Of the three half marathons I ran last year, two stood out as entirely polarised experiences. By and large I had an identical training schedule and I was injury free for both. However, my time for the second race was much slower. I also didn’t enjoy it.
When I consider all the other things going on around the time of each run, I’ve got a fair idea why the second was such a blow out.
The first race was held just off the back of winter. Work wasn’t busy and because it was cold there wasn’t much happening on the social front. I had time to focus on training and I was getting sound sleep. Competing for a good time was my top priority.
For the second there was a lot more going on. For starters, the race was in another country and was held the week before the biggest campaign launch I was involved with all year. I’d also recently had my family visit and because it was summer there were things going on all the time. While in my mind I wanted to do well, I was stretching myself too thin.
Looking back, I’ve no idea how signing up for the second run struck me as a good idea. I’d committed myself in significant doses to family, friends, fitness, my relationship and work. And as such, none got the attention they deserved.
This story came back to me today after I came away from a mentor session in which I a fairly common phrase struck a new chord:
something’s gotta give
On face value, it doesn’t read like a typical piece of advice, but in the context of the discussion it made total sense as a means of giving direction.
I was talking with my mentor about the difficulty I sometimes face when it comes to balancing different areas of my life. Often it can feel like there’s only so much energy or attention I can give things and when I put all my focus on one or two, the others suffer from the neglect. I know that a lot of this comes down to managing my own commitments, but it seems to continuously creep up on me.
Drawing parallels to when she decided to have children, my mentor said “I realised I had to pull back, so I decided to stop watching TV and having hobbies. Something had to give. But it wasn’t forever”.
In the whole hour and a half we spent talking, there was plenty of good take aways. However, this comment, and in particular the last bit about it not being for good, was what really stuck.
For the first time ever it made me think about categorising all the areas of my life that take up time into buckets. Prior to her comment, I’d not really considered there be much of a difference between hobbies and watching TV, I’d have probably classified this as ‘stuff outside of work’. However, by calling them out there’s a sense of how much time they’re taking as an individual block and therefore how much time we might get back if we were to drop them for a bit.
In a strange but appropriate way, the image of a Tetris came to mind and suddenly, the idea of rearranging priorities felt more fluid. At the most basic level, it’s a matter of moving things around in a constant cycle to make space for others.
It can be a real struggle to admit we may need to step back from something or give up a few of the things we enjoy. But we have to understand the limitations of our own ouput. We cannot do everything. In a work situation we may start to drop the ball and in a personal situation we may unintentionally make people feel unimportant or under appreciated.
It’s also a common to feel when we shift our priorities that it’s permanent. A mindset that is simply not true. Keep in mind the Tetris thing, it’s a matrix of moving parts.
Adopting the idea that ‘something’s gotta give’ isn’t a sign of defeat. If anything it’s a sign of knowing when to rejig our priorities, make the right choices before we hit breaking point and know that whatever refocus we’ve applied is only temporary if we want it to be.
