Play the Long Game

On the art of showing up: why excellence is less about intensity than endurance.

Hi there. This is a short story about performance. The ideas drifted along in my notebooks for a few years. I’m setting them down now as a letter to an earlier me, and to the person I’m still becoming. Hope you find some value too.

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You.

Yes, you.
You’re going to be a wonder. I know it.

Not by going harder. But by going longer. Excellence is not a matter of intensity but of repeated moderation. Whatever path you follow, you’ve got to work long, not just hard.

You’ve got to play the long game.

Midjourney generation.

Work Long, Not Hard

First things first: relax.

Take a breath; this will take time. Anyone can white-knuckle through an epic gym session that leaves them collapsed on the floor. Fewer show up the next morning. And the day after. And the day after.

The thing is, discipline is not going as hard as you can. You can’t slam your head against the wall at every practice. Or finish each workout tapped out, tasting pennies.

What’s needed is many moderate efforts. Multiplied thousands of times. It’s about working a “little hard” every day. That’s the discipline: not to go all out.

“Almost anyone can burn bright for a few days. But few can burn bright for years upon years.” — Brad Stulberg

Midjourney generation.

Weeknights, Not All-Nighters

As it turns out, performance can’t be crammed.

Cal Newport, author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, notes that even experts rarely sustain more than four hours of creative effort per day. In a 2012 blog post, he points to Henri Poincaré, a French mathematician, engineer, and physicist. The polymath’s daily schedule focused his effort within four hard hours: two in the morning and then another two hours of concentration in the late afternoon.

Poincaré’s focus illustrates that quality work is less about heroic bursts and more about what can be quietly sustained, week after week.

I got a hint of this in college. After a couple of semesters, I realized getting good grades was relatively straightforward: spend 2–3 hours every weeknight in the library. Take a break on Saturdays. Study some more on Sunday. That’s it.

It was bemusing to watch the university library get crowded at the end of every semester as final exams approached. Students, hitherto absent from the study rooms, would pull all-nighters at the carrel desks and computer labs, frantically working around the clock.

Obviously, I don’t know how these folks performed, but I’d conjecture that not many pulled A’s. Mastery takes putting in a little time, day after day. It won’t come in a single night.

Go Slowly

Daily rhythms teach another lesson: real progress is unhurried. To last, you have to slow things down.

In a 2018 speech to the Oxford Union, Eliud Kipchoge, arguably the greatest marathoner ever, argued, “discipline is not a one-time event.” It was more like going to the gym to build strength. In his quiet voice, the marathoner suggests we find a training program, follow it, and “go slowly by slowly. That’s the way to build your muscle.”

It’s a striking moment in the speech, with one of the fastest men on the planet advising that the key to success is to slow down.

I wish I’d heard Kipchoge when I was preparing for my first marathon.

My first attempt at the distance was on a hilly course with a few big climbs winding up the Blue Ridge Mountains. I thought a few massive long runs on a mountain near my apartment would get me ready. These grinding, three-hour workouts left me wrecked, sipping Gatorade, sprawled on the floor. Like going to the gym once to build muscle.

When the race arrived, I built an early lead, but the gaps in my training soon revealed themselves. Two big climbs late in the race left me bonked, dry-heaving on the scenic road shoulder of the Blue Ridge Parkway as my competitors ran past. Eventually, I recovered enough to jog in the last few miles to finish and eat my humble pie.

It would take a decade of steady, methodical training to finally run a marathon that reflected my potential. Kipchoge was right: find a program, then go slowly by slowly.

“Practice puts brains in your muscles.”
—Sam Snead

Practice Until You Can’t Get It Wrong

My high-school band director had a saying he’d toss out as we sat ringed around him in plastic chairs, a semicircle of bored band nerds:

“Don’t practice until you get it right. Practice until you can’t get it wrong.”

That’s a high standard. As we’ve noted above, mastering something takes time. It also takes deliberate practice.

According to psychologists K. Anders Ericsson, Edward T. Cokely, and information systems scholar Michael J. Prietula, deliberate practice means targeting “tasks beyond your current level of competence and comfort,” with concentration, honest feedback, and guided coaching.

In their Harvard Business Review article, “The Making of an Expert,” they argue that innate skill plays a small role in outstanding performance. Practice is far more important. Expertise is built by continually moving out of your comfort zone through sessions of high concentration that both improve existing skills and extend your range of skill sets.

Repetition is crucial, but not sufficient. Direct your practice at areas of focus to fill missing knowledge, garner improvement, and hone abilities not yet mastered.¹

“Experts are always made, not born.”
— K. Anders Ericsson, Michael J. Prietula, and Edward T. Cokely

Midjourney generation.

Have a Ritual

Deliberate practice doesn’t happen by accident. Structure helps make the hard work repeatable.

In the years before she became famous, Toni Morrison rose before dawn every day to write. The point wasn’t heroic asceticism but simple necessity. Morrison had children and a 9-to-5 job as an editor at Random House. It was the only time she had to write.

The habit stuck even as she became a famous author. In an interview with The Paris Review, Morrison reflected upon her morning writing. Before starting, she would make a cup of coffee and watch the sunlight come as she sipped her coffee:

“For me, light is the signal in the transition. It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense.”

The experience of transitioning from darkness into dawn light was a switch that let Morrison enter a creative space of focus. It suggests the mechanics behind the long game: make a dedicated window of space and time, ritualize it, and keep it.

Let’s recap.

Work long. Put in the time. Go slowly. Practice with deliberation. Have a ritual.

But what will sustain you through all this? What will keep you going through illness and injury and breakups and new children and lost friends? What will pull you through those dark nights of the soul when all seems hopeless?

Something vital must power you, a necessary precondition, the long-burn fuel that powers top performance …

Love Is the Way

Love. It’s the only way you’ll make it. Love will help choose your project and drag you back on the bad days. Love will wake you up with deep yearning for the work, such that you’re miserable when away from it.

Whatever it is. You’ve got to love it.

Malcolm Gladwell, famous for the “10,000 hours” rubric for greatness, argued in an interview that the brilliance of hockey legend Wayne Gretzky was sustained by love:

“So what is Wayne Gretzky's talent? Well, part of it is his extraordinary vision, his coordination, his … whatever it is, but a lot of it is this guy loves this game so much that he would do nothing but do it and think about it and engage it and do all those things.”

What a beautiful idea. World-class performance comes about because you can’t help but love the pursuit. Genius—whether on the athletic pitch, stage, track, or studio—is an act of love.

If Gladwell is right, then the real challenge is finding the object of that love. The true task is discerning the path or project you cannot but work toward that will fill you with meaning and drive everyday. Then the rest, well, it won’t be easy, but it will be powered by the rocket fuel that lets you play the long game.

Love. Irresistible, inexorable love.

Thanks for reading. Much appreciation to Austin Kleon, whose book Steal Like an Artist first inspired this little post. I borrowed ideas from brilliant thinkers like Brad Stulberg and Cal Newport, many of which I discovered in the thoughtful curation of Mario Fraioli in his great the morning shakeout.

Consider this a small heist in honor of their work. Go read their stuff.

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In case you missed it …

I had a fun conversation with Stephanie Reents last week about her forthcoming novel, We Loved to Run. The story of a cross country team navigating competition, life, and trauma, the novel follows the runners over the course of a collegiate season.

Some highlights:

• On the origins of the novel

• Writing the team’s perspectives

• Capturing the physicality of running in prose

• On disordered eating

• Reconciling trauma and athleticism

Lee Glandorf had a fantastic chat this week with Reents, discussing the clothes and style rituals of the characters. The convo made me think about my own little pre-race style quirks and rituals. Check it out!

We Loved to Run Is The Running Novel You've Been Waiting For

We Loved to Run will be released tomorrow on August 26. Get your copy.

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That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading.

1. According to Ericsson et al., the need to work on missing or improvable skills is where coaching is important. Good coaches help identify skillsets that need work and provide guidance to ensure the skills are developed effectively.