Do you feel overwhelmed by a big goal and perhaps procrastinate a bit with getting started?

Imagining the whole journey to your destination can be intimidating, and that intimidation often leads to fear and procrastination. While breaking a large task to smaller bites is an advice worthy of captain obvious, I’d like to take it one step further.

The 20-mile march as a concept was introduced by Jim Collins in “Great by Choice”. I had not actually read the book (at that time – I absolutely have since then) BUT I got lucky enough to be able to attend Growth Faculty’s workshop with Jim Collins himself in Chicago (as of this writing, I’ve attended twice – highly recommended! I believe the workshop is an annual event).

Jim uses the story of the Amundsen / Scott 1911-12 race to the South Pole. How Amundsen’s team had a goal (and limit) to trek 20 miles every day, no matter what. The concept is, if the weather is good and the going is easy, let’s get our 20 miles in and rest. If the weather is crappy, let’s still push and do 20 miles.

Why, you may ask? Discipline. Expectations settings. Ease of planning. And, most importantly, compounding effect. Those miles add up.

It doesn’t matter what “your” march is. Your 20 miles may be writing every day. Your version of racing to the South Pole may be 50 pushups in the morning. Your ‘no matter what’ may be ensuring your 10,000 steps a day. Obviously, you may be on multiple marches at the same time.

Recently, I suggested to a coaching client (a small company working on product market fit, as their key objective) to quickly gain expertise by all leaders making one call per day to a possible ICP, just asking questions and collecting feedback (there’s no sales quota / expectation attached to this activity). The only thing they need to do is to write notes from the call and share with the rest of the leadership team the next day at their daily huddle. This goal equated to 16 calls a week (four-day week, and four of them on the team). A few weeks later, they had a score of data points, deep understanding of their pricing and main objections to overcome in their sales process.

Funnily enough, I didn’t realize I was putting them on a 20-mile march – until a few weeks later, when I saw Jim Collins (again).

There are many actions that don’t yield any results on their own, or only miniscule ones. The one walk is good for you, so do it, but it won’t make you perceivably healthier. Walk a few times a week, rain or shine, though – and now we’re talking. Writing one social media post won’t make you a star, but do it daily, and not only you’ll get better each time, the right followers will find you.

These short articles inspired by the quote cards are my 20-mile march (well, one of them). My reader will be the judge, and my accountability mechanism for keeping the pace.

How about you? What big goal can you break into small increments and make progress every day?