{"id":29631,"date":"2013-01-06T21:49:47","date_gmt":"2013-01-07T03:49:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artofmanliness.com\/?p=29631"},"modified":"2021-09-25T07:48:09","modified_gmt":"2021-09-25T12:48:09","slug":"whats-your-20-mile-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/character\/self-improvement\/whats-your-20-mile-march\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s Your 20 Mile March?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Vintage<\/a><\/p>\n

Nine years ago, business authors Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen, along with a team of 20 researchers, set out to answer this question: Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not?<\/i><\/p>\n

The group analyzed seven companies that performed not just better than their industry, but ten times<\/i> better. They discovered a very interesting key finding. The qualities that business gurus frequently tout as being the main difference-makers — things like innovation, creativity, and the ability to quickly pivot in a fast-changing world \u2013 were indeed somewhat important, but it was actually discipline, fanatic<\/i> discipline, that was one of the true master keys of the companies’ success.<\/p>\n

Instead of constantly changing course, making really aggressive moves, and taking big risks, “10Xers” (as Collins and Hansen dubbed these greatly successful companies) came up with a plan, and carefully, methodically, and consistently stuck with that plan; they moved ever towards their long-term goals instead of getting side-tracked by short-term temptations, fears, and changing circumstances. They didn’t panic during stormy periods, nor did they expand too aggressively during good times.<\/p>\n

For example, Southwest Airlines made it a goal to create a different kind of company culture, and turn a profit every single year. While the airline industry as a whole lost money during the recession, and other airlines axed employees and lost piles of cash, Southwest achieved their goal, keeping themselves in the black for 30 consecutive years without ever having to furlough a single employee. As Collins and Hansen explain in the book that emerged from their research on 10X companies, Great by Choice<\/i><\/a>, Southwest did it through careful, consistent growth:<\/p>\n

“Southwest had the discipline to hold back in good times so as not to extend beyond its ability to preserve profitability and the Southwest culture. It didn’t expand outside Texas until nearly eight years after starting service, making a small jump to New Orleans. Southwest moved outward from Texas in deliberate steps — Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Los Angeles — and didn’t reach the eastern seaboard until almost a quarter of a century after its funding. In 1996, more than a hundred<\/i> cities clamored for Southwest service. And how many cities did Southwest open that year? Four.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The 20 Mile March <\/b><\/h3>\n

Collins and Morten dubbed the slow and steady approach taken by Southwest and other 10X companies “The 20 Mile March.” They took this moniker from imagining a man determined to walk across the United States, and how he could accomplish his goal faster by committing to walking 20 miles every single day  — rain or shine — rather than walking for 40-50 miles in good weather and then very few miles or not at all during inclement conditions.<\/p>\n

The pair later came upon the story of the race between Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen to be the first to reach the South Pole<\/a>, and they were amazed to discover how the differences in the way the two expeditions were executed also aligned with their 20 Mile March idea. Amundsen beat Scott to the Pole and had a pretty smooth and uneventful journey both there and back. Scott reached the Pole only to face the crushing realization that the Norwegians had been there first, and he and his four men perished on the grueling 700-mile return trip. Collins and Hansen found that among the many other lessons comparing the two expeditions can teach us<\/a>, is that much of Amundsen\u2019s success can be traced to creating his own plan, and then carrying it out with methodical, disciplined consistency. In other words, sticking with his 20 Mile March.<\/p>\n

Your<\/em> 20 Mile March<\/b><\/h3>\n

As I read Great by Choice<\/i><\/a>, I was struck by how applicable the 20 Mile March principle was not simply to corporations or polar expeditions, but to individual lives as well. Many of the men I see struggling to improve themselves usually tackle their goals through an inevitably fruitless series of fits and starts. They get all excited about a new goal or program for themselves and throw themselves into it with gusto, only to soon get burned out, sidetracked by the next cool new thing, or demoralized by a setback. This pattern leaves an unending trail of unfinished projects in their wake.<\/p>\n

I completely sympathize with these gents, because I\u2019ve done that too! But as I evaluate the times I\u2019ve been successful in life, I notice a pattern. It usually wasn\u2019t through big Herculean efforts, or snazzy new productivity plans that I achieved my goals, but rather through steady, consistent efforts. I reached my goals by throwing on my knapsack every single day and setting off on a 20 Mile March.<\/p>\n

The Seven Elements of a Good 20 Mile March<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

In the book, Collins and Morten lay out seven elements that create a good 20 Mile March:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Clear performance markers<\/li>\n
  2. Self-imposed constraints<\/li>\n
  3. Appropriate to the enterprise [or individual]<\/li>\n
  4. Largely within your control<\/li>\n
  5. A proper timeframe — long enough to manage, yet short enough to have teeth<\/li>\n
  6. Designed and self-imposed by the enterprise [or individual]<\/li>\n
  7. Achieved with high consistency<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Below we take a look at each of these elements one-by-one. Because I think it\u2019s so instructive, we\u2019ll first take a look at how each of these elements played out in the race to the South Pole. We\u2019ll then explore how we can apply these elements in our own lives to create our own 20 Mile Marches.<\/p>\n

    \"Vintage<\/a><\/p>\n

    1. A good 20 Mile March uses performance markers that delineate a lower bound of acceptable achievement. These create productive discomfort\u2026and must be challenging (but not impossible) to achieve in difficult times.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

    How this element applied to the race to the South Pole.<\/b> Roald Amundsen and his team of five men skied and sledged for 5-6 hours and went an average of 15 nautical miles a day.<\/p>\n

    Yet Amundsen did not measure his daily progress in hours, or even individual miles; instead, he used degrees. Fifteen nautical miles represents one-quarter of a degree of latitude, and Amundsen realized that knocking off one degree of latitude every four days and being able to imagine themselves inching their way across the map would be highly motivating for the team. One-quarter of a degree of latitude every single day: this was Amundsen’s clear performance marker.<\/p>\n

    Fifteen miles a day wasn’t a walk in the park, but it wasn’t exhausting either. Although it took grit and discipline, it was a pace that was doable in fair conditions as well as foul; whether it was calm or foggy or freezing, whether it was smooth sailing over flat terrain, or a team member and his dogs fell into a crevasse and had to be pulled out\u2026on the men went, getting in their fifteen miles a day.<\/p>\n

    Scott, on the other hand, did not have a consistent goal for how far he hoped to go each day \u2014 letting the daily weather conditions and his fluctuating feelings of motivation dictate the pace. On a day with ideal conditions, he might push the men to trudge for 9 hours at a time. When the weather turned ugly, he might decide to not leave his tent at all, even though Amundsen was out in similar conditions.<\/p>\n

    How this element applies to your own life:<\/b> Your performance markers basically set out your pace en route to your goal: the minimum effort you\u2019re committed to making every day\/week to get to where you want to be. This pace has to be hard enough to stretch you when conditions in your life are ideal, but still doable — as long as you exercise grit and discipline — during times when the poop hits the fan, or you\u2019re simply not in the mood.<\/p>\n

    So for example, if your goal is to start exercising regularly, and you don\u2019t exercise at all right now, creating a goal to work out for 90 minutes 6X a week is probably going to be impossible to stick with. Instead, pick a goal that\u2019s going to be difficult for you, but still doable if you\u2019re willing to work hard — say 45 minutes, 5X a week.<\/p>\n

    If you\u2019re looking to write the next great American novel, consider setting a number of words you will write every day. Author JG Ballard (and many other writers) took this approach: \u201cAll through my career I’ve written 1,000 words a day — even if I’ve got a hangover. You’ve got to discipline yourself if you’re professional. There’s no other way.”<\/p>\n

    2. A good 20 Mile March has self-imposed constraints. This creates an upper bound for how far you’ll march when facing robust opportunity and exceptionally good conditions. These constraints should also produce discomfort in the face of pressures and fear that you should be going faster and doing more.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

    How this element applied to the race to the South Pole<\/b>. Amundsen kept up his 15-mile-a-day pace for three-fourths of his journey to and from the Pole. When he was nearing 90 degrees south, he increased the pace a little to 20 miles a day, and did the same thing as he got close to his base camp on the return trip.<\/p>\n

    But other than these small deviations, it was 15 miles the whole way for him. It’s not that he couldn’t have easily pushed the team and their dogs to do more \u2014 they were healthy and eager \u2014 but he deliberately chose this pace so as to not exhaust his team and run the risk of injuries and sickness. Amundsen\u2019s men passed most of their \u201cdown time\u201d resting in their sleeping bags — up to 16 hours a day. But Amundsen saw this rest as a vital part of the overall plan.<\/p>\n

    For Scott, impatience was one of his weaknesses; he didn\u2019t like sitting around and any kind of delay made him feel anxious. He also felt that if an effort didn’t tax you completely, it hadn’t been enough. Even after a long day of marching, he might decide to keep on pushing. Apsley Cherry-Garrard, who accompanied him part of the way to the Pole, recalled: \u201cAfter nine or ten hours on the march, Scott would say, \u2018Oh, well, I think we’ll go on a little bit more\u2019…It might be an hour or more before we halted and made our camp: sometimes a blizzard had its silver lining.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Because Scott always liked to be going, it was harder for him to see how equally important rest was in the short-term in achieving his long-term goal. Scott pushed his men so hard on the way out to the Pole that the men did not have enough strength left for what turned out to be an even more arduous return journey.<\/p>\n

    How this element applies to your own life. <\/b>A 20 Mile March creates two forms of discomfort. The first is the strain from hitting your performance markers as outlined in the first element. But the second form of discomfort can actually be more difficult to deal with — and that\u2019s holding back, even when conditions are ideal for pushing harder. It\u2019s easy to get excited about a goal and go full throttle after it, but this frequently leads to burn out and exhaustion before you ever reach what you\u2019re after. It\u2019s also easy to panic when you see what other people are doing instead of running your own race. Self-imposed constraints keep your short-term temptations in check in favor of continuing to steadily progress towards your goals.<\/p>\n

    For example, our newbie exerciser above might set 60 minutes a day as his max workout time, so that he doesn\u2019t work out for two hours on days he\u2019s feeling good and his schedule is free, and then feel so tired he doesn\u2019t work out at all the next day.<\/p>\n

    This element is especially important to remember when you\u2019re starting your own business or side hustle<\/a>. You look around at what some other guy is doing, how his website looks, and what features he\u2019s rolling out, and are suddenly beset with anxiety and self-doubt that others are outpacing you and doing a better job. Your panic turns into a decision to expand into things that aren\u2019t really part of your vision, which weakens the enterprise and can lead to failure. Oftentimes, when you actually take a minute to reflect on the reality of the situation, you\u2019re not really trying to do what the other guy is, and you\u2019re unfairly comparing apples and oranges. Make corrections when needed, but try to stick with your own plan.<\/p>\n

    3. There’s no all-purpose 20 Mile March for all enterprises [individuals].<\/i><\/b> A good 20 Mile March is tailored to the enterprise [individual] and its [his] environment. <\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

    How this element applied to the race to the South Pole. <\/b>One of the biggest factors leading to the failure and success of the respective expeditions centered on the forms of transportation each leader chose.<\/p>\n

    Scott, who patterned much of his trek after Ernest Shackleton\u2019s 1907 Nimrod<\/i> expedition, decided to use horses for a quarter of the trek and then man-hauling (the men put themselves in a harness connected to sledges and pulled them, step by step, through the ice and snow) for the rest, just as his predecessor had. But horses were ill-suited to Arctic conditions; they sweated through their hides, which then froze into sheets of ice and they had to be covered with blankets and covers to be kept warm. Moreover, their heavy weight and narrow feet ensured that they sunk deep into the snow and ice with every step. The man-hauling was disadvantageous simply because it was so physically taxing on the men to pull tons of gear 120 miles, up a 10,000 foot rise.<\/p>\n

    In addition to using the same modes of transportation, Scott used the same base camp area and followed the same route to the Pole as Shackleton had. Scott even checked his progress every evening against that of the Nimrod<\/i> expedition.<\/p>\n

    Amundsen, on the other hand, took a different approach. After studying the ways of the Netsilik Eskimos, he decided that dogs were by far the best option for the Arctic environment: dogs ran quickly in the snow and ice and were low-maintenance haulers, they could be fed a variety of foods (including each other), and they kept warm by digging holes to bed inside.<\/p>\n

    Amundsen also made his base camp at the Bay of Whales, a spot no explorer had camped at previously, and pioneered a brand new route to the Pole. He didn\u2019t know what terrain he\u2019d face en route to his goal, but it was the straightest way there, and not only saved him 120 miles round-trip, but also ended up being an easier path than Scott\u2019s.<\/p>\n

    How this element applies to your own life. <\/b>Don\u2019t simply copy the goals and plans of others. Your 20 Mile March needs to be tailored to your individual personality and the conditions of your environment. What worked for someone else (or even you at a different age), might not work for you now.<\/p>\n

    For example, the way you tackle a goal will be different when you\u2019re a single, college student, than when you\u2019re a married father. Here\u2019s how I\u2019ve seen this dynamic play out in my own life.  Prayer, scripture study, and writing in a journal has been a priority for me for years, but finding time to do it since becoming a father has been tricky. Before Gus arrived in our family (and even for a few months afterwards \u2013 newborns sleep a lot), I often had an hour of distraction-free time in the morning to devote to those tasks. It was awesome! But I quickly learned that a toddler doesn\u2019t care about your hour of \u201cme-time.\u201d So I\u2019ve had to adjust. I now pray and write in my journal while Gus plays and Kate\u2019s at the gym. Gus will sometimes come over and pull on the sleeve of my robe, demanding that I \u201cget down on carpet!\u201d (such a tyrannical tot!) to play with him. It\u2019s not an ideal set-up, but it gets the job done (don\u2019t worry — Gus and I have plenty of one-on-one play sessions at other times of the day).<\/p>\n

    4. A good 20 Mile March is designed and self-imposed by the enterprise [individual], not imposed from the outside or blindly copied by others.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

    How this element applied to the race to the South Pole.<\/b> This element largely reiterates the previous one. While Scott blindly copied the plan used by Ernest Shackleton, Amundsen designed his own plan to arrive quickly and safely at the South Pole.<\/p>\n

    How this element applies to your own life.<\/b> In order for your 20 Mile March to be truly effective, you<\/i> need to be the architect of it. Studies show that goals that are imposed by somebody else are decidedly less effective than goals that originate from within the person. Creating our own 20 Mile March 1) gives us a sense of autonomy, which is highly motivating, and 2) allows us to craft it to our specific needs, which ups the chances we\u2019ll actually succeed.<\/p>\n

    Don\u2019t should on yourself<\/a> by creating a 20 Mile March you think will please your parents, girlfriend, or friends. By all means, listen to their advice when they give it, but take what they say simply as that — advice. You decide whether to follow it or not. If it fits in with your individualized 20 Mile March, use it. If not, ignore it.<\/p>\n

    Also, following this element and the one above doesn\u2019t mean you should never<\/i> look at the 20 Mile Marches of other successful people. On the contrary, I highly recommend studying the lives of people you admire to discover what they did to achieve success. The key is to not simply copy the 20 Mile Marches of these folks wholesale, but rather to use them as inspiration and then to modify them to make the March your own.<\/p>\n

    5. A good 20 Mile March has a Goldilocks time frame, not too short and not too long but just right. Make the timeline of the march too short, and you\u2019ll be more exposed to uncontrollable variability; make the timeline too long, and it loses power.  <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

    With this element and the next, because they don\u2019t have a strongly resonant parallel to the race to the South Pole, I\u2019ll keep it short and simply talk about how they apply to your own life.<\/p>\n

    It\u2019s necessary to create a concrete timeframe in which to complete your goals \u2013 one that\u2019s long enough to accommodate any unforeseen setbacks, but short enough so you don\u2019t lose motivation and\/or experience burn out. For example, if you have a goal to lose 60 pounds, a two-month timeframe to achieve that goal is too short in order to achieve lasting success. Two years is too abstract and long. Nine to twelve months is likely the Goldilocks Zone — long enough to allow you to overcome any setbacks, but short enough that the tangible deadline will keep you pushing yourself.<\/p>\n

    6. A good 20 Mile March lies largely within your control to achieve. <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

    Don\u2019t set goals where you\u2019re not entirely in control of the outcome. So instead of setting a goal of getting into Harvard, or getting ten new clients \u2013 goals that depend somewhat on the behavior\/decisions of others — set a goal to get straight A\u2019s your senior year, or to call 100 new business prospects. Those are the kind of things you have complete control over.<\/p>\n

    7. A good 20 Mile March must be achieved with great consistency. Good intentions do not count. <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

    How this element applied to the race to the South Pole<\/b>. As discussed above, the key to Amundsen\u2019s success was consistency. Even if there were gale-force winds, Amundsen traveled his daily 15-20 miles. “Travelled completely blind,\u201d he wrote in his journal, \u201cnonetheless we have done our [daily] 20 miles.”  With slow, methodical, and dogged consistency Amundsen achieved his goal.<\/p>\n

    Scott on the other hand was inconsistent. Some days, when he was feeling strong, and conditions were good, he traveled 45 miles; other days he stayed huddled in his tent, unwilling to brave the harsh elements outside.<\/p>\n

    How this element applies to your own life. <\/b>Just as in the race to the South Pole, the victor in life\u2019s race is usually the doggedly consistent tortoise and not the sprint-and-snooze hare.<\/p>\n

    Barring life-threatening sickness or a family tragedy, put in your 20 Mile March each day. You\u2019ll have days when you won\u2019t feel like doing it. Maybe it\u2019s too cold for your daily 3-mile run or maybe you\u2019re too tired to write your daily 1,000 words for your book. Doesn\u2019t matter. Put on your knapsack and get marching.<\/p>\n

    Conclusion<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

    \"Vintage<\/a><\/p>\n

    I promise you that as you apply the 20 Mile March concept in your own life, you\u2019ll find greater success in achieving your goals. You\u2019ll gain confidence in your ability to succeed even when adversity strikes because you\u2019ll be putting in your 20 Miles even on days when it\u2019s hard and you\u2019d rather not. While you can\u2019t control everything that happens in your life, you can<\/i> control whether you put in your 20 Mile March for the day. As you see yourself steadily, consistently marching towards your goal, your motivation and drive will begin to increase, and will keep you going until you see your goal through.<\/p>\n

    What\u2019s your 20 Mile March?<\/i><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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