Hopefully by now, you've integrated the belief that the route to success in any endeavour in the long term is made with journey of continuous and consistent effort towards improving your expertise and areas that impact and affect it. But we should also acknowledge that's not the only tool at our disposal.
In "Linchpin", Seth Godin talks about the concept of sprinting and how you should be doing it often.
In my own words, sprinting in this context means creating a temporary imbalance in yourself by narrowly focusing unsustainable effort for a short period of time with the intent of a) deliver something of value (or shipping as Seth calls it) or b) quickly attain or improve a particular skill that you believe you require immediately and do not possess.
This can happen for a number of reasons, whether to take advantage of an opportunity for better or different work or to make you more effective at reasoning with and influencing others with the right advice and considerations. I've used it extensively through my career and plan to keep doing so.
But it has a cost, and one must understand its cost if we're to manage the its impact on ourselves. The cost, at least in my case, usually comes in one of two ways. loss of sleep or dropping other things which keep me balanced to use the available capacity to focus on that narrow sprint goal.
It's a price you should be willing to pay if you really care about it, if you're serious and if you want something almost as bad as you want to breathe. If you're not willing to pay such price, that tells me you just "kind of want it". That you don't really want something as bad as you say you do, or better than you want to party or look cool. Never fool yourself.
The danger here, which will be subject of the next blog post, is how to ensure you don't lose yourself and that state of imbalance doesn't stay permanent, to a point you no longer recognise or enjoy who you are.
