Lanny Bassham won a gold medal in rifle shooting. We’ve talked about him and his wisdom from With Winning in Mind a number of times.
Today we’re going to chat about another little story from that great book. Here’s the rough take.
Lanny almost won a gold in his first Olympics. But he says he kinda choked and wound up with a silver instead. Then he studied the most elite athletes to get his mind right and win gold the next time around. (Which he did.)
So, one day Lanny was training with another REALLY good shooter. They both got to work. Lanny did what he wanted to do and got up to take a break. His buddy kept on shooting and shooting and shooting and shooting and shooting. Like a crazy amount of shooting. (Laughing.)
After the session was over, Lanny asked his buddy, “What’s up with that? I thought we were going to do X and you kept on going and going?”
His friend said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Lanny. I was just hammering it. I was so in the zone. When you find that sweet spot of flow you’ve gotta ride it and imprint all the ‘that’s like me!’ energy you can.”
So…
Why am I sharing this story?
Because I’m writing the first draft of this at 6:41 am. I got up kinda crazy early this AM and I’ve already put in nearly two and a half hours of work on the next batch of +1s. I had a simple target for today and then kinda got on a roll and the ideas were flowing.
So…
Although I’ve been hammering my burpees (I’m 88 in for the day so far) and pull-ups (check the box on today’s installment of “10”) and taking my micro breaks every 1,000 seconds plus a 5-min break after my first hour of work, I’m kinda in the zone and letting it flow.
And, I thought you’d like to know about this cool idea.
So…
Today’s +1. Create the space to go Deep. Single-mindedly focus. Start. Finish. Repeat. Oscillate.
And, when you’re feeling it, keep shooting. 🤠
P.S. We all need to find our own idiosyncratic rhythms but one thing I’ll pretty much never do is work hard past 5pm. I’ve learned too many times that sleep is my #1 self-care practice and that there’s nothing I’m going to do that late in the day that justifies disrupting my early AM super-clear-minded Deep Work mojo. Enter: Shutdown complete.
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