A few weeks ago I started on an aggressive journey towards bettering myself. One of the things I starting doing is jogging regularly, at least 3 times a week. I figure that I can now comfortably do a 5k without much difficulty, though the course I run only goes 2.3 miles so I'll have to test that later this week. I don't necessarily do this for weight loss. It does help, but I do body weight exercises for that purpose. I jog it for 2 reasons. The first reason is to increase my stamina for the touch football games I play with coworkers over the summer. The second reason is that when I get tired and want to give up I force myself to keep going. I hope that this builds the determination I need in other areas of my life.

One of the times I went for a job recently I decided to start at full speed and then slow down and go at a steady pace the remaining time. After doing this I realized that this was a mistake. Many times when I start on something I have a lot of energy and enthusiasm for it. I get a strong surge of motivation to begin, but it burns up as fast as it comes. I talked about this a bit in my previous post about micro-quotas. Near the end of this particular run I was dead tired and had the strongest urge to give up. Luckily I have a bit of determination when I jog, but it is not as easy to keep going in other areas of my life. If I do things like this in other areas of my life I will fail at them.

Now when I go for a jog I end it with a sprint. There is red mailbox that I cross as I approach my house, and I use this marker to tell me to start sprinting. At this point I am tired, but the end is in sight and I know I need to finish strong. When I am done I am extremely tired, but now I don't need to run anymore.

This is the approach I need to take in other areas. Start at a steady pace. Control motivation, get into a rhythm, and when I see the end is in sight, that is the time I need to hustle. The best people in the world learn to finish things. I think if I sprint the last leg of my job I am hoping that will help me to transform into a strong finisher.

If nothing else I hope it will help me to never make the mistake that this guy did:

[embed]https://youtu.be/D63PQPuvQ3Q[/embed]