Low intensity, long duration.

I spoke to a physical therapist -- while my health goals have brought me great strength and cardio, I'm under-indexed on stretching and am feeling the repercussions. The therapist described stretching exercises as low intensity and long duration, emphasizing that increasing the intensity of the stretch does not lead to better results. Rather, it's the consistency of the practice of stretching over days and weeks that leads muscles to increase their flexibility.

What else does this apply to in life? There are so many type-A folks who burn their energetic fuel intensely, using exhaustion as an indicator of a successful day (even famous, highly successful people like Rich Roll have trouble turning off, expressing guilt when they don’t end their day feeling exhausted). While that can certainly be true for some activities, and indeed, a feeling of being well worked and tired at the end of the day can mean we did good work, it is not the sole indicator of success or growth. There are so many other ways that we can grow.

I think about this in my own life. I have intentionally made writing this blog a low-intensity exercise. I give myself a minimum of 5 minutes to write -- and I often stick to that 5-minute mark. I give myself full permission to be complete after that. And here I am now, having written over 80 posts in the past two months. I am proud of that achievement, which did not come from high intensity. It was low intensity, long duration (over a period of months) that led me to this output. And the posts themselves aren't the reward -- it's seeing in myself more structured thinking, the knowledge that I am capturing my thoughts and can refer back to them, and the fulfillment of my life goal to exercise my mind and share it publicly. These are great rewards from a low-pressure exercise.

Another low-intensity, long-duration exercise in my life: practicing my Anki flashcards almost daily, usually while I'm at the gym. Between my weight-lifting sets, I need a rest of at least 1.5 minutes, so I use that time to review my cards. Low intensity -- it's really not difficult to review the cards. It's often fun, and the low pressure lets me be creative. I'll often get curious about something, add new cards, improve old ones, or add images to cards to see if I can improve retention. Over the long duration of weeks and months, I see information seamlessly integrated into long-term memory, and I’ve been loving my new ability to remember information. It’s a refreshing contrast from the frustration of not being able to remember something I had seen repeatedly.

Now perhaps in these examples, we can replace "long duration" with "consistency" -- I am stretching the application here, so maybe these examples aren't the best. But even in other areas of our lives, there are so many things we can do at low intensity that serve us. Cooking a meal, for example, is not always active -- there are passive processes like waiting for the meal to fully bake.

For my fellow intensity junkies, my type-A comrades, remember that progress does not have a single shape or color. It is multivariate, and we do not have to control every variable. We can embrace low-intensity activities -- and often these are much higher leverage than high-intensity ones that carry the risk of burnout.

So, where will you lower intensity and stretch yourself to new abilities?