1
Slowing Down, Speeding Up, and Your âRunaway Brainâ . . . What Are We Talking About?
Slowing Down . . . Whatâs That Mean?
From Robb:
Having spent almost a decade in the cycling industry, I had so many opportunities to learn about slowing down in order to speed up. But my thoughts were usually going so fast I probably missed most of them. That is, until my friend Allen Lim dropped this nugget on me one day. Dr. Lim is one of the worldâs leading authorities on exercise physiology, specifically in bicycling. Anyone outside of cycling may not know his name, but if we were to rattle off a list of athletes who have hired him to help them win races, medals, competitions, or contracts, that would be a heck of a list.
I first heard him say this right after he had finished consulting for a Tour de France team years ago. He was sharing his months-long experience with us and throughout the course of his stories, his quote made more and more sense.
For those who are unaware, and regardless of your opinion of cycling, the Tour de France is arguably one of the hardest, most grueling events in all of sports. And it requires quite an investment of suffering in order to complete the event. Competitors typically ride a minimum of 100 miles every day for three weeks straight. There are only two days off. The stages typically include climbing, sprinting, hours-long turns riding at the front to block the wind, and countless trips back and forth to the team car to gather food, water, and supplies. Got a bee sting? Road rash? Sunburn? Saddle sore? (Yes, thatâs a real thing and at least as painful as you can imagine it to be.) Too bad. You must deal with it and fight through the pain, because many of the medicines used to heal these problems are banned in and out of competition.
So Al was sharing with us that his job is to help the riders figure out ways to stay healthy and strong up to and through the last week of the race. A lot of riders believe that they need to grind it out no matter what, all day and every day. They have been told âit will only make me stronger for tomorrow, so harden the âfâ up!â This is a mindset that many professionals carry into their sales, customer service, clinical, insurance, real estate, and trade careers. Spoiler alert: Thereâs always a story about failure or burnout that follows the admission.
Alâs job was to help the athletes learn, understand, and apply different techniques for doing just the right amount of work exactly when they needed to while racing, so that their bodies could fully recover between stages. Climbers should ride their hardest only in the climbs. Sprinters can sit in until the last possible moment. Domestiques (the guys who do all the grunt work and protect the team leader[s]) can take turns, never going a minute longer than they need to at the front of the pack.
The lesson for these cyclists is this: You think you are tired from working too hard. Thatâs only part of it. You are actually tired from not taking the proper amount of time to recover. You waste energy doing things you donât need to do to achieve the goal. And then you donât value your âdown timeâ enough to let yourself rest and recover properly. You are already thinking about tomorrow when you havenât even finished today. Youâre not fully present where you are right now, and instead you are creating turbulence, and thatâs whatâs exhausting you.
Cure for the Common âGO!â
Hereâs the deal: most of you reading this book arenât cyclists. But the lesson is still relevant for you, personally and professionally. Replace the word âcyclistâ with ârealtorâ or âfinancial advisorâ or âartistâ or whatever your profession or your goal is.
Imagine a financial advisor studying for her Series 65. She spends a ton of time studying, typically after a full workday. She tries reading when she is tired. Her mind is elsewhere. She forgets what she read. And this happens over and over and over again. She starts thinking about what will happen if she doesnât get her studying done. It stresses her out. She stays up late and doesnât get a good night sleep. Every single appointment the next day is unproductive. Are you starting to see how the idea of âpowering throughâ isnât serving you? Are you starting to notice that taking a little more âdown timeâ will help you operate more effectively during your âup timeâ?
Stop trying to âfight throughâ to get what you want. Stop ignoring reality. Start rethinking how you approach things. Start putting the appropriate amount of time, effort, and mental bandwidth into not only working smarter but also thinking smarter. Thinking smarter means less small thinking and more big thinking, less overthinking, and more relaxing.
Real-Life Examples
When it comes to slowing down in order gain progress, there are examples we can find everywhere to understand the importance of this tactic.
An airline pilotâs job is to safely travel from origin to the destination. If he can make it there on time, thatâs a bonus! But the ultimate goal is to get the plane safely to the destination.
How many times have you been on the plane, in your seat, slightly overheated, wondering when this plane is going to take off. All of a sudden the sweet, soothing sound of âBoi-n-n-ngâ comes over the loudspeaker, followed by âLadies and gentleman, this is your Captain speaking. We are currently number 12 for takeoff, but donât worry, weâll make it up in the air. So for now, just go ahead and sit back and relax, weâll be off the ground in just a bit.â
You might think the pilot needs to speed up in order to achieve his goal. He needs to fly faster than he had planned in order to get to the destination on time. But thereâs more at stake here.
The pilot needs to get to the airspace where the destination air-traffic controller can get the plane in the queue to land. Once there, the pilot receives instructions on where to be and when (and at what speed) in order to keep the air traffic flowing smoothly.
Hereâs the best and potentially most overlooked part. In order for the pilot to achieve the goal (landing safely at the destination), the most important thing he needs to do is slow the plane down. If the pilot does not decrease the speed of the plane, it literally canât land, and heâll never achieve the goal.
How many projects, conversations, activities, meetings, and so on never got finished simply because you never took a second to âlay off the gasâ in order to let things fall into place, instead of having the emergency brake pulled, bringing everything to a screeching halt?
Hereâs another example from football (the American type, not soccer). In order to snap the ...