Part 2: The productivity principle that works like a cheat code for doing hard stuff
A multi-part post inspired by one of the deadliest females on planet earth.
Coming in cold on this post? Catch-up on Part I
Only got time for a quick recap before your Turkish bath and massage? I got you:
I’m pushing through a run the morning after one too many Tiki themed libations with my brother - we’d been celebrating the successful flagship delivery of my Effective Goal Setting for Stressed-out Founders Workshop - because; when you’ve wrestled with your ideas and experiences to the point where you can effectively deliver them to a live audience and they don’t throw rocks at you, you celebrate.
There’s a fork on this particular running route that will circumvent a bluestone staircase: around 30 m of altitude gained in 5 m latitude.
‘The Bastard Stairs’
On this occasion it would be so easy to choose the chill path; a gentle 800 m incline.
I attack The Bastard without a second thought.
Why?
I’d leveraged a productivity principle imparted to me by a human literally rewriting history in the combat sport of Muay Thai (aka The Art of 8 Weapons). That (alleged) human is Sylvie von Duuglus-Ittu - The Westerner with The Greatest Amount of Professional Muay Thai fights of all time.
272 professional bouts and counting.
…
When someone, who has a track record of meeting their impossible goals, tells you how they do it, you listen and learn.
Or you stupid.
Side note; Sylvie was my second (ever) podcast guest. You can check out the episode here. Note the nervousness in my voice? A bi-product of finding yourself in the bizarre/blessed position of facilitating a candid interview with one of your heroes, over a patchy Skype connection in a Chiang Mai hotel room. Your guest is driving toward their next fight and their legacy. You legitimately have no fucking idea what you’re doing.
A testament to doing shit that scares you before you think about it too much.
Rewind: I’d been watching one of Sylvie’s Vlog posts regarding her hardcore training regime. Specifically; I wanted to know how she’d maintained such a high cadence of hardcore training sessions (think two, two-to-three hour sessions a day that include a combinations of sparring, running, weights, bag and pad work - all facilitated by maniacal-hyena-laughing-Thais. Their only response to any indication of needing a break (aka weakness) being to laugh, increase the pace and sneak in a strike when you’re vulnerable). Good times.
The kind of training one would need in order to be competitive at the highest level, of one of the most dangerous combat sports, for over a decade.
Sylvie's logic was thus: if she decided whether to train on a given day, then factors such as fatigue, her emotional state, the thought of having to train for 6 hours in a sweat-and-blood-stained stable with seasoned professionals and adolescent Thai males (feat. adolescent Thai male mindsets) would all play a significant factor in her whether-to-train decision making process. Net result? Less training sessions.
Having recognised this flaw in her terminator bios, she made a pact with herself (as one does when they are a terminator) to only ever decide not to train the night before the next day's planned sessions.
No matter what she felt like the morning of the session, unless she was physically incapacitated, she was in that gym, putting in work.
A hardcore approach demanded by a hardcore pursuit.
Inspired; I began to experiment upon myself (as tends to be my wont)...
Stay tuned for the next episode…
Be your EPIC
- Michael (Mike) Drohan
We out. 🙇