Where do you want to be on concert day?
Seth Godin says, “In a long distance race, everyone gets tired. The winner is the runner who figures out where to put the tired, figures out how to store it away until after the race is over. Sure, he’s tired. Everyone is. That’s not the point. The point is to run.”
Some people quit at 24 miles, and some people keep going to the end. They’re both tired, but one knows how to manage the tiredness and get to their goal.
This is how I think about concert weeks, and it’s how I think about school years. And it’s how I think about a career.
There’s a lot of work to do for concert week. That’s clear. But I want to feel a certain way when I walk onstage on Friday – so I’m not going to let tired stop me.
There are a lot of a big goals we want to accomplish in a year. We’re going to want to give up or settle for “good enough.” The only way to get past that to greatness is to keep going even when we’re tired.
A career is a collection of shorter goals, successes and failures, but there’s also a throughline – a real marathon if ever there was one. If you want to make an impact, you’ve got to accept the tired and follow that throughline.