Set Limits to Achieve Goals

Set Limits1 Set Limits to Achieve GoalsLim­its Schmimits

I’ll admit it. I’m a rebel at heart. When peo­ple zig, my instant reac­tion is to zag. As a kid I even rewrote Robert Frosts’ famous poem, The Road Not Taken, to match my own ten­dency: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I bushwhacked.”

My rebel­lious nature trans­lated into hat­ing lim­its. Well, I hated being lim­ited by anybody’s arbitary expec­ta­tions and inter­pre­ta­tions of my abil­i­ties. I actu­ally liked “lim­its” in that they gave me some­thing to strive to break through. I remem­ber as a kid, when told that it wasn’t safe to ride my bike down a steep trail, being obsessed with doing just that until I finally did (never mind that it was the scari­est two min­utes of my life and I lost con­trol of the bike).

I fought all kinds of lim­its with teeth and nails. Bed time, amount of TV I was allowed to watch, and whether or not I was able to go off-campus dur­ing recess. I wasn’t going to let some­one else impose lim­its on me and say what I could or couldn’t do. This atti­tude got me far in some cases. By chal­leng­ing the sta­tus quo I gained a rep­u­ta­tion for being cre­ative and a “go-getta”.

The Prob­lem With “No Limits”

There was a rather seri­ous prob­lem fes­ter­ing in my not accept­ing or even set­ting lim­its, though. In not set­ting bound­aries, I unknow­ingly lim­ited my abil­ity to achieve my goals. I wore myself out chas­ing after too much. “No lim­its” can be tir­ing as hell!

I recently fin­ished read­ing the book, The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Lim­it­ing Your­self to the Essential…In Busi­ness and in Life by Leo Labauta. In it Leo explains how set­ting lim­its goes hand in hand with achiev­ing goals. Lim­its allow us to focus our energy on what’s most impor­tant. With­out set­ting lim­its we aren’t able to focus. And with­out focus, we can’t achieve our full potential.

I clearly need to set more lim­its in my life if I really want to suc­ceed in a few key areas.

Lim­its are Impor­tant in a Good Run­ning Program

Set­ting lim­its and hav­ing focus is crit­i­cal in all areas of our lives, espe­cially when it comes to run­ning. If we’ve only run 2 miles at a time, for exam­ple, and want to run a 10-mile race, we can’t expect to set a per­sonal record in a 100 meter dash and run 20 miles dur­ing the same period. We need to focus all of our energy and time on train­ing for the 10-mile run. If we spread our time and energy out over many dif­fer­ent goals, we’ll likely end up achiev­ing none of them.

Para­dox­i­cally, lim­its help us achieve our goals. They help us focus and keep us from spread­ing our­selves too thin. Instead of chas­ing numer­ous dreams, decide exactly what it is you want to achieve and then set lim­its where nec­es­sary to enable you to focus on your goals.

But there’s so much to do!”

Set­ting lim­its can be dif­fi­cult. We have many impor­tant areas of our life that we can’t ignore. Fam­ily, work, par­ents, fit­ness, nutri­tion, per­sonal growth, chores, bills, and more. How do we decide where to place lim­its with­out suf­fer­ing severe con­se­quences? Well, I can’t answer that for you, but here are some lim­its that I am going to set for myself so I can find the time to con­tinue to run, spend time with fam­ily, and gen­er­ally take care of myself:

  • No unsched­uled TV, and only TV when I’ve been very productive.
  • No stay­ing up past mid­night, and hope­fully more like 10 or 11 – I’m just not pro­duc­tive enough to war­rant the seri­ous phys­i­cal and emo­tional investment.
  • No more than a 15% increase in the dis­tance of my weekly long run or total mileage from week to week.
  • Do not accept any new requests for work with­out tak­ing some­thing off of my plate.
  • No work email between 7 and 9 PM, and only emer­gen­cies after that.
  • No check­ing work voice­mail after I leave work.
  • I will cut my run­ning back if it inter­feres with fam­ily time (that’s hard to say, but it’s very impor­tant that run­ning remains a means to an end – a bet­ter me – not the focal point).
  • When not trav­el­ing, be at home for at least 3 fam­ily dinners.

Obvi­ously, these are just some of the lim­its I will need to set. There will no doubt need to be new lim­its estab­lished and adjust­ments made to exist­ing ones as I return to work and my sched­ule gets incred­i­bly busy. But if I don’t set lim­its now, I face cer­tain drown­ing upon return­ing to work.

Instead of see­ing lim­its as, well, lim­i­ta­tions, I now real­ize the free­dom they pro­vide me to achieve my goals.

What lim­its have you set, or plan to?

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  • http://www.paulpetch.com www.paulpetch.com

    I agree that lim­its need to be set to real that goal– and for me it was the trick­i­est part for me to come to grips with early on when i was train­ing for the ultra. Thank­fully i learnt my les­son early on as injury started to chew on my ankles as i increased the KM’s to much to soon.

    This would be my best advice to you while you chase your ultra goal– increase 10% per week. No more. And if you can;t run and skip a ses­sion– don’t stress. Also — if it becomes to tricky when run­ning– just walk– as long as you have time on your feet and are going for­ward– that’s all that counts.

    As for all the other “lim­its” or “rules” most in your list make total sense– but all “lim­its” and no play does get dull after a while. This is easy for me to say though as i’m still tak­ing it easy after the ultra and won’t be plug­ging away at any seri­ous KM’s on my feet until the new year. Say­ing that, I have a week of moun­tain bing bik­ing in Rotove­gas (North Island New Zealand) over new years so that should get the body in check.…..kicking and scream­ing no doubt after 3 weeks of “recovery” ;)

  • http://www.runningquest.net Clyn­ton

    Thanks Paul. I really appre­ci­ate the advice, espe­cially com­ing from an ultra fin­isher. You are absolutely right in say­ing play is impor­tant as is 10%. There will be tough weeks, for sure, but it will be impor­tant to not toss­ing every­thing out the win­dow if I skip a day or fall behind in my miles one week. It won’t be per­fect, but if I keep going, I’ll get there, eventually.

    Enjoy the bik­ing, that sounds terrific!

  • http://www.paulpetch.com www.paulpetch.com

    I look for­ward to fol­low­ing your train­ing and then you nail­ing that ultra! Happy trails!

  • http://simplyblog.net/ Miguel

    Great book by Leo. Thanks for shar­ing. You’re right, with­out lim­its we’re in for trou­ble. I just fin­ished read­ing Born to Run, talk about excite­ment. Nice site ya got going here, I plan on stick­ing around. :) Cheers!

  • http://www.runningquest.net Clyn­ton

    Thanks for stop­ping by, Miguel. Appre­ci­ate the feed­back on the site and look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing the conversation.

  • http://simplyblog.net/ Miguel

    Great book by Leo. Thanks for shar­ing. You’re right, with­out lim­its we’re in for trou­ble. I just fin­ished read­ing Born to Run, talk about excite­ment. Nice site ya got going here, I plan on stick­ing around. :) Cheers!

  • http://www.runningquest.net Clyn­ton

    Thanks for stop­ping by, Miguel. Appre­ci­ate the feed­back on the site and look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing the conversation.

  • http://twitter.com/gtdagenda Gtda­genda

    If you’d like a tool for set­ting your goals, you can use our web application:

    http://www.Gtdagenda.com

    You can use it to man­age your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and con­texts, use check­lists, sched­ules and a cal­en­dar.
    A Vision Wall (inspir­ing images attached to yor goals) is avail­able too.
    Works also on mobile, and syncs with Evernote.

  • http://www.runningquest.net Clyn­ton

    I’ll give the free ver­sion a try. I use a Palm Pre, so obvi­ously, would like some­thing that I could access on it.

  • http://www.runningquest.net Clyn­ton

    I’ll give the free ver­sion a try. I use a Palm Pre, so obvi­ously, would like some­thing that I could access on it.

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