This week, in a rather special episode I am going to set you a challenge that if you accept, will guarantee to transform your life in terms of your health, your fitness and your mental and physical toughness. 

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Script

Episode 160

Hello and welcome to episode 160 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

So, what am I talking about? I want to challenge you to commit to running and completing a full marathon in 2021. 

Why?

As I will explain in a moment, marathon running teaches you life lessons that will benefit you in so many different ways. From improving your health, managing your weight to showing you that you are capable of doing something you previously thought was impossible or that you didn’t have enough time to do. 

I’ve heard all the excuses, and so I want to show you in this episode that no matter where you are fitness-wise, you can take this challenge and completely change your lifestyle. 

Now before I explain this to you, I just want to give you a heads up that my Create Your Own Apple productivity course has been updated and is available on my Learning Centre.

While this year has not seen many functional changes to the apps you use, there has been a few changes to the way iCloud Drive works and I have also included how to set up the Time Sector System using only Apple’s productivity apps. 

So, if you only want to use the built-in apps that Apple provide for free and want the peace of mind using built-in apps bring you, then this is a course for you. 

Now, if you are already enrolled in the course, this is a free update for you, and if you are new to the Apple ecosystem and want to create a simple to use intuitive productivity system, then this course is for you.

Full details of the course are in the show notes.

Okay, no mystery podcast voice this week just me explaining why you should get yourself involved in the challenge. 

So, how does running a marathon transform your life? 

Well. Firstly, no matter what fitness level you have right now, to run 26 miles or 42 kilometres requires practice, or as we call it training. You are not going to be able to decide to run a marathon today and go out on Sunday and run 26 miles. Marathon running does not work like that. 

To complete a marathon requires a period of about six to ten months of consistent training. You have to go out and run five to six times per week, every week for six to ten months. There is no getting around that and you cannot take any short cuts. 

Because you are committing to training that many times per week you have to plan your training. If you have a busy week, where are you going to fit in your training runs? When you go on holiday, how will you continue your training? 

What will you do when the inevitable injuries happen—and they will—how will you maintain your fitness? 

All of these factors need careful consideration. 

Plus, if you are over the age of 35 and have not exercised for a number of years, you will need to visit your doctor for a medical check-up. Marathon running puts a huge strain on your physical body and you need to make sure your heart and lungs are capable of going through the effort you will have to put yourself through. 

Okay, so there are the challenges before you start. How does running a marathon help your productivity and your self-development?

The first, and in my opinion the most important, is it develops your self-discipline. Life is too easy for most of us today. We live in an incredibly convenient world. You’re sat down on the sofa binge-watching The Crown on Netflix and you feel hungry, all you need do is open your phone go to your local pizza takeaway app and order your favourite pizza and within 30 minutes you have a hot steaming plate of delicious pizza in your lap. With the exception of answering the door, you hardly needed to move. Total calories expended—about 40. Your pizza will contain at least 1,200 calories and watching TV will amount to less than 100 calories. 

But, when you know you need to get in your daily run, you have to pull yourself up, get off that sofa and go out and run. No excuses. To do that requires a huge amount of self-discipline and effort.

When it’s pouring down with rain, the temperature has plummeted into the minuses (less than 30 degrees Fahrenheit) and the wind is blowing a gale, the determination and self-discipline required to put on your running shoes and go outside is massive. 

That kind of mental training prepares you to achieve anything. It teaches you to push through no matter how hard—or boring— something is. And you learn that to achieve anything takes consistent effort over a period of time. 

Secondly, marathon running moves you away from the pernicious instant gratification trap many of us have fallen in to. The last twenty years or so has been fantastic. Technology has transformed almost everything we do. Sadly, the drawback to this is we expect everything to come to us at the push of a button. 

I remember when you ordered something by mail order, at the bottom of every order was the notice “please allow 28 days for delivery” and we were absolutely fine with that. Today, if you live in the right area, you can order something online at 8 PM and it will be sat outside your door when you wake up the following morning. Nobody is prepared to wait 28 days for their delivery today. 

I can order a box of food from the UK using the fantastic site, The British Corner Shop, and that box will be delivered half-way around the world here in Korea within three to four days. Something that was impossible just fifteen years ago. 

But with that instant service has come an expectation of instant gratification, yet great things take time to develop. Completing a marathon might not change the world, but it will change your world. The time and effort you put into preparing shows you that by taking consistent steps five to six times per week you move yourself bit by bit to a successful outcome. 

And that is how great businesses are built. It’s how amazing careers are developed and it’s how you build a successful life. None of these can be achieved at the push of a button. To achieve any kind of success takes time, effort and consistency. You have to push through the difficulties, you have to learn how to deal with adversity and you have to learn to stay focused on the outcome. 

Marathon running does that. To finish your marathon, you need time, you need consistency and you need to put in the effort. 

Another lesson marathon running teaches you is that Google, Facebook and books can only take you so far. You will never complete a marathon by just planning and researching, At some point, you have to get outside and run. You can plan and research as much as you like, but that will never prepare you for a marathon. The only way you can prepare for a marathon is to get outside and run. 

Too often I come across people who tell me they want to start a blog or begin a podcast but first they must… You fill in the blank. There’s always more research to do, there’s always something else they must do before they start their blog or podcast. No! Research and thinking will never create a blog or podcast. Only by recording or writing content will you create a blog or podcast. Doing. Doing the hard work of sitting down in front of a screen and writing or recording. That’s how you create a blog or podcast. 

Research has its place. When you embark on training for a marathon you will need to read about training programmes, the best running shoes etc. But at some point, that research has to stop and you have to take those first steps. You may have to start by jogging 100 metres and then walking 200 metres, those first steps can be painfully slow. But as you do it, you gradually find that those 100-metre jogs turn into 200 metres and then 300 metres and before long you are jogging 800 metres (almost ½ a mile) and that in turn becomes 1.600 metres or almost a mile. It’s a slow process, but consistently going out for your daily run moves you closer and closer towards your target. 

And marathon running teaches you about setbacks and how to handle them. Part of preparing for a marathon means you will pick up a few running injuries. You will get calf strains, hamstring pulls and blisters. When you take the first few steps, you will wake up the next morning and your legs will feel as stiff as boards. You will suffer soreness like you’ve never felt before and if you are training through the winter the chances are you will sprain your ankles at some point too. 

That’s all part of the process. You will learn about RICE—the acronym for Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation—you will have a freezer full of frozen peas. Not to eat, but to put on your knees, ankles and calves when you pick up those running injuries. 

But these setbacks only make you mentally stronger. You learn the importance of taking a rest day. You learn that setbacks are part of the process and that the way through them is to be patient, follow the process—RICE—and within a few days or a couple of weeks, you will be back to your best and raring to go again. 

Because our convenient world has taught us we can have almost anything at a push of a button we have lost the art of persistence, determination and hard work to achieve the things we want in life. Yet, the realities are that instant gratification is short-lived. It does not make us happy in the long-term, it leaves us craving for more and a feeling unfulfilled. 

By taking up this marathon challenge, you will learn so much about yourself. You will reset your approach to life by knowing that the best things in life take effort, hard work and patience. And more importantly, when you cross the finish line, exhausted, you will experience an exhilaration you have not felt for years because you have achieved something that just a few months before you thought was impossible and you have done something only a tiny percentage of people in the world have achieved. 

And remember, marathon running is not a race. It’s an achievement and everyone who crosses the finish line after running 26.2 miles is a winner. 

So I challenge you to become a winner in 2021. Put the awful 2020 behind you and focus on achieving this one thing in 2021. Not only will you accomplish something incredible, but but you will also teach yourself that nothing is impossible given a little patience, a lot of action taken constantly over a period of time. 

Good luck and thank you so much for listening to this podcast. 

It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.