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Whenever one thinks of a task that is difficult, what comes to mind is a task that requires large amounts of energy or effort to complete. Broadly speaking, there are two ways in which we can expend this effort. It can be expended over a short period of time or a longer period of time. We will call the former Sprint Difficulty and the latter Marathon Difficulty. However, to our own critical detriment, we often ignore the existence of Marathons and think of difficulty only in terms of a Sprint.
Sprint Difficulty involves short-term goals with a large amount of energy and effort expended over a short amount of time. Just as in running a sprint, accomplishing the goal requires a great showing of effort, but is over before much time has passed. Whenever we think of something being difficult, this is generally the sense in which we conceive of it. Lots of exertion, but over quickly. For example, having to write an essay that is due at midnight that evening is not very much fun, as any procrastinating college student can tell you, but the task is only for that one day. It does not extend across several days, weeks, or even months. A long day of writing, but nothing beyond that.
Nevertheless, this is only one of the types of difficulty. The alternative, and often ignored, type of difficulty is Marathon Difficulty. Just as in running a marathon, this difficulty is expressed through a low or moderate amount of difficulty expended over a relatively longer period of time. Just as writing an essay over the course of a day is a Sprint, writing a Master’s Thesis over the course of several months is a Marathon. It doesn’t require the large present workload of the Sprint, but asks for a lower workload over a longer period of time. Even though there is no lack of general awareness of Marathons and the form of difficulty they take, the default view of difficulty from is almost exclusively Sprint Difficulty. Marathon Difficulty is an afterthought, if it is thought of at all.
The lack of awareness of Marathon Difficulty versus Sprint Difficulty is relevant in the fact that the two are separate and distinct challenges. They require very different skill sets, just as an athlete who runs sprints trains very differently than one who runs marathons. For example, if I were to ask you to completely cut out your entertainment consumption (TV, music, phone, etc.) for a day, you could probably suffer through it. It wouldn’t be fun, but you could make it out the other side. However, if I asked you to cut down your entertainment consumption by 50% for two weeks, you would probably find that significantly more difficult to accomplish.
We can see examples of this inability to effectively deal with situations involving Marathon Difficulty all the time. One of the best representations of it is the classic case of the “New Year’s Resolution”. Because a new year is fast approaching, it is customary to Resolve to make a big positive change for the new year. Losing weight, reading more books, begin a new diet, etc. January 1st arrives and everything is going great. A week passes and resolve is beginning to slip. The magic of the resolution is beginning to wear off. Two weeks in and most of these resolutions have been abandoned and forgotten. Maybe next year, they all say in unison (a pleasant fiction, to be sure).
We probably all know someone who has experienced something similar to this story before, or have had the displeasure of experiencing it ourselves. It is so commonplace to almost be cliché, and the term “New Year’s Resolutions” is inextricably associated with these feelings of false optimism and a doomed pursuit of improvement. The reason for the near-universal failure of “New Year’s Resolutions” is not due to a lack of motivation or a genuine desire for change. It is because these factors are present that any headway is made at all. That first week of a new change is all run off the mental adrenaline that naïve motivation gives you. However, once that wears off is when your real, unaltered mental constitution has to take stock of the struggle it faces. These type of changes people look to make are almost always marathon difficulty. Because of that, they lack the skills necessary to overcome it.
Why is this the case? Why are we so familiar with Sprint Difficulty, yet so vulnerable to Marathon Difficulty? The answer is fairly simple: you can run sprints every day, but nobody runs a marathon every day. Marathons are significantly more time-consuming. As a result, it just isn’t feasible, possible, or even desirable to run them very often. Getting a 4.0 GPA in a semester at college isn’t easy, and a semester lasts for several months at a time. The time necessary to complete this goal necessarily entails that it can’t be re-run very often. In contrast, sprints can be run simultaneously. A sprinter might compete in several events at a single track meet or event. Marathon runners rarely have this same level of multiplicity. People might be engaged in multiple sprints at once, whereas marathons are generally only overcome once at a time. You don’t meet too many people who are starting their own business, while also starting a new diet, while also learning to play the violin. Whenever we do meet these kinds of people, we naturally find them quite impressive.
Our weakness in the face of a marathon challenge is reducible down to a near-universal lack of exposure. It is very seldom that we set out long-term goals for ourselves and work to accomplish them, especially compared to the frequency of sprints. Indeed, it is a product of the nature of a long-term goal that they cannot be quickly or rapidly conquered. Consequently, the skills and mentality necessary to overcome these particular types of obstacles are never built or reenforced. Just like an immune system that without exposure to disease, it has great difficulty rising to the challenge when prompted.
How can grow ourselves into being able to overcome the Marathon? How is it that we can cultivate the resolve within ourselves to conquer these obstacles? Just as with anything else, the best way to improve is to just do it. As we have just emphasized above, we naturally have much less exposure to these tasks than sprints. Even so, conscious knowledge and recognition of this fact is a vital part of the solution. The specific type of mental discipline and fortitude to make it through a marathon are not built overnight, but we must recognize that they must be built. Much of the frustration from a Marathon comes from the fact that it feels impossible to overcome. We can dissipate much of this frustration by realizing that completing a marathon is a skill that must be cultivated.
As difficult as they can be to accomplish, Marathons cannot be avoided. Most of the worthwhile positive changes that someone can make are long and arduous marathons. Improving your physical fitness, balancing your mental health, or balancing your finances are not quick or easy goals. They take enormous amounts of effort and energy expended over a long period of time. Even so, they are worth it. If you ask anyone who has accomplished a Marathon goal if they are happy that they endured through it, they will near-unanimously answer in the affirmative. The most difficult goals bring the sweetest rewards, and the longest journeys have the most spectacular destinations. Marathon difficulty is not easy to overcome, but for our lives to see meaningful and permanent improvement, it is necessary. It will be difficult to do at first, but the objective is not immediate mastery. The goal is to improve.
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