Ep 385 | The 20 Mile March

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Today I want to talk about the 20-mile march. What the heck am I talking about? The 20-mile march is this concept that was put together by an author. You may know him, his name is Jim Collins. Jim wrote some amazing books, Good to Great, then he wrote Great by Choice. I believe in Great by Choice is when he talks about this 20-mile march concept. And I want to talk about this here today because I think it applies in every one of our worlds, whether you're in business or not. Even though Jim is a business author, I think this applies throughout life, throughout relationships, throughout health, and, and of course in your business pursuits. So this 20-mile march concept describes what Jim would call a disciplined approach to achieving success. And the approach to achieving success is to maintain consistent, steady progress regardless of external conditions. So the idea is based on, of course, this metaphor of a grueling journey, a long journey where the key to success is to commit to marching 20 miles every single day, no matter the weather. You're not overexerting yourself when conditions are favorable, and you're not underperforming when things get tough. Now, he told this story to kind of demonstrate this. What he used was an example of two teams in a race to the South Pole in 1911. These two teams, you know, one was led by a guy, last name, uh, Amundsen, and the other one was led by a guy last name Scott. Amundsen's team, what they did was adhere to this 20-mile march rule. So every day they would advance a set distance, this 20 miles, no matter the weather. So on good days, they actually didn't push too hard, and on the bad days, they pushed just enough to keep moving forward and get those miles in. Now, Scott's team, by contrast, would go long distances on the good days and then barely moved or even rested during the bad days. At the end of it, Amundsen's team that followed this disciplined, consistent approach won this race. Amundsen led his team to success. Scott's inconsistent effort ultimately led not just to their failure but their disaster. So what was learned? What can we draw from this concept of the 20 mil— 20-mile march? Number 1, success is achieved not by spectacular, spectacular breakthroughs, but by disciplined, sustained effort over time. Do the work daily and do it consistently. Time on task is going to trump talent. So do the work consistently, day in and day out. Be disciplined and sustained over time. And oftentimes that's what creates success versus spectacular breakthroughs. Next, external conditions, which in our world is the economy or our industry, uh, legal challenges, the market. These external conditions, the reality are they're beyond our control. But maintaining steady progress despite these external conditions is what makes for great companies, what makes for great individuals. So control the controllables. Right? You can't, you can't do anything about the hand that you've been dealt, but you can do something about the effort and the commitment that you make each and every day. And then lastly, in terms of lessons from, from this 20-mile march story, the concept of 20-mile march really helps us avoid these extremes, these extremes of either burnout through overperformance or stagnation due to, to fear or adver— or adversity. So in essence, this 20-mile march concept is about consistent and controlled progress in any endeavor, which leads to longer-term success and durability. Now, I think this 20-mile march concept applies throughout all sorts of things in life, not just business. Let's take relationships for instance. If we think about Amundsen and Scott, the two individuals that were competing, and we use the kind of the same strategy they each deployed. Amundsen would have, you know, as it pertained to relationships, each and every day made a contribution to that, that relationship. Not too little, but not necessarily trying to overperform either. Every single day consistently, he would plug into a relationship and give something of himself. Whereas using the same analogy, What you might have seen out of Scott was on certain days going all in, pouring into that relationship, but then on other days maybe neglecting it, not even showing up at all. I don't know. I mean, you kind of think about those two, those two different strategies there. While Amundsen may not have some, some crazy success one day, he also limited his underperformance. And I would think contributing to that relationship over time, doing the work each and every day, probably would make for a stronger relationship than showing up on some days and underperforming on others. How about in your health? If you take your diet or your workout or whatever it is you want to choose in, in health, I think we all know that consistently performing each and every day, being disciplined, having restraint, preparing for the, the obstacles, the adversity that you're gonna encounter, focusing on what you can control, doing this stuff day in and day out, each and every day, is going to serve you better than working your ass off one day for 4 hours and then taking the next day off and taking the day after that off, but then going back out and working hard for 3 hours and taking a day off, taking a day off. Bottom line is there's a habit that's being created through the daily activity and the consistency over time is going to make for improved health. Ultimately, this very much applies in business, right? And this is what we're all, you know, usually focused on here at No Days Off. In your business, that 20-mile march, hitting the standard each and every day, is going to serve you better than getting some big wins and then taking the week off. At No Days Off, we've talked about it quite a bit. Where we talk about you've gotta aim to win the day. Every single day, understand what it takes to win, to get a W. Have it very clearly defined. Make sure it's objective and not subjective. Make sure you can measure it and you're not guessing as to whether you won or lost. If you can stack a win every single day, not only will it create massive momentum, because that's how you create momentum, right? By winning, by creating small wins and stacking them. And then those small wins lead to big wins, not only will you create more momentum, that consistency will lead to success. So winning the day is critical in business, and I think this 20-mile march is just another way to talk around that, you know, that win-the-day objective. So in summary, I think the focusing question for you right now: what is it that you're working on in your personal world or in your professional world where you've got to make some decisions around your approach and you're choosing to either follow this 20 Mile March protocol, doing some work every single day, a minimum amount of work. And by the way, this minimum is not a low bar. It's a stretch, especially when you face external, external adversity, but you still get the work done. You make a decision to do that, or you make a decision to do it a little bit differently. Where in your world is it time to make that call? And can you see this 20-mile march approach playing out for you? What steps do you have to take to make sure that, especially on those days when it's freaking hard, when you know you've got to make 100 phone calls but everything is stacked up against you doing it, those days when it's super hard, how are you going to go about getting it done? I think that that's so critical, and that's what separates you know, those that have success from those that just never achieve the goals they desire. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.