The Spartan Way by Joe De Sena

Author:Joe De Sena
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

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WILL IT MAKE THE BOAT GO FASTER?

Spartan Race’s mission is to rip people off the couch and make them fit. To accomplish that mission, I knew I had to be truly Spartan, selfishly frugal with my time and energy. You must be frugal, too. With every decision, big or small, ask yourself, “Does this choice take me closer to my True North or further away from it?” This simple strategy will comb through your decisions, clearing out those unimportant ones that don’t align with your goals. This strategy has roots in an Olympic story about the British men’s rowing team that went from finishing near last at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 to winning Olympic Gold four years later in Sydney. England’s coxed eight team had consistently failed to medal or even make the finals in the major regattas. So they decided to change everything about their approach to training and working together. As the athletes prepared for the Sydney Games, the crew decided that they would ask themselves one clear and crucial question before undertaking any action either as a team or as individuals: Will it make the boat go faster?

Will extra training make the boat go faster? Yes.

Will putting more time on the rowing machine each day make the boat go faster? Yes.

Will partying on the weekend make the boat go faster? No.

For eighteen months, as they trained, these ordinary athletes answered yes or no to the question—will it make the boat go faster?—and on the day of the Olympic final, against all the odds, their boat went faster than any other boat in the race, and they took home their first Olympic title.

Everyone was shocked that the team had won, but those people were only looking at the rowers’ previous race results. They didn’t consider that the British crew had taken the time to identify what was truly important and had spent the last year and a half building on that. Their win didn’t come down to some mad, urgent dash to the finish line. It began in the many months running up to the games as these athletes recognized how to effectively manage their time. Every seemingly insignificant decision along the way, when stacked on top of one another, led them to a gold medal. At the same time, because they relentlessly questioned their actions in relation to their goal, the British rowers weren’t just prioritizing new actions; they were creating new habits.

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