Jogging vs. Sprinting and Doing Creative Work

Jogging isn’t an efficient form of exercise.

I’m not just saying that because I personally don’t like jogging. It’s largely a waste of energy compared to what you could be doing.

When jogging, you’re mostly just running at one constant pace without much change in incline, especially on a treadmill. This only trains your slow-twitch muscle fibers. To build speed, power, and agility you need to train your fast-twitch muscle fibers.

To build speed and strength you need to use high intensity exercise.

If you want to lose weight and keep muscle, intermittent sprinting is much more effective than jogging. You only need to look at a marathon runner and a sprinter to see which body you’d rather have.

“Your least frequent, most extreme exertions will have the greatest influence on your fitness. The peak moments of a workout count far more than the amount of time you spend working out. This is why a series of 40-yard sprints at full speed benefits you more than half an hour of jogging. It’s also the reason why lifting a weight heavy enough to make your heart pound and your muscles burn counts more than spending hours at the gym always in your comfort zone, never truly challenging your body. When a work-out becomes an unvarying, monotonous routine, it loses its effectiveness.”
– Arthur De Vany via The New Evolution Diet

To do the best creative work we are capable of, we need to think and act like a sprinter, not a jogger.

It’s hard to create anything of brilliance if you’re doing repetitive tasks with a consistent effort all day.

Creativity needs restraints.

Friction is good. It sharpens your ideas and lets you compete against yourself.

You need to push beyond your personal limits.

Creativity needs randomness.

You need to give your creative muscle random experiences to feed upon. New ideas rarely come from monotony.

Creativity also needs to breathe.

Step away from everything you’re doing.

Take a walk. Let your ideas marinate.

Then with fresh legs, get back to doing creative work where you push yourself beyond what you think you’re capable of.

If you’re trying to come up with 10 ideas, you come up with 20 instead.

All of this isn’t to say that a creative routine is a bad thing. As long as your creative routine includes randomness and an ebb and flow to your creative drive.

Train your creative muscle like a sprinter, not a jogger.

• Feed it randomness.
• Push yourself in short increments. Write down ideas until you can’t think of anymore.
• Step back, slow down and reflect.
• Use the Pomodoro Technique. High intensity work for 25 minutes, then 5 off.

Connect with me on Twitter: @BenNesvig