The greatest miler in history

I finished the biography The Golden Mile: The Herb Elliott Story today. His mental and physical training would best be described as character building. If you like to run, think that modern methods are a little tame and want to read about how the best athletes trained in the ultra-amateur era of athletics, this book is a must-read. Once you are finished with this book, pick up a copy of Why Die: The Extraordinary Percy Cerutty ‘Maker of Champions’ to learn more about the famous Portsea camp and Cerutty’s coaching methods.

Camp activities followed a fairly regular pattern. A typical day went like this: 7 a.m.: A five mile run before breakfast in any direction our whim took us, followed by a dip in the ocean. 8 a.m.: Breakfast of uncooked rolled oats (without milk) sprinkled with wheat germ, walnuts, sultanas, raisins and sliced banana. Perhaps a few potato chips to follow. 9 a.m.: Swimming and surfing or outdoor chores like chopping wood, painting and carpentry. Noon: Training and lectures at Portsea Oval, followed by another swim. 2 p.m.: Lunch – fish and fresh fruit. 3 p.m.: Siesta. 4 p.m.: Weight lifting. 5 p.m.: Ten mile run along dirt roads ending once more at the beach. 7 p.m.: Tea and a general discussion led by Percy on a wide variety of subjects. 11 p.m.: Lights out.
Herb Elliott

Herb Elliott, the 1500m gold medalist at the 1960 Olympics, is regarded as one of the greatest middle-distance runners of all time. The Percy Cerutty athlete saw running as the ultimate expression of the human body and embraced his coaches methods of natural eating, long runs in the mountains, sprints up dunes, sea swims, and weightlifting to develop extreme levels of strength and conditioning. Besides his physical abilities, mentally Elliot was a highly intelligent savage who through reading philosophy and embracing suffering, cultivated both unwavering confidence in his running performance and a will to win that saw him unbeaten in the mile and 1500m in his short adult career.

Most athletes imagine themselves at the end of their tether before they’re even seventy-five per cent exhausted. I was so determined to avoid this pitfall that if at any time I thought I was surrendering too soon to superficial pain I’d deliberately try to hurt myself more. In apparent conflict with this self-inflicted scourging was Percy’s theory that running should be a free expression of the body; that my body in motion, in the words of the song, ought to be doing what comes naturally. I trusted that my intelligence and enthusiasm would produce a happy compromise between this theory and my striving for perfection through pain.
Herb Elliott

While reading this book, I found my mindset changing towards heavy training. I started to see my quality sessions as an opportunity to push hard and embrace the pain a little more, driving with my arms and lengthening my stride when it started to hurt. I have begun heavy deadlifting and overhead pressing again on the journey to a double bodyweight deadlift and bodyweight overhead press, the standard that Percy Cerutty set his runners. And I have picked up my old copies of Stoic philosophy books and started to listen to Classical music from time to time including Beethoven’s Tempest III Allegretto when I need some inspiration.

1,000 True Fans and the Portfolio Life

In the book, The 100-year life, the authors introduce the idea of a portfolio job. To provide an individual with autonomy in their working life, they step away from full employment in a single position to take on several smaller roles that together make up the required income and creative outlets that person desires. A portfolio job requires the individual to have developed mastery in a field that they can then exploit for revenue through various products and services. It is an attractive idea for those of us that have worked hard to develop a level of mastery in our chosen fields, but it is a step away from what most of us learned in school. For knowledge workers, the two big questions are who are our potential customers and what kind of products are services can we offer them?

1000 True Fans

Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of Wired Magazine and author, wrote an article in 2008 titled 1,000 true fans in which he argued that to be a successful creator and make a living, you only need a thousand true fans. Kelly defines a true fan as someone that will buy anything that you produce and a living as earning $100,000 per year. To make $100,000 per year as income, you must create enough to earn $100 profit from each of these true fans and then sell them directly. This calculation assumes that it is better to sell more to your existing fans than it is to find new ones and that you get to keep all the purchase price from any sale instead of giving away a percentage to an intermediary.

The target of 1000 true fans is a number that is manageable for most people, that could be as simple as one per day for a few years. You can play with this formula depending on your field, so if you can earn more per true fan, you need fewer of them to hit the $100,000 mark. These true fans will also work for you through word of mouth marketing and attract regular fans that may purchase some but not all of your product so focusing your attention on them is far more valuable than other marketing approaches.

Kelly highlights two areas where this formula is becoming accessible to a larger group of creators. The first and more obvious reason is the internet has made it far easier to connect, build relationships, and have financial transactions directly to a vast pool of consumers. The second and less obvious reason is how network effects amplify the discoverability of niche products and put them one click away from that best selling ones.

Selling your creative output is an easy idea for traditional creatives such as musicians or artists, but what about knowledge workers?

The Full-Stack Freelancer

Tiago Forte has built a portfolio business as a freelancer in Forte Labs and suggests seven types of product that can make up a portfolio income in his blog post ‘The rise of the full-stack freelancer.’ These income streams can mix products and services, digital and physical, and passive and active income.

Social Media
Blog/subscriptions
Public workshops
Online courses
Phone coaching
Corporate training
Consulting

A portfolio of income streams takes advantage of opportunistic addition; doing each of these in moderation can add value and minimise the diminishing returns experienced when focusing exclusively on one area. Each of the products or services feed off each other and create a marketing funnel from free content to the higher value offerings. True fans can be developed in one direction through this funnel or move through multiple streams and back again with a monthly subscription to a premium blog, purchasing one-off highly interactive courses, and receiving a free monthly newsletter for example.

Creating a portfolio life

The idea of discovering and cultivating a relationship with a collection of individuals who will then purchase what you produce to give you a steady and comfortable living is exciting. A place to start could be to build a presence on social media such as Twitter or Instagram and begin to cultivate an audience, and an email list, through free longer-form content on blogs or podcasts. Once you have a following, you will introduce revenue-building products or services such as a book or an online course. Whatever route you choose, the portfolio life is an attractive one, and the internet has made it easier than ever to cultivate.

Have a conversation with me about this post on Twitter; I am interested to hear your thoughts.

A Christmas to remember

Traditions are funny things. Christmas has been celebrated across the Christian world since the forth century, taking the place of winter solstice celebrations on the 25th of December. The winter solstice in the northern hemisphere is the point in the year when the North Pole is at its maximum tilt away from the sun producing the shortest day and the longest night of the year.

I started the day with a run to the top of the highest hill near my house and back, a distance of seven miles and around 800meters of climbing. This run was special for three reasons, we had glorious weather, I managed the run in under 60 minutes for the first time ever, and it marked the completion of my 2000 miles of running challenge for the year.

The rest of the day was spent with my wife, cooking and eating great food, video calls with family, and a cheeky few glasses of champagne with the couple next door over the fence in the front garden. It was not the Christmas we had planned but it was a day to remember.

In England, we have some tough months ahead. The rate of infections are up and increasing, the cold winter will come, and we are likely to enter a heavier lockdown in the next few days. But just as the winter solstice marks the turning point towards longer days and shorter nights, there is a vaccine, a trade deal has been agreed with the EU, and the winter will give way to the spring in a few short months.

Merry Christmas! I hope you and your family and safe, have full bellies and warm homes.

Change through challenge: the university course in running a marathon

Bobby Maximus, a strength coach and author, says it takes 130 hours to build a base level of fitness. He developed this idea through training high-performance individuals to achieve impressive feats of strength and conditioning. In his book, The Maximus body, he provides two examples of how one hundred thirty hours can be completed; through one meaningful hour per day, five days per week for six months or over twelve weeks, two hours per day Monday to Friday and one hour on Saturday. The vital part is 130 meaningful hours of training, and some attention paid to quality nutrition and recovery. Budget your time, set your schedule, and do the work.

A college business module learning to run a marathon

Andrew Johnston, a GRIT and Business faculty member at RRCC and marathon runner, developed a similar idea but with a different target audience. Johnston created Change through Challenge, a 22 Week course for students that had never run before, with a final exam of running the Arizona Rock n Roll marathon. With a classroom session, a group run, and three individual runs per week; the training commitment probably came close to 130 hours.

In Johnson’s introduction to business class, his students asked local business owners for their keys to success; the most frequent answer was developing character and life-skills including a passion for work, work ethic, persistence, determination, and grit. According to Angela Duckworth, who wrote the book by the same name, grit is passion and perseverance for long-term and meaningful goals. As a keen distance runner, Johnston decided that his students’ best way to develop grit was to train for and then complete a Marathon, a challenge that, if you do not put in the necessary work and training, you are not going to finish.

Starting a business is a big goal that often requires the creation of a detailed, written, and time-denominated business plan that breaks it down into small weekly tasks to achieve the goal… That’s identical to a marathon-training plan.
Andrew Johnston

Each of the 22 weeks has a Monday classroom seminar, a Saturday morning group trail run, and three runs per week that students do independently to achieve the weeks running goal. The Monday night seminar covers three elements; Diet, training, and the discipline of the week. The twenty-two disciplines include goal setting, the power of consistency, and dealing with setbacks. Each is then related to the students’ schoolwork, business, and life. The Premiss of the course; all the life-skills needed to succeed in education and business can be acquired and mastered through training for a marathon.

My Change through challenge module

These two examples of time-based courses have me thinking about my next challenge. Can I package a physical challenge into a module? In my work, we typically package modules into 200 hours of learning, and I like the idea of going beyond the base level that 130 hours suggests and achieving something more significant. As I will be teaching myself, it makes sense to make this a problem-based learning module where I start with an open-ended problem and work through a series of steps, with other people to solve it. As an endurance athlete, I will set myself a training target of at least 10 hours per week, giving me around 20 weeks to complete the challenge I set myself—more on this to come.

You can learn more about Change through challenge through Andrew Johnston’s Tedx talk. Let me know on Twitter if you want to start your 200-hour Change through challenge module, and we can all create a group.

Make time for what is important

I like a level of routine. Without some routine in my day, I can quickly waste away days in front of the TV. A simple way to get around this, particularly now while having a stay at home holiday, is to have at least one ‘highlight’ each day. The todo might be small, like go for a run or something fun like having a long call with a friend or family member, but something each day.

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.
Seneca

In their book Make time, Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky of Google sprint fame, share a framework for designing your day around what matters. The four-step process focuses on choosing a highlight for the day, something you want to use to answer the question ‘what did you do today?’ and then gradually testing out tactics to help get this thing done. Over time you will test and adopt tactics that together build a daily system tailored to your life and priorities.

We want you to begin each day by thinking about what you hope will be the bright spot. If, at the end of the day, someone asks you, “What was the highlight of your day?” what do you want your answer to be? When you look back on your day, what activity or accomplishment or moment do you want to savor? That’s your Highlight.
Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky

The four steps

Highlight – start each day by choosing a focal point
Lazer – Beat distraction to make time for your highlight
Energise – Use the body to recharge the brain
Reflect – Adjust and improve your system

The most important step is choosing your days highlight. The book suggests asking yourself each morning ‘what is going to be the highlight of my day? Choose an activity that takes around 60-90 minutes, it can contain multiple steps and might be work-related, personal care or even something from your honey-do list. Before you go about your day, select the time you will do this highlight and protect it. Add it to your calendar and let people know that you are busy at that time.

Once you get to the scheduled time, you need to make sure you can focus on that one task and nothing else. Becoming distraction-free might require you to turn off any technology not needed in your task or go somewhere away from your usual setting. To make sure you have the energy to do the things you want the book suggest a load of tactics from taking care of your body with regular exercise, good sleep patterns (naps!), and healthy food, to the strategic use of caffeine before your task for a quick pick up.

Each evening, the authors suggest taking a few notes on how well your new system is working. Did the tactics make time for your task, focus on it, and have the energy to do it work? If yes, keep them, and if no, ditch the ones not working and replace them with new tactics to test.

Try it tomorrow

Tomorrow morning, get up and write down a task you want to do that will take around an hour and choose when you will do it. Make it something that you really want to do but might not make the time for usually due to the day’s natural run. When that time comes around, make a coffee, turn off your phone, and do it. In the evening, think about how you got your highlight done, your energy levels, when you scheduled it. What could you do better to get tomorrows highlight done? Simple, but maybe not easy.

Pick up a copy of Make time: how to focus on what matters every day to find the full explanation of the process and an extensive collection of tactics to help you build your system. Let me know on Twitter what tactics work for you.

T’is the season for rest and recovery

Today was the first day of my two-week break and the start of my recovery week after yesterdays half marathon. With Christmas plans cancelled by Boris, I spent the morning finishing my shopping and getting the presents wrapped and sent off with the last Christmas post. Not so restful, but I will do better tomorrow. I slept poorly last night as my mind would not shut off after my solo race. I have had a bit too much coffee but cooked a nutritious dumpling casserole, had a couple of glasses of red wine, and put my feet up in front of Die Hard (It is a Christmas movie).

Rest: cease work or movement in order to relax, sleep, or recover strength.
Oxford Languages

Recovery: a return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength.
Oxford Languages

I am already thinking about the next step, but I am forcing myself to take the week to relax and let niggles I am carrying recover. Sometimes it is essential to take time to rest and recover even when we think we do not need it. I will do a light run and a longer post tomorrow.

I hope you are all having a break.

Ready player two (spoiler alert)

Warning! This post will spoil both books, so read them first.

I was a big fan of Ernest Cline’s first two books, Ready player one and Armada. I enjoyed the Ready player one film too although I am happy I read the book first. When I saw that the sequel was being released in November, I was excited to see where Cline would take the Oasis. Will Wheaton reads all three books on audible, and I enjoy what he adds to the text so I would recommend getting them on Audible.

Ready player two is a story about a general AI created from a brain scan of the creator of the Oasis, a virtual reality world that most of civilisation is addicted. The book introduces a possible post-human future where people can upload their consciousness to the simulated world and live on as a digital version of themselves after they die. Another idea introduced is that of people recording their experiences through brain scans. Others then can play them back, experiencing them from inside the other person’s body, with the feelings and emotions, providing empathy, something that might solve many of the current political and social arguments.

People not being ready for accepting digital versions of others is mentioned, especially as the first version of this goes mad and holds the whole virtual world hostage. Cline, however, does not talk much about the ethical implications. Are humans meant to live forever? What happens to a persons decision making when you can’t die? A statement is made towards the end of the book about a person’s mind and body are two separate things, but is this true, and are there implications of separating them?

Altered carbon has a similar premise, but as it is based in the physical world and explores the magnified inequalities that result from the costs of moving from body to body and the ethical and religious issues of living forever. The marginal cost of digitising the mind and living forever in a computer is much cheaper and so more accessible. This would avoid some of these issues, but income inequalities will be exacerbated, and a two-class system of AI avatars and blood sacks is sure to result. I hope this is the plotline for Ready player three.

This is a great book, especially if you were born in the 80s and get all the cultural references, I highly recommend you read both Ready player one and two. If you have read or watched Altered carbon before getting to the second book, it might make you think a little more about the ending.

Let me know on Twitter if you have read the second book and what you thought of it.

Hypocrisy and Integrity

According to the Oxford languages site (the one Google search uses for definitions), hypocrisy comes from the greek hupokrinesthai meaning to play a part or pretend. It is defined as ‘the practice of claiming to have higher standards or more noble beliefs than is the case.’

Hypocrisy is the practice of engaging in the same behaviour or activity for which one criticizes another or the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behaviour does not conform. In moral psychology, it is the failure to follow one’s own expressed moral rules and principles.
Wikipedia

Oxford languages define integrity as ‘the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.’ It comes from the Latin integer meaning ‘intact’.

Integrity is the practice of being honest and showing a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one’s actions.
Wikipedia

In a world full of hypocrites, be a person of integrity.