How To Persist

In Effortless, author Greg McKeown speaks of how even the right pursuits can be exhausting because of how we’re doing them. There’s the identifying and deciding of the action, and then the discipline in determining how to do it sustainably.

This is similar to "Zone Two" training, a concept addressed in depth by Peter Attia, and one practiced by ultra endurance athlete Rich Roll among others. In an interview on The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, Rich Roll describes Zone Two training as a level of output that can consistently be achieved every day. It’s slower than what one is capable of (i.e. intentionally not max output), but can be maintained.

"It’s truly the ability to efficiently persist,” Roll describes in the episode. “The prize doesn’t go to the fastest guy—it goes to the guy who slows down the least.”

Results are experienced by the individual who slows down the least. Embedded in the physical practice of ultra endurance training is the Stoic virtue of temperance, or moderation—the paradox within it being that one can do too much of what is obviously good, too. A concise description of temperance is offered by Daily Stoic: "Doing the right thing in the right amount in the right way.”

The rightness of the act is defined by one’s larger intent; the amount is defined by what serves that intent, and the way, by what serves the intent in the agreed-upon amount.

Anything worth doing is worth making it easy for ourselves to keep doing. It is not a matter of pursuing what's easy, but rather, of making what's worth pursuing, easy.

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