I recently came across a clip from the Joe Rogan podcast on YouTube featuring Firas Zahabi (gotta love YouTube recommendations), contrasting the way that Russian wrestlers train and the way Americans train, and why the Russians had enjoyed so much success. In the clip, Zahabi explains that Russians never train themselves to exhaustion, and so they never need to recover. This was quite intriguing to me because it had been engrained in me, as it has a lot of people, that you’re not really training if you don’t feel sore the next day, and that you want to break down those muscles so they can build back up. But Zahabi says “no,” the Russian approach is totally the opposite. He says you should enjoy the workout and you should always leave it wanting to do more so you’ll be excited to come back and do it again the next day. Over time, with this level of consistency, you will have trained much more frequently than the person that exerts themselves to the point of muscle failure and having to take days off.
And Zahabi is actually not alone in this regard. The late, great Kobe Bryant had a similar explanation for the reason he was able to totally dominate his opponents. For him it was simple: if he woke up earlier, he would have more opportunities to train. So over time, it wouldn’t matter what advanced techniques his opponents were using to train, because Kobe had consistently trained more.
Let us juxtapose the world of sports training with the world of business and the general way we approach the workday. Especially as entrepreneurs, it is engrained in us that we must grind all day and all night. It’s the “hustle culture.” But honestly, for most people, I don’t think that is sustainable. In fact, I wonder how many entrepreneurs would attribute their failings to being overwhelmed and just burnt out. We all know that the outset of a business idea is perhaps the easiest part to be motivated for. You’re excited and have all this energy and high expectations, much like embarking on a new workout routine (especially a really challenging one). But once that soreness starts kicking in and its hard to get out of bed, or those cravings kick in because you abstained from literally every kind of food you used to enjoy. How hard is it then to not fall off the wagon?
This used to happen to me over and over again. In business, in dieting, in exercise, etc. So I started applying what I will now call the “Zahabi method” with added workflow twist. Everyday, I open up my Trello board and I set myself a goal that I know I can reach that day (for my project managers out there, we call these SMART goals: Specific, Relevant, Attainable, Relevant, Time-based). The rule is: I do no more than the goal that I set for myself that day. After that, I close my laptop and I’m done. Some days, I absolutely feel like I could do more, but instead, I take that extra time to enjoy my day. I’ll read a book in the park, go to salsa class, maybe play XBox or something. But what I learned in doing this, is that I’m always excited to get back to work the next day. Part of that is because everyday I see myself achieving what I set out to do, instead of once again plunging into an endless mountain of tasks.
Now contrast this with the daily office life I’m sure many of you reading this are accustomed to. I’m sure we have all had days where we are working from 9 to 5, but there simply isn’t 8 hours of work to do, or the opposite, there’s definitely more than 8 hours of work but you don’t know where to stop. There were some days where I experienced the absolute worst feeling, which was “I don’t know if there’s really a specific thing I need to do in this moment, but I know I’ve got to be doing something.” Especially when the regional manager is in town or something, then I couldn’t even leave the office until they were sure that I was sufficiently sweaty, disheveled, and overwhelmed-looking. I’m not even kidding.
So what is my life like now that apply the Zahabi method to everything? I wake up naturally at 7 am, not 5 am like I used to force myself to try to do. I get up excited to go to the gym everyday (although, to switch it up, I’ll do yoga on Sunday instead). I’m only at worst minimally sore. Because I’m not sore and fatigued, I’m no longer pounding three cups of coffee a day, I’m down to just one cup. When I open my laptop, I feel motivated to crush my goals that I set for the day (Zahabi also describes the concept of “flow,” which is working hard enough so that you’re not bored, but not so hard that you’re straining and would demotivated to do the workout another time). Even though I always know there’s more to do, I do not feel overwhelmed, because I am confident that my routine is sustainable for the long-term. The result has been astounding. Suddenly, the goals I set for all of 2022 don’t seem like enough.
I challenge you to find a similar “flow” for your “workflow.” Are you sufficiently challenging yourself at work, but allowing yourself to either step away when it gets to be too much or just going through the motions when there’s just not really anything to do? Try it!
