Succumbing to the path of least resistance: how to win the war
“Are you still swimming at all, Sally?!” asked Helen, searching my face for the reason that she hasn’t seen me swimming at my masters club for around a year.
“Yes, Helen! Of course I’m swimming! How could I not be?” I protested, aghast.
I am a Swimmer. Swimming is who I am.
It course-corrects me. It makes me calm, and serene, alive.
It makes me feel strong, and confident, and able.
It stops my brain from chattering as I concentrate on the rhythm of my stroke. 1, 2, breathe — 1, 2, breathe...
It slows down my world for just enough time for things to begin to make sense.
It makes me happy.
And when I am happy, it makes me happier still.
It consumes and defines me.
And yet despite all of this, sometimes, I can’t be bothered.
Sometimes I succumb to the path of least resistance: the sofa, the comfort of a cup of tea. Sometimes I just don’t want to swim, I want to hide. Although at weekends I relish a swim, on a work day I mostly won’t get out of bed for a swim, preferring instead to sleep an extra precious hour. After work I’m often too tired and wound up. Sometimes I’m sorry to say I dread it.
Which me wins in this frequent tug of war? This year, I’m pleased to report, the hard working stubborn version of me won. At the close of 2019 I tallied my year of swimming miles — and smiled. In 2018 I swam 377km, in 2019 I swam 655km: almost doubling the previous year’s total.
I’d love to say that the sheer love of swimming, alongside ample opportunity, drove me to my significantly higher total in 2019. But it wasn’t. My secret was simple: target setting.
In February 2019 I decided, on the spur of the moment, for a reason I cannot now recall, to give myself an loose target of swimming at least 50km per month for the year. It was a pretty arbitrary amount, a nice round number that I plucked out of nowhere, for no good reason. Previously, in a good month, I might have averaged between 35 and 45km. I hadn’t swum more than 50km in a month for 5 years. Nevertheless I persisted.
I swam over 50k in February and felt so proud of myself. I’d set myself a goal for that month and achieved it. My first small step towards a year of 50k months. From then I figured out more or less what needed to be done to consistently hit my monthly target. 4 swims a week, each of at least 3k, with slightly longer swims at the weekend. It was easy to hit a monthly target if I kept more or less to that routine, hitting a steady 12–15km per week. And the more months I hit my 50k monthly target, the more I was determined that I’d have to keep it up for the year. This meant not even countenancing letting myself slack or ‘have a bad month’ — as that would mean I’d have to start again. The days I wanted to sit on the sofa with a cuppa I would give myself a stern talking to: “What about that 12k a week? If you don’t go today you’ll be making it more difficult to reach that target and you’ll only have to swim more at the weekend.” I didn’t want to let myself down. And so I’d go. Again and again and again.
In management theory, and in sport, there is much talk of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and of how intrinsic motivation is a more powerful tool for success. Extrinsic motivation gets a bad press. In my experience both are needed to reach your goals and succeed. Unfortunately, life is not all fairy tales and irridescent mermaid tails and joyousness. Sometimes the water calls, and no matter how beguiling you know it will be, you say fuck off I’m having a bad day. Data doesn’t care about your bad, sad, lazy days though. Your sins will find you out. In the dark days I had in 2019, when sometimes I lost the memory of how wonderful the water made me feel, it was my fear of failing to reach my self-imposed goals that pushed me on, and packed me off to the pool when I was tired, or sad, or stressed.
Ultimately my desire to nudge the points on my graph over the 50k mark each and every month of 2019, and prove to myself that I could complete the thing I said I would, were greater than my desire to hide from the world. And, the funny thing? Once I was in the water, I never regretted a swim, not 1km of the 655km. Go figure.
If you liked this article, please clap the clappy things below to show your appreciation. Click the (Follow) button if you’d like Medium to alert you when something new is published
