to break a tackle, but you can’t go flat out all the time so you’re going to have to do a series of sprints.

“Good things happen when you move at pace” but you can’t always be moving at pace.

You need to push yourself but then you also need to recover, and those periods of recovery and time off, time-outs, change of pace – don’t feel guilty over them.

They prevent burn out but also they allow your brain to catch up with what you’ve done.