After running half-marathons for a few years, I eventually made up my mind to invest a significant chunk of time in training and running a full marathon. During those long running sessions accompanied by 180 BPM music, lots of things went through my head and I ended up learning the following connection between marathon and career.
Take the First Step ↔ Take Initiative
Taking initiative is the No. 1 common ingredient for both marathon training and career (and almost everything else too to be honest). This self-conquering activity of “taking initiative” is not easy, because nobody can help you except yourself. It’s important, because only when you start on something, you can get somewhere. When your execution is effective, you may achieve something significant that you never imagine you could. But without a starting point, you get nowhere for sure.
Training Plan ↔ Growth Plan
If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!
– Benjamin Franklin
Both marathon training and career are long journeys with many complexities and up-n-down to navigate through. You only have limited amount of time for it. A plan helps you make your long journey effective and stay on the right direction towards your goal. A plan also helps setup the rhythm and routine, which helps you to sustain the effort and less likely to quit half way.
Injury Prevention ↔ Progressive Growth
Marathon training is within the constraint of body capacity. To sustain the training, injury prevention is a must-have. For example, never increase mileage more than 10% week to week. Similarly, for career, a progressive plan ensures solid and sustained growth. Some folks aim for fast growth, just to find out they often times burn out quickly and back to square one. 10% percent increase might not seem a lot, but take into consideration of compounding, as long as you sustain this rate, you will be amazed how fast you will progress without burning yourself out.
Training Coach ↔ Mentorship
Learning from others and standing on giants’ shoulders is how human being accelerate the advancement of the specie. A training coach can make your training much more effective and help avoid mistakes. Similarly, mentors (including career mentors, senior team members, managers, etc.) are the counterpart of training coach who help your career growth. So find mentors that are right for you is important for your success.
Base Training ↔ Knowledge and Mental Foundation
For marathon, base training builds aerobic and mental foundation for other stages of the training. Similarly, for career, the knowledge and mental foundation supports effective growth. For example, for software engineer, this includes deep grasp of software engineering principles (e.g., design principles, operational principles). It takes persistence and patience to build these foundations, because they may not bring the immediate gratification that excites you. It’s like nobody looks at the Burj Khalifa and sighs “what an amazing foundation of 110k tonnes of concrete that goes 164 feet deep”.
Cross Training ↔ Well-roundedness
Both marathon training and career are multi-facet. For marathon, besides running, you need cross training like strength training, mobility training, etc. to elevate you in the main activity – run. For career, besides core domain skills, you need similar “cross training” like communication, collaboration, negotiation, etc. to support you to be more well-rounded and be more effective in your main domain field.
Interval/Tempo/Endurance Training ↔ Stretch Yourself
For marathon training, some uncomfortable trainings like interval, tempo, and endurance are the ones that move you forward in speed and endurance. Similarly for career, some uncomfortable stretch activities help you grow. The common theme is striking the balance and get certain amount of activities that makes you feel “comfortably uncomfortable“. You will be happy to see the growth you can get out of them.
Recovery ↔ Work Life Balance
For marathon training, you spend majority of the time recovering. It replenishes yourself to be effective during the next training session. Similarly, for career, you spend more time not working (recharging) than actually working (if this is not the case you are in danger zone!). One of the important recovery activity for both marathon training and career is sleeping. In the past, I have been associating 8 hours of sleep with laziness, but my new understanding places sleep at top priority. Recovery and work life balance is a necessity, period!
Nutrition Plan ↔ Reading and Learning
Both marathon training and career are high power consumption activities that need high quality fuel. For marathon, nutrition plan is key. The counterpart for career is reading and learning. They shouldn’t wind down after school education was done. It’s a life long re-fuel source.
Conclusion
For long term multi-faceted endurance efforts that are important for you, take the first step, make a plan, and stick to it. You will be happy about the compounded benefits and self-fulfillment from it.