I’m going to convince you to live your life a little more like a marathon runner and a little less like a Hollywood superstar.
But first, we’ll discuss a few lazy billionaires.
Jeff likes his 8 hours in the sack, doesn’t take meetings before 10AM, and is known to “putter” around in the morning, which means coffee, reading the newspaper, and having breakfast with his kids. High IQ meetings are scheduled before noon when he can carry that type of cognitive load.
He does not deadlift twice his body weight before the sun is up and then hustling to the office for a morning stand-up.
He is focused on something different.
Jeff said “If I make, like, three good decisions a day, that’s enough. And they should be as high quality as I can make them. Warren Buffett says he’s good if he makes three good decisions a year.”
Wow, Jeff. Pulling Warren down with you.
Warren Buffett is up at 6:45AM. On his way to the office, he’ll stop by Mcdonald’s to grab breakfast. He’s not busting his tail to be the first one in before the market opens.
Once he arrives at Berkshire Hathaway most of his day is spent reading. “I just sit in my office and read all day.” He estimates that 80 percent of his work routine is spent on reading.
“He reads the WSJ, NYT, Financial Times, Washington Post, the Omaha World-Herald. He reads some offbeat things like the NY Observer. He reads all sorts of trade press relating to the different businesses that Berkshire runs. American Banker, Oil & Gas Journal, A.M. Best, Furniture Today. There are stacks of reports from the different subsidiary companies on his desk.”
Alice Schroeder, The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
For God’s sake, the man reads “Furniture Today,” and he might be the only one. That is what he does. And it gives him an advantage, leverage, and improved judgment. He knows more than the next guy.
Reading, learning, thinking, preparing, and waiting for his opportunity to do what he is most famous for.
But mostly it’s just the reading.
“I like to sleep so I will usually sleep eight hours a night.” Warren heads to bed at around 10:00PM, reads for half an hour or so, then goes to sleep by 10:45PM.
Three decisions a day. Three decisions a year. Puttering and reading the day away.
Ben Franklin was not so different. Out of bed a bit earlier but keeping an open calendar that most of us would envy. Ignoring the important, so he could focus on the essential.
What Jeff and Warren and even Ben are doing is keeping the main thing the main thing and limiting distractions. It’s not about making hundreds of good decisions, it’s about the 2-3 great decisions that make an impact.
“Imagine someone comes along who has slightly better judgment. They’re right 85 percent of the time instead of 75 percent. You will pay them $50 million, $100 million, $200 million, whatever it takes, because 10 percent better judgment steering a $100 billion ship is very valuable. CEOs are highly paid because of their leverage. Small differences in judgment and capability really get amplified.”
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Are you with me?
Maybe Eliud Kipchoge can convince you. The two-hour marathon man does the runner’s equivalent of puttering and sitting around reading all day. Most of his schedule is made up of “easy” running. And that allows him to run 4:37 miles 26 times in a row on race day. Yes, faster than you can run a half mile downhill, maybe off a cliff.
26 times in a row.
But let’s take the time out of it. That’s all relative.
Here is Eliud’s weekly schedule:
Monday
6 AM: 12 miles easy
4 PM: 6 miles easy
Tuesday
9 AM: A track workout totaling 9 to 10 miles of speed, run at marathon pace or slightly faster, on a rough dirt track.
4 PM: 6 miles easy
Wednesday
6 AM: 12 miles easy
10 AM: 60 minutes of strength and mobility exercises
4 PM: 6 miles easy
Thursday
6 AM: A 19- or 25-mile run (alternate weeks)
Friday
6 AM: 12 miles easy
10 AM: 60 minutes of strength and mobility exercises
4 PM: 6 miles easy
Saturday
6 AM: Fartlek (13 x 3 minutes fast/1-minute jog)
4 PM: 6 miles easy
Sunday
Any time: 2 hours easy
He works at it every single day of the week, but mostly easy. And then on race day, it’s all gas.
Can you and I do it like that?
I think we can and we should, and it’s called working like a lion.
But how do we work instead?
Like a cow.
“We’d like to view the world as linear, which is, I’m gonna put in eight hours of work, I’m gonna get back eight hours of output, right? Doesn’t work that way. Guy running the corner grocery store is working just as hard or harder than you and me. How much output is he getting? Outputs are non-linear based on the quality of the work that you put in. The right way to work is like a lion.”
Naval Ravikant
“We are not like cows, meant to graze all day.”
“As a Modern knowledge worker athlete, you want to function like an athlete. Which means you train hard, then you sprint, then you rest, then you reassess.”
But many of us are working like cows. Clocking in and clocking out. Grazing on busy work and meetings all day. Making decisions about happy hour instead of business strategy. It feels good to check the box, to “accomplish” a few more than 2-3 things a day, but it doesn’t move the needle.
The problem with grazing is that you’ll never be satiated. And you’ll never be satisfied.
Newt Gingrich points out that “a lion is fully capable of capturing, killing, and eating a field mouse. But it turns out that the energy required to do so exceeds the caloric content of the mouse itself. So a lion that spent its day hunting and eating field mice would slowly starve to death.” Sound familiar? Your business, your career, they operate in the same way. “A lion can’t live on field mice. A lion needs antelope. Antelopes are big animals. They take more speed and strength to capture and kill, and once killed, they provide a feast for the lion and her pride. … So ask yourself at the end of the day, ‘Did I spend today chasing mice or hunting antelope?’”
And antelope don’t come around every day, so the lion sits around most of the time. Resting and readying itself for the next opportunity.
The alternative is really sad. I mean, Hugh Glass survived on roots, berries, and field mice for over 6 weeks as he crawled for his life, but he was in pretty bad shape. Chasing mice really is the desperate act of a dying man.
Things are not as bad for you as they were for Hugh, so you’ve got a chance to change your practices. But waiting around, preparing, and working like a lion instead of a cow, can be difficult.
Difficult because it doesn’t always feel like working. It doesn’t always look like training.
Keanu Reeves admits that he loves “a good couch, a little home, and then of course the itch starts, and then that’s a fever.” That time in between acting gigs is what he calls “working on working.” Preparing mentally, putting some feelers out, and maybe checking in with his agent. “You know, if you’ve been working and it’s been really intense for five or six months, you might not be thinking about being unemployed and working on working for a week or two” but eventually you get that itch.
Working on working is a great framework, and it’s where you actually want to spend your time.
That’s where Warren spends his time. Jeff does too.
When Eliud goes on those easy runs, he is working on working, he is preparing for the next big race.
But then something hits you. The fever.
And instead of working on working, you want to act, make deals, and push the tempo. And mistakes are made. Other people want you to do more than working on working as well. Your boss, your agent. The kids, a client.
“Don’t just do something, stand there.”
Lots of people
Your coworkers see empty space on your calendar and are quick to fill it up. Activity leads to productivity, right? Wrong. The great John Wooden said to never “mistake activity for achievement” and he’s still right.
Runners call it the gray zone. It’s not that slow, easy training. And it’s not that race pace either. It’s something in-between and it’s alluring. It’s alluring because you get a nice sweat going and feel the runners high. It feels like work, but it doesn’t have the desired benefit. It doesn’t help you get faster.
Wasted energy, poor strategies, and undesirable outcomes. You end up swinging at pitches outside the strike zone.
The way to fix this is to be more patient and spend more time working like a lion instead of a cow.
Putter like Jeff, limit decisions like Warren and clear your day like Ben. Spend most of your time in that easy zone like Eliud. Fight the urge to take action all the time and instead spend your days working on working, so when the real work arrives, you’ll be ready to pounce.
