Sprint vs. Marathon Challenges: How to Succeed at Both

Different approaches can help you meet your goals, whether they are sprints, marathons, or life-long challenges

August was a bit of a steep learning curve for me. I took part in a number of challenges. Two were monthly challenges, another was a set of four-hour task-driven sprints on three different occasions that I’m likely to continue on a weekly basis. The last one is an ongoing, for all time, challenge.

Two of the challenges (daily journal writing and a social media challenge) showed me how best to succeed in 30 day marathon challenges (ie: make it to the finish line). The third showed me how to get my book completed in sprints. For transparency purposes, my non-fiction book isn’t finished yet. I am only 12K of the 35–50Kish words in, but I now know exactly how to finish the draft.

However, in running these four challenge experiments in August, I stumbled upon how to make the most of the three different types of challenges.

Making the most of sprint challenges

As part of my four-hour writing sprints with UK-based Writer’s HQ, I had another go at using the Pomodoro technique. for those that aren’t aware, Pomodoro technique uses 25 minute long focused sprints, broken by 5 minute breaks with a longer 15 minute break at the 2hour mark.

While lots of people swear by it, some swear about it. I’d tried using it previously and it really didn’t seem to work for what I was trying to do. I needed longer swathes of time to get into deep focus — especially if I was writing difficult client work or coding websites. Just as I was getting going, getting into my train of thought, it would be time for a break.

And the first time I tried it for my writing sprints, I had the same experience. I’d just get going and break. So I often worked through the breaks, turning what was a sprint into a marathon. Even when I was ‘taking a break’ I stayed at the desk, catching up on email, doing social media engagement for another challenge.

For the first sprint, I’d originally set myself a goal of 4,000 words in four hours. I knew I could write 1000 words an hour, reasonably easily — my journalling shows I can pound out 1000 words free flow from my brain in about 30 minutes — so, it would be easy right? Wrong!

What I didn’t take into account was;

• how tired I would get writing for 4 hours (I only managed 2800 words, not 4000)
• the actual necessity of real breaks
• the speed of writing a book is different to other types writing. I wanted to sound like I had a vague clue what I was talking about and that was, in fact, different to dumping journalled brain vomit onto the page
• the hour at which I started my sprint — 6pm, the end of my day (which was far more sprightly 9am for the UK folks) and what that meant for the goal I’d set myself.

Yeah, if you’re laughing at how daft that seems in hindsight, me too.

The next sprint, I changed things up a bit. I did it during my regular day 1–5pm (because I wasn’t limited to taking part with the UK folks this time). I actually made sure I took the breaks. I finished my sentence and then pushed back from the computer, got up and did something completely different for my breaks. I got a cup of tea, painted my nails, walked around my house, played with the dog, picked flowers from the garden to put on my desk and wonder of wonders, managed to find that my 5 minute break was just long enough to do my physical therapy exercises I was having trouble remembering to fit into my day.

I wrote 3000 words that session (and the next), which I’d made my peace with given I wanted mostly good words, not random ones. BUT…I felt energised when I’d finished, not totally slaughtered.

The key to getting the best from sprint challenges?

1. Breaks matter — you need to use the break to refresh your brain so you can go hard for the next 25 minute session. My suggestion is that whatever you do, have it be profoundly different from what you’re using your Pomodoro task time for.
2. Use your breaks to pin new habits into your routine. For months, I’d been trying to figure a good place to fit my physical therapy exercises into my day. Even though they were important (grumble, grumble), there was no easy place to put them and so whether they were done or not on any given day was a bit random. Until… I discovered their perfect fit within my Pomodoro breaks.

I’d also, don’t laugh, been lamenting my nails having been unloved for many months — again no real regular time to fit that in (aka forgetting) — and voila a Pomodoro break is perfect for painting on a coat and 25 minutes for letting them dry whilst you type. You might use such a break for planking or meditation or pulling weeds — whatever you want to get done — that you can’t seem to fit in anywhere else.

Getting through marathon challenges

Succeeding in 30-day or month-long challenges, even if they only require an hour or less of your time each day can be hard to turn up to. Every. Single. Day. They require that sloggy, dogged day, after day, after day, type of commitment. But…

As I discovered from tracking the 30 day challenger participation rates, more than 50% of those that started, dropped out somewhere between day 5 and day 10. And if you can make it past day 14, you’re waaaaaay more likely to stick it out to the very end (about 40% completed both challenges). It’s probably one of the main reasons why so many New Year’s resolutions rarely make it to the end of January.

The key to getting the most from your marathon challenges?

1. Think about where in your current routine the challenge will work best in advance. One of the best things I did with my two 30 day challenges was to sit myself down and think through how the challenge would fit into my day. What would I do before and after it. What time would it happen. What would I do if things didn’t quite go according to plan? I sketched something out and then stepped myself though it in my head. The first iteration felt clunky. So I swapped a couple of things around and it all fell into place.
2. Tweak if necessary. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. So, if it’s not worked, re-look at where the glitchy bit was and re-step through with a tweak here or there until it feels right.
3. Pin your marathon challenge to another established habit if you can. I pinned my journaling challenge to my meditation habit. They seemed to go nicely together. But as I discovered, the whole was greater than just the sum of the parts; so the two together usually added to three or four rather than just two.

Embracing the life-long challenges

One of my key life-long challenges, aka the thing that no-one’s following me up on, nor reminding me to do, is my daily meditation. A while ago, I made the choice to sit for just ten minutes and do a guided meditation with Calm.com.

Whilst I’ve discovered nothing drastic happens if I don’t do it, I’ve also found my day tends to flow better if I do, even if it’s just in my own head.

I also know finding that 10 regular minutes, yep just 10 little minutes, regardless of whether it’s for something super important or just for a bit of fun, if not planned into my day in a way that’s super sustainable, will likely not happen.

So first thing in the morning, generally when the house is quiet, has been assigned as my special ‘me’ time. I treat it as a standing appointment with myself. Nothing else happens in my day until this is done.

I’ve even gone so far as to pin other habits to it to make sure they happen.

The key to getting the most from your life-long challenges?

1. Make it about you. Meditating isn’t something I ‘have to do’ or am forced to do. I choose to do it. It’s just for me, so I treat it as sacrosanct. A special moment of me time. Even though, sometimes (often) I suck at meditating and get distracted — it still counts as ‘me time’.
2. Find a way to build other habits around it. Pin it to other habits that are ‘just part of your day’. Have it become your cultural norm — it’s just what we do around here. Creating a ‘habit cascade’ can be a powerful thing.
3. Get a big, dopamine inducing tick-box tied to it. As much as meditation feels great, there’s nothing like a good dopamine hit of ticking the box to mark it as done, after the fact, for the day. I like coach.me’s habit check-in button. I’ve become a big fan. I love that I get to check-in on all of my habits each day and hit the big green button.

There you have it. Three different types of challenges that you might undertake and how to get through them.

Most important of all with challenges of any type?

Just start. Keep going. Find a way to engineer the challenge into your life. Start small and build if you need to from there. Keep showing up. Learn from the process. Rinse. Repeat.

That’s what makes for a good challenger.

Kristin Austin is the creator of the 1st in business revenue building game. And is writing an e-book version because it’s much, much easier to ship. Thanks for reading. You can also hire me as a habit coach to help you build your sales revenue.

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