Recognizing Limits to Make Progress — Part 1

I used to look at limits as weakness and do what I could to ignore them and do my best to try and push through them, without giving them the chance to get in the way or slow me down on the race toward achievement. This seems like a good place to pause and rethink my definition of achievement, however for now I’m going to leave that for a different time.

The limits I’m referring to here are limits related to how much I can get done in a certain period of time and how far and hard I should push until taking a break. Many people refer to the former as productivity and the break I mention could take the form of anything from a quick pause in thought, to stand-up, stretch and take a few deep breaths, to a weeks-long, unplugged and disconnected vacation, to anything in between those two extremes. I originally thought I’d write about both ideas here, however as I’m getting into this post, I think it’s better to address the former today and the latter in a coming-soon Part 2.

I used to think that the more productive I can be, the better off I will be, since increased productivity would result in traveling down the road to achievement faster and the achievement would be bigger when I arrived. So I studied productivity and became as efficient as I could humanly become. The problem with this approach, at least for me, was that the more efficient I became, the more I tried to cram into every minute, including the time that was being freed by the efficiency improvements. Initially, my limits were set by poorly-defined goals that were tied to achievement. What I discovered and am still discovering is that these were not effective limits, since the second I achieved one goal, it was on to the next one, and the next one, and then the next one…

As a result, I started running faster and faster…