When we’re trying to achieve something that matters to us, it’s tempting to want to sprint out of the gate. The problem is that going too fast at the beginning will almost always slow us down the rest of the way. The costs of this boom-and-bust approach to getting important projects done is too high: we feel exhausted on the days we sprint hard, drained and demoralized on the days we don’t, and more often than not we wind up like those British explorers, feeling battered and broken and still no closer to achieving our goal. Luckily, there is an alternative. We can find the effortless pace.
