Going through the motions

I finished Peak Performance some days ago. The book describes a simple principle: Stress + Rest = Growth.

One thing I highlighted while reading the book, was a reference to a phrase: “going through the motions”. It was mentioned regarding people who go to the gym, but do not really work out. Rather all of us sometimes simply go through the motions, lift weights, just hard enough so that we break a sweat.

The book also mentions a counter concept. Just-manageable experiences. Just-manageable seems very appropriate and well named to me.

Similarly some years ago when we talked about assigning tasks to specific people, @bandito mentioned that some people are good at building factories and some are good at running them.

One of my personal challenges is to be very thoughtful about everything that happens in my life. When designing in the past I always preached that there are no bad or good designs, rather only deliberate or naive decisions. The same goes true for everything in our life. We can naively let life unfold, ofter trapped in “going through the motion” routines, or we can actively seek out just-manageable experiences. Run factories or build them.