The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 308 - Running 2024

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Pete.

Pete: Hello, Jen. I sense a pep in your step.

Jen: Oh yes, you do, because it's that time of year. It's time for Jen's annual running episode.

Pete: And the crowd goes wild. What the listeners couldn't see was both of us drumming our tables with a drum roll because we knew what was coming. I'm excited. The annual running episode, some sort of profound wisdom, undoubtedly, that you've had whilst out on one of your summer runs. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Okay, Peter. First, let me just say that this summer has been a little different than previous summers, in that I made a commitment to do my Mark Fisher Fitness workouts three times a week in addition to my running. So my running has been less of a daily thing and more of an in between my Mark Fisher workouts, which already is just like, "Oh, it's kind of fun to change it up." But that's not what I actually wanted to talk about today.

Pete: Right, right, right.

Jen: So when I run, I use an app called Map My Run, and it tells me how far I've run and how fast I'm running. And like, typically, I run basically the same distance, and then I turn around and I run home. So, that's like pretty routine. So the other day, I'm out on my run, and I'm six minutes into my run...and maybe this is TMI, sorry listeners. But I'm six minutes in, and I'm like, "Oh no, I just got my period. Shit, shit, shit. Better turn around and run those six minutes home, and take care of business." So I run home, I deal with what I needed to deal with, and I'm like, "Ugh. Well, now what do I do? Because this whole thing has been upended. Well, I guess I'll just keep my app going, and I'll just run for the normal distance I run and then turn around. So like, I'm just going to not run very far now. Because I've, you know, already ran twelve minutes, and now I've taken this break."

Pete: It's interrupted. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jen: Okay. So I head out the door and I start running again, and I get to the point where I'm like, "And now I should turn around." And I'm like, "Actually, I have a lot more energy. I'm going to keep going." So I ran twice the distance that I run during a typical run because I took a little break, an unexpected break, and then suddenly had a second wind. And as I was running that extra distance, I was like, "I think this is the episode. This is it. I think this is it. Life lessons from the run."

Pete: I mean, so many things to say. Firstly, I think we're going to make a playlist in this week's Box O' Goodies of the last, let's say it's like four or five years of running episodes, because they're so good.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And we've had listeners contact us, saying, "I can't wait for Jen's annual running episode." So this is it, folks. So I hear the wisdom from this being something around the reminder of the benefit of taking a wee break.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Not a wee break as in a bathroom break, but as in a little break. A little break or a bathroom break, as it were. And so, I mean, I kind of feel called out already. And we haven't even talked about it.

Jen: Yeah. I mean, that was a big takeaway for me, was like, I am the kind of person...or maybe up until this run, I've been the kind of person where I'm like, "I could just keep going. I could just push through. I don't need to stop." And this forced stop actually replenished my energy unexpectedly, to the point where I could go twice as far with just this little break. And it made me think of, in my Career Collective, that online community we have with the studio, we do these things called Productivity Power Hours, where we do twenty-five minutes on (this is, you know, the Pomodoro method), twenty-five minutes on / five minutes off, twenty-five minutes on / five minutes off. And that five minutes really does replenish your energy for the next sprint.

Pete: Yeah. It's also like a little doggy treat for our brain, to be like, "All you need to do is just twenty-five minutes, and then I'll give you a little break. Then you can go and stare at a wall or scroll your phone for five minutes, or go and stand outside in the sun for five minutes." It's like, "Don't worry, there's a reward there. You don't have to sit there for four hours and work. Or you don't have to run for sixty minutes straight up. Maybe I'll just run for twelve minutes and then have a little break, and then we could run a little bit more."

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: So one of the random things that came to my brain was, I guess, a cultural difference that I know to be true with certain Asian countries and also European countries (I'm sure there's others I'm missing) where there's an embedded culture of afternoon siestas.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: Or like, afternoon naps. And I'm sure many of our listeners have been traveling in various parts of the world where all of a sudden, at like two o'clock or three o'clock in the afternoon, all the cafes, all the restaurants are shut, all the shops are closed, and they close almost like entire towns at the same time, to have a nap, to have a break, to rest. And I just feel like there's probably some ancient wisdom in that, that you rediscovered on your run. That we, in our overly-caffeinated productivity culture that we live in certainly in Australia and in, you know, parts of America, where, I don't know, it's like that's become a weakness. That we've forgotten that breaks are a good thing. Why can't we say that breaks are a good thing? Why does that feel taboo?

Jen: Right. Well, you know what I find kind of fascinating about this idea of taking a break? Is that, if I hadn't taken the break, my assumption about myself was, "I actually can't run that far."

Pete: Ooh.

Jen: And so, I had no realistic sense of my own potential or capacity in that regard, because I had never worked a break in before. And that kind of blows my mind, when I think about sort of blowing that out over my whole life, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh. Where else do I not recognize my own potential and capacity, only because I haven't given myself a break?"

Pete: Wild, wild. I'm trying to think, I'm sure I have so many examples of this. I mean, you can't even think of them, I guess is the point, is, "Where are we telling ourselves a story about what we're capable of that is perhaps limiting because we're not either giving ourselves a break or just trying something different?" We're set in our ways of, "This is the distance we run," or, "This is the path that we take," or, "This is the way that we run a meeting or facilitate a workshop," and how are we limiting ourselves? Where are we limiting ourselves, because that's been our posture?

Jen: I agree. Okay, so here's an element of this break that I've been trying to figure out. How could a person actually do this for themself? The thing that was a critical ingredient here was that it was a completely unplanned, unexpected break.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And because I wasn't planning on it, it affected me in a specific way. And in thinking about this, I realize I have done this for other people. Like as an example, if I'm directing a show, I will sometimes...I'm laughing because it feels like such a non sequitur when it happens. I will sometimes just turn on Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars in the middle of rehearsal. We'll have, you know, a four minute surprise dance party, and then we'll get back to work. And it can be like such an energy shifter and such a refocuser, but it's because I'm sensing something in the room and I'm like, "These people need an unexpected break." What I don't know is how to give something unexpected to myself. Like, how could I actually make that happen? I'm like, "Could someone please invent a random alarm clock where it just like goes off at a random time of day and it's like, 'Do a five minute dance party,' or like, 'Walk outside,' or something random." People with tech skills, make me that app.

Pete: Make Jen that app. I'm sure it exists. Okay, so you reminded me of a...I'm not sure if it's a catchphrase. I don't know if my wife has a catchphrase. But she says this line often, which I have tried to incorporate into my own life, which I think speaks to what you're talking about. Which is, I'll often hear my wife say, "Oh, I need to change the energy in the room." Which is her way of saying, "I'm in a funk, or I'm like stuck, or I'm like trying to force this thing. I need to change something. Something needs to give." Or if we're hanging out with Ollie, and Ollie's starting to get, you know, frustrated or...what's the word I'm looking for?

Jen: I think the words you're looking for are "acts his age".

Pete: Yeah. If he's starting to act his age, i.e. one, we might go, "Oh, we need to change the energy. Like, let's go for a walk. Or let's go outside. Or let's change which room we're hanging out in." And so this like little reminder that she gives herself, and she often says it out loud, feels helpful in the sense that like we can give ourselves that prompt. But it doesn't quite answer your point, which is, "How do you add some randomness to it?" So that requires you to recognize, "Oh, I'm stuck in a funk. I need to change something," and you're suggesting that we need to almost randomize when that happens.

Jen: Yeah. I don't know how to do that. But like given the option, if, in that moment, you had said to me, "Would you like to take a five minute break, twelve minutes into your run," I'd be like, "Why would I do that? No."

Pete: Yeah. It's so funny, because if you offered that to me while I was running, I'd be like, "Oh, that'd be like cheating."

Jen: Right.

Pete: "I'm here to run. I'm not here to walk."

Jen: Exactly. And then, of course, I'm like, "Oh, wait. I, in years past, have run to this app where there's a coach like yelling at you while you're running. And very often, a couple minutes into the run, she'll say, 'Okay, slow it down and walk for two minutes.'"

Pete: Interesting.

Jen: And I'm like, "Oh. That is one way, in terms of running, to do that. But like, what about lifeing?"

Pete: "Okay, slow it down and nap for two minutes." "Oh. Alright, I'll do that."

Jen: Right.

Pete: So the Olympics are on at the moment, and I'm trying to figure out which sport, which event, is a beautiful example of incorporating rest, breaks, time outs into it. The team sports are the ones that come to mind. I was watching the women's hockey last night. Sadly, the Australians lost. And towards the end, as it's getting close and time is running out, you see teams take like random time outs to regroup and regather and take a break. So I guess they're intentional in the sense that the coach might be calling them, but maybe they're random for the other team. And there's a recognition that regrouping as a team or taking a deep breath and taking the momentum out of a game is a really important way to maybe try and wrestle back some momentum or to give oneself a chance to refocus. So, the sports metaphors are all around us. Like you said, though, how do we incorporate this into lifeing?

Jen: Well, now I'm having a totally new thought. Which is, maybe I misread the entire situation to begin with. Maybe it wasn't the rest, maybe it was the randomness that I was responding to. And when I think about the work I'm doing with creative people, how do I get the best work out of them? I often throw something they weren't expecting their way. And then, when I do that, I will often follow that up with, "And if that exercise felt useful in the moment, here's how to do it at home on your own." I wonder if I actually look for opportunities to inject some impulse, spontaneity, and randomness, rather than making it all about rest.

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: Is there perhaps a different takeaway that feels like something I could action or put into place, take some ownership of?

Pete: Yeah, I like this thread. And I feel like randomness is so hard to incorporate, because inherent in it is that it's so random. So, I'm having a hard time grappling with how I would inject that into my life. However, the word that I feel more excited about is "variety". What I feel like you're describing is, and you told this in the story, you usually run the same distance for the same amount of time in the same way, or maybe your time differs slightly depending on how fast you're feeling that day. And so, there's a routine there. Which, you know, there is many benefits to having routine and structure. And I feel like what you're recognizing is the variety of...unintended variety, in your sense. But adding variety, whether it's to a workout or to the way that we approach a creative task, feels like it could unlock certain things that we hadn't considered before. And maybe that's an obvious thing to say out loud. But I mean, there's a bunch of neuroscience about when you're trapped commuting to work, traveling in different ways to get to that or like taking a different route will change different parts of your brain because you'll connect different neural pathways, and that's actually a good thing for your creativity. So like, adding variety is a healthy way to stimulate one's brain. That's what I'm hearing now.

Jen: I agree with that. And I also think both things are true. Because I am immediately coming up with the things that I do to create randomness. For example, I'm going to do it right now. Folks, you've heard me do this before on an episode. I go to my contacts and I randomly scroll.

Pete: Oh yeah, she's doing it right now.

Jen: I'm doing Cellphone Roulette right now, friends. And then, I look at the screen, "Is there someone on this screen that I would like to reconnect with and send a little message? Yes. My friend / client, Ali, just appeared on my screen." And so, I am going to say to her, "Was just scrolling through my phone and saw your name. It made me smile. Love you." That's it. And then, I hit send.

Pete: And she literally just did that in real time. That's so cool.

Jen: And it's random. That is like random and spontaneous, and that makes me feel good.

Pete: Nice.

Jen: And then, I also do this thing called "Drop the Pen", which maybe I've spoken about on an episode before. I don't know. Have I ever talked about Drop the Pen?

Pete: I feel like I've heard you say it, but I want you to demonstrate it. She's holding a book in her hand, team.

Jen: Yeah. So I do this with actors all the time, where I will take a book...so, let's say someone's working on a piece in class. I will open the book, drop my finger (which makes no sense why I call it "Drop the Pen"), but I drop my finger, and what I just landed on is, "If they say yes," those are the words my finger just touched. So if I'm working on a scene with someone, I could say to them, "What happens if the other character says yes? Like, what if that is what's at stake?" You know, we'll find a way to use it. Or I turn to another page and I drop the finger, and I just landed on, "Don't even try to manage it." How do you incorporate that into the scene?

Pete: Oh my god, this is random. I like this. This is fun. I don't think I've played this game with you before.

Jen: So, I think both things are true. We need variety so that we can keep things exciting and fresh, and we need randomness to give us ideas that we can't even control.

Pete: Right. Oof. Well, I feel like hearing you describe randomness as a good thing is, at least for me, landing in an important way. Because I feel like one could easily tell themself a story when things don't go to plan or when your run gets interrupted, that, "Ugh, it's inconvenient. It's annoying. It's a pain. It's disruptive. It's ruining the thing that you were trying to do." But what you're actually saying is, "How do we look for the gift in the random? How do we look for randomness as a way to actually make the thing we're doing even better or more enjoyable or more fulfilling or more surprising?"

Jen: Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Well, Pete, I'll be going for a run in the morning. And while I don't wish to have the same literal experience, I will happily look for opportunities to be a bit more random. Maybe I'll take a right where I usually take a left. And listeners, I'll see you in about a year for the next episode of, "Jen has thoughts while running."

Pete: I speak for everyone when I say, we can't wait. We can't wait. And that is The Long and The Short Of It.