Walk Before You Run
Slow Down!
I’m usually the one telling people to move. There’s something magical about pushing forward. In the early stages of projects, you pick up knowledge faster. In the middle, you get more things done. And in the end, you accomplish more than you ever dreamed.
But what if you slowed down a bit?
I’m taking a different approach in this entry because I’ve been shown some examples recently of how we are moving too fast.
GPT, not GT
I’m not much of a car guy but I do remember when I was growing up that anyone who had a “GT” version of a vehicle was admired. The acronym stands for “grand tourer”. The Ford Mustang, specifically, was one car I remember having the coveted “GT” model.
Are circuit boards taking over the world?
Do some poking around the Internet and you’ll also see the term “gran tourismo” related to racing movies and video games. It’s all about speed!
Anything GT has to do with cars and racing and the love of speed.
I thought to myself, “What’s something else that deals with pace in today’s world?” I don’t know if it was because I had the “G” and “T” already in my head but Chat GPT came to mind. This is the hot new artificial intelligence (A.I.) technology from OpenAI.
I asked the computer to give me a 100-word (or less) description of what it is. Here’s what it spit out:
Chat GPT is an AI model developed by OpenAI. It builds on the GPT series, starting with GPT-1 in 2018. GPT-2, released in 2019, raised concerns due to its ability to generate human-like text. In 2020, GPT-3 emerged as a highly advanced language model with 175 billion parameters. Chat GPT, based on GPT-3, was fine-tuned for conversational interactions and introduced in 2021. User feedback and updates have helped improve its performance, addressing issues and enhancing its ability to engage in dynamic conversations. It represents the progress in developing powerful AI models for natural language understanding and generation.
Essentially, it’s like a digital assistant that can speed up information processes for you. It’s not a failproof copywriter or journalist.
A.I. is also about speed. You’re just lazy if you’re using it to do things so you don’t have to do them yourself. On the other hand, impactmakers that are using it to speed up their impact are the ones who will thrive and whose efforts will make a change.
With all of that in mind, you can’t run an impact project, or even a radically growing company, by making everything a race.
Use Chat GPT, not GT, to scale your efforts.
Fitness
I love talking about sports and exercise and you might think it would be a rough transition from A.I. to working out. However, Chat GPT makes it pretty smooth. I asked it to develop a fitness plan for someone trying to gain muscle mass.
Here’s what I got:
Certainly! Developing a fitness plan for someone looking to gain muscle mass involves a combination of resistance training, proper nutrition, and adequate rest. Here's a general outline to help you get started:
Set Clear Goals: Define your specific muscle gain targets, such as increasing overall muscle mass, targeting specific muscle groups, or improving strength.
Resistance Training: Focus on compound exercises that work multiple muscle groups simultaneously. Include exercises like squats, deadlifts, bench press, overhead press, rows, and pull-ups. Aim for 3-4 workouts per week, allowing sufficient rest days in between.
Progressive Overload: Gradually increase the intensity and challenge of your workouts over time. This can be achieved by increasing the weight lifted, performing more repetitions, or reducing rest periods between sets.
Proper Form: Learn and maintain proper exercise form to maximize effectiveness and minimize the risk of injury. Consider working with a qualified personal trainer for guidance.
Nutrition: Consume a well-balanced diet that includes lean proteins, complex carbohydrates, and healthy fats. Aim for a caloric surplus to provide the extra energy needed for muscle growth. Include foods like chicken, fish, lean beef, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and nuts.
Protein Intake: Ensure an adequate protein intake to support muscle growth. Aim for 0.7-1 gram of protein per pound of body weight per day. Good sources include lean meats, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy products, legumes, and protein supplements if necessary.
Hydration: Stay well-hydrated throughout the day. Water plays a crucial role in muscle function and overall health.
Rest and Recovery: Allow sufficient rest days between workouts to allow your muscles to recover and grow. Aim for 7-9 hours of quality sleep each night, as sleep is essential for muscle repair and growth.
Tracking Progress: Keep a record of your workouts, including exercises, sets, reps, and weights used. Regularly track your progress to monitor improvements and make adjustments to your training plan as needed.
Remember, it's always a good idea to consult with a healthcare professional or certified trainer before starting any new fitness program, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or specific considerations.
I love how it gives a risk management warning at the end. This makes me think that A.I. really isn’t that different than we are IRL (in real life). Even the computer is covering itself!
Back to the point…
Fitness is one of those things that we tend to rush. There are three things that come to mind:
We want to be in better shape now. It leads to manic states early in a new fitness plan, diet, or New Year’s resolution. We rush.
Working out, specifically lifting weights, requires varying paces and movements. We tend to rush the movements when we feel pain (the good pain that lactic acid causes). Any fitness professional, workout enthusiast, or even Chat GPT would tell you that “time under tension” is an important concept. We go faster to avoid it anyway.
We think supplements are replacements when they are actually, well, supplements. If we can’t get that straight, we resort to something that’s even more (performance-enhancing drugs…still just supposed to be enhancing); rushing the process.
Rushing is an obvious theme.
Impact Takes Time
Impact is very similar. Part of making positive change is finding the negative existence. It sucks, frankly. Who wants to go searching for bad things?
There are a lot of jobs that require us to react when bad things happen. This takes a special set of skills but they are not of primary importance to us in this contest. See last week’s E-Impact 154. It’s better to serve proactively in the impact space.
You could argue that impact is immediate if you are proactive. The moment you start searching for a problem you’ve already begun to make a difference. It’s certainly a journey to behold but what good is searching or even finding something if it doesn’t result in change?
You have to go through the pain to see the results. Just like you need to experience shortness of breath, lactic acid build-up, and acute muscular fatigue, you’ll need to deal with tension in your impact work.
Doing good often requires the following “bads”:
What’s stopping you from making and impact?
naysayers
worried family
political conflict
money concerns
lack of diversity
human pain
technology limitations
time crunches
health/medical risks
physical danger
There are plenty of others. Each time you run into one of them, time can be wasted. But I encourage you to not think of it that way. You’re not wasting time. You’re enduring the necessary evils that it takes to make a difference.
The impact you will make will feel that much more fulfilling when you’ve overcome the pain that it took to finish something.
Marathon Training, Or Not
I can’t get away from fitness. The best example of overcoming pain for triumph comes from Mrs. DePasquale - and me.
The December 8th , 2020 E-Impact talks about “The Lakes Marathon”. It was a 26.2-mile run that my wife did in our neighborhood in place of the New York City Marathon in 2020. She was scheduled to run it for Team Boomer that year but COVID-19 canceled the race. Thankfully, she was still able to raise some money for a good cause so there was still a great impact.
If you know the pain you have to put your body through to train and run for a marathon, you can skip the next couple of paragraphs.
Mrs. DePasquale and I love to exercise in the mornings and we do most days. On Saturdays, however, she is normally in marathon training. She runs longer distances in order to prepare for her next race. In 2020, she kept up her training even after the NYC Marathon was canceled. Every time she was done with a run I would put her through a massage and stretching routine to manage the body. I still do this. In fact, I just did this morning as she is training for the Chicago marathon this time around.
I hope I don’t seem like I know a lot about this subject because I have my own marathon training story.
The Dumbest Thing I’ve Ever Done
I stand by the fact that I am glad I did the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. It was an accomplishment and if nothing else, it will help me illustrate this concept.
I referenced this event in the December 15th, 2020 E-Impact in relation to The Lakes Marathon.
When my wife indicated she was going to run a half marathon over a decade ago, I told her she could do a full marathon. I was so confident that I said, “If I can, you can.” And so my “pursuit” to complete an Ironman Triathlon (the elements of) before I turned 30 began.
I knew that sheer time would not allow me to complete an entire Ironman in one day so I had to split it up. I can save the story of the bike ride and swim, which were both an event by themselves, for another entry.
The marathon was the first leg I would complete. It was scheduled for February 3, 2013. If you’re a National Football League (NFL) fan you might remember that this was the date of Super Bowl XLVII. The Ravens defeated the 49ers after a blackout happened in the middle of the game.
My “brilliant” plan was to get up really early and begin running at 4 am. I knew it would take me at least six hours to run 26.2 miles.
“Bob, why so long?”
Because I didn’t train. I was going to run an entire marathon without ever practicing.
I had no intention of going through some prior pain in order to prepare for such a grueling run. Looking back, it was certainly foolish. I had continued to exercise and this likely helped me survive but the small muscles, ligaments, and tendons that surround your joints were not used to this pounding.
It took me six and a half hours for me to finish. I had some friends and family come out at different times to join me for some laps and I had plenty of snacks in my pockets.
But wait, I said laps! Yes, I ran this marathon around the track at Tequesta Trace Park in my town, Weston, FL. I finished at 10:30 am and walked (wobbled) over to St. Paul Lutheran Church for the 11 am worship service.
Lord knows I needed to pray after that experience!
I remember sitting at my friend’s house for the Super Bowl with a bunch of ice, a lot of pain, and plenty of hunger.
Walking Instead of Running
I was determined to finish the marathon without walking. I’m not sure if you could have called what I was doing as running but I maintained some semblance of a trot for all six and a half hours. It wasn’t fun, but somehow determination, podcasts, friends and family, and food kept me going. I think the slowly rising sun had something to do with it as well.
If I were to prepare for a marathon properly, I would have started with that slow pace for months, maybe even a year, before the “race”. Even walking would have been productive at an early enough stage. My strategy was to “rush” into a long run and avoid walking.
This is a terrible mode of operation for impact work. You have to walk before you run.
Train for Impact
The goal is to move fast but I must leave you with three encouragements to start slow.
Burnout is real. If you’re not trained to move fast, you’ll tire quickly and likely end up wasting time in the long run.
Quality is important. Many things are better to do as effectively as possible and build pace as you go.
Opportunities are abundant. It’s hard to concentrate on anything but running when you’re in a full sprint. Walking enables you to see more chances for impact.
Even sprinters take time to get to full speed. You can’t rush the race of impact either.