Save the sprint for the end

In Jim Collins’ book Great by Choice, he shares the fascinating story of how Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole ahead of his contemporary, Robert Falcon Scott. The teams had similar conditions, but Collins argues that while Scott pushed his men to exhaustion in good weather and stayed in the tent when it was terrible, Amundsen had his men march 15-20 miles per day on good days and bad. On good days they could have gone much farther, but by leaving something in the tank, they had the wherewithal to go 15-20 miles on the bad days too. With this steady tempo they made it to the pole and made it back.?

Collins suggests that this is how the best companies manage their growth. Southwest Airlines, for instance, expanded very carefully over the years. In 1996, 100 cities were clamoring for the airline to add flights to their airports. Southwest looked at that demand and elected to add four new destinations. By leaving something in the tank, Collins notes, Southwest could expand profitably, and be fairly certain that each new city would be a success.

I’ve been thinking of this lately as I’ve been revising my novel. I drew up a schedule that had me editing 1-3 short chapters per week over the next few months (with the number of assigned chapters depending on other planned commitments). This past week wound up being fairly quiet, and I know I could have made it through more than three chapters. Part of me felt bad that I wasn’t making more progress! After two months of this, I’m only on chapter 20, and there are going to be around 36 in the novel.

But this is the deal I have with myself. By limiting myself to three chapters, I can preserve some creative energy week to week. That way, during a week where I’m feeling sluggish, uninspired, or busy due to things that pop up, I’ll feel like I can keep going. I’m never doing too much. The schedule feels doable. And so I will finish by Memorial Day.

That’s been my approach with reading through all the works of Jane Austen this year too. Each day, I read ten pages. Now I know some Jane Austen fans may object, but I’ve found her novels hard to get into at first. For the first 100 pages or so, I am definitely noting the page number each day (am I at 60 yet?). This is when it’s good to know that I only have to read ten pages. Ten isn’t much. I can read ten pages in less than 15 minutes!

Then, of course, the novels get a lot more gripping; Pride and Prejudice isn’t one of the most loved novels of all time due to mass delusion. But there, too, I stick to ten pages. That way I’m not racing past an interesting bit of character development, or a side plot point, just to see what happens.?

Well, most of the time. Unlike Roald Amundsen, I’ve decided that if I am within walking range of my metaphorical South Pole, I don’t have to camp for the night. Once I was about 50 pages from the end of both Sense and Sensibility?and Pride and Prejudice, I decided to let myself keep reading. If I was going to be finished in an hour, it was OK to sprint at the end.

But only at the end! Most of the time, slow, steady, and sustainable is the way to go. That’s how you can be sure you will finish a project you start.?