Learn to calibrate your effort more effectively By: Dr. Patel
Life is tough, and many people push themselves really hard -- the go-getters, the gunners. Others lay back and only keep the accelerator at half throttle -- they look relaxed most of the time. It seems like most people are somewhere in the middle, but you could make an argument that the answer is situation-specific. Sometimes it might be better to be aggressive, and other times holding back and laying low is a better strategy. But how do you decide where to put yourself on that spectrum? The answer is rarely obvious, and usually you only figure it out in retrospect. Is there a way to get better attuned to the right level of effort appropriate for a given situation, maximizing results while staying efficient with your time?
I’m sure there are plenty of ways to go about this, particularly mindfulness meditation (Friese et al, 2012). But the method that comes to mind for me is long-distance running.
I first started long-distance running because I was tired of being out of shape, and I noticed that my eating habits weren't particularly healthy. Although it was extremely difficult at first, I started to jog, gradually increasing my distance but keeping my pace low.
My initial goal was just to be able to run a few miles without getting totally winded, because at that time I was experiencing significant fatigue after running only a quarter mile. It was hard to motivate myself -- I mainly had to use external cues, like the distance measurement on my treadmill, to gauge my progress. I also tried to visualize myself being a relatively fit person, which had always been a personal goal, and found this to be helpful as well.
Gradually, my endurance increased. It happened over the course of several months, and included days of soreness, difficulty walking around, a complete inability to go up more than a flight of stairs due to knee pain, and a general distaste for the whole process. I started wondering why anyone would engage in such a pointless endeavor, and it became easy to find excuses to not go to the gym. Despite these types of thoughts, I kept going on, determined to at least get my endurance up to a reasonable level.
It took some time, but to my surprise, I began to feel extremely refreshed and energetic after I could tolerate a few miles of constant running. Not taking breaks during runs appeared to be particularly beneficial, not just psychologically for the internal gratification, but for that feeling of “flow” that only sustained, uninterrupted action can provide (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008). For those of you who meditate regularly, you probably know this feeling very well.
The only problem was that it still took a lot of effort to motivate myself to run. Even though I felt great afterwards, with a clearer mind, more positive attitude, more energy, better memory, and a reduction in body fat percentage, I still didn’t look forward to it. It was a strange combination of feeling great while doing something, feeling accomplished after making progress towards a goal, and paradoxically not being inherently motivated to continue. I’m guessing that people who work out for brief periods of time, such as after New Year’s, know exactly what I’m talking about here. It’s as if you know what you need to do, but just can’t quite get the motivation to do it!
So how do you know how hard to work? Do you continue to force yourself to get off the couch and go for a run no matter what? Or do you give up entirely, binge-watching Netflix, feeling foolish and discouraged?
My personal experience was that I had to overwork myself at the start because I was countering years of inertia. It’s hard to withstand the psychological pull of sedentary habits, particularly if you’re accustomed to a low-energy lifestyle. If you’re interested, I highly recommend this article by the Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron, which addresses what she calls “comfort orientation,” a type of resistance to change that directly applies to exercise (Chodron, 2019).
The tendency to seek excessive comfort is sneaky, troublesome, always present in some form, and many times disguised. It almost always was a drag to get myself outside to the track or to a treadmill, but every time I did, I felt great afterwards. I eventually got up to doing 7 miles of running three times per week, and while I felt good physically and mentally, the process felt like a chore. A frequent thought would be “Nice, I’m done with all my work today … wait … I haven’t run yet.” And then I’d head straight to the gym. I’d bet that this is a breaking point for most people -- that moment when you decide to commit to something over the long term or run the risk of slipping into stagnation. It’s the trap of making a goal into an obligation, which then raises the danger of procrastination, avoidance, and ultimately, failure.
It took a few years of effort to definitively push back against the force of “comfort orientation” in this area of my life. Once my body gained enough lean muscle to sustain this level of activity, there was still plenty of soreness, but it lost some its intensity. I gradually became able to inwardly get in touch with my strength and endurance, as well as my psychological barriers. While running, it became easier to tell when I was physically tired, whether from dehydration, not eating enough beforehand, or not sleeping well the night before. It also became easier to tell when I was giving up too early on a workout goal; for example, being on mile 5 out of 7 and thinking that I should stop. By pushing through that feeling, I was able to override my own psychological inertia, leading to more motivation and ultimately a satisfying run.
This continual process of running, evaluating my level of fatigue, and identifying whether I was getting in my own way mentally, started to have an effect on me. The process sharpened my ability to tell how hard I should push myself on a run, and this carried over into other tasks as well. I started to see how my mental state affected my ease of completing a run, and how a positive mood state could override fairly significant physical distress.
After several years of this, I reached a point where my sense of mental and physical stamina became refined and intuitive. I loosened up my adherence to the 21 mile per week schedule, and I started to lay back on some runs when I could tell that I was physically spent or mentally exhausted. I could truly decide how hard to push myself, because I knew I wasn’t indulging in “comfort orientation.” Instead, I was honestly evaluating my abilities in that moment, and making a reasoned decision.
The more I continued to run, the better I got at this process of self-evaluation, and it spread to other areas of my life. If I was studying, working on a project, or giving a presentation, my “throttle” was way more accurate. I’d know when to stop, or when to really push hard. I could calibrate my effort to the situation more easily, and this made a variety of tasks more fun to accomplish.
Striking a balance between performance and sustainability is a critical goal in life. Overdoing it for too long burns most people out, but not even trying isn't good either. Figuring out the right balance lets you sustain whatever it is that you are doing without getting overwhelmed by it, and running taught me that very directly -- I think it’s the main reason that I’ve been able to sustain a regular workout schedule for over a decade. Looking back on this whole process gives me a sense of deep gratification, and it’s now easy to understand why I see runners outside in 20 degree weather early on a Saturday morning.
This stuff is open knowledge, but hard to implement. If you are starting a workout routine, don’t ignore the psychological aspect of the process. Use it as a way to understand your mind, and you may gain quite a bit from the experience. Good luck!
References in this article:
Pema Chödrön. Looking into Laziness -- Pema Chödrön – Lion’s Roar. Lion’s Roar. https://www.lionsroar.com/start-where-you-arelooking-into-laziness/. Published July 24, 2019. Accessed July 24, 2019.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow -- Paperback. HarperCollins Publishers: World-Leading Book Publisher. https://www.harpercollins.com/9780061339202/flow/. Published 2019. Accessed July 24, 2019.
Friese M, Messner C, Schaffner Y. Mindfulness meditation counteracts self-control depletion. Consciousness and Cognition. 2012;21(2):1016-1022. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2012.01.008
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