#868 On a Roll?

You know how I’m all about oscillating and recommend that we pretty much never work for longer than 90 minutes straight without at least a 10 to 15 minute break?

Well, I just violated that principle.

Twice.

Today.

(Hah.)

I had some aggressive targets with getting ahead on these +1s and planned to create a large quantum of time to focus.

So…

I got to work.

And got on a roll.

And kept going.

This is actually the 20th +1 I’ve written today. I hammered a big batch this morning when I went on an epic 3.75-hour Deep Work binge.

Then I hammered another batch after the Trail in another 3.1-hour Deep Work binge.

Of course, I oscillated micro-style via my 1,000-second countdown thing but still.

I kinda broke my own rules.

On purpose.

I rarely go that hard for that long but I always have some of Lanny Bassham’s wisdom in mind when I choose to. As we’ve discussed, Lanny wrote With Winning in Mind. He’s a gold-medal winning rifle shooter.

In his great (!) book, he tells a story about another world-class shooter with whom he was training. Pretty sure it was before he won his gold and this guy was currently even better than Lanny.

So… They’re training together. My recollection of the story goes like this:

The plan is to shoot for x period of time then take a break. Lanny does his regimen. The agreed-upon time has elapsed.

But his buddy just keeps on shooting and shooting and shooting.

I think Lanny might have gotten some lunch and then came back and then the guy finally stopped.

Lanny asked him something along the lines of: “What was that all about? I thought we were stopping after x minutes?”

The guy says something along the lines of: “I was on a roll. I keep shooting when it’s all flowing. I want to let that success-pattern groove itself into my consciousness.”

So, yah.

That’s what I was thinking about as I got on a roll and kept shooting Today.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I WOULD NEVER (personally) do that past my shutdown complete time. For a couple reasons.

First, my brain tends to be mush that late anyway so I rarely try to do super-challenging creative work then. (Match Energy to Task!!)

Second, I’m not interested in going all manic on myself and then getting ungrounded by violating my family time and great sleep habits, etc. I’m all about diligently, patiently and persistently showing up. Doing silly things that unnecessarily expose me to burn out isn’t that appealing to me any more.

So…

That’s Today’s +1.

Feeling inspired?

Keep your micro-1,000-second oscillations and consider hammering your creative shooting well past your normal stopping point.

But do honor the ol’ shutdown complete.

Leave some in the tank for the next day.

And shoot again.

+1. +1. +1.

(And, as my 1,000-second timer goes off… Now I’m done. 🤓)