85% Is Good Enough
Don’t give 100%. Instead, try 85%.
For someone who is a recovering perfectionist and workaholic, that’s hard to hear and harder to learn.
Somewhere along the way, you’ve probably been told to “Give it 110%!”
I’ve said it myself, and I did it for a long time.
It led nowhere good.
Perfectionism often involves a need for control. And workaholism usually means we are compensating for something that’s missing in our lives.
It’s time to abandon perfectionism and workaholism.
Why 85% Is Good Enough
It happened on August 4, 1984—during the final of the men’s 100-meter dash at the Los Angeles Olympic Games. Carl Lewis became only the second person in history to win 4 gold medals in the the 100m, 200m, long jump, and 4x100m relay, just like his boyhood idol, Jesse Owens who did it in 1936 while Adolph Hitler looked on.
Carl was often behind the pack for the first 40 meters or so of the 100-meter dash, and then he would glide by the competition.
It seemed almost effortless.
What was his secret?
While other runners began to push and strive, Carl’s form and breathing stayed exactly the same.
It was later described by the coach who studied Lewis’s technique as the 85% rule.
The 85% Rule – Maximum output is achieved by moving at 85% rather than 100%. 85% allows you room to think, breathe, and find your rhythm. It turns out, moving at 100% (or 110%) is neither sustainable nor helpful—apparently even for a very short sprint like a 100-meter dash!
At one point or another, you have probably heard the saying, “No pain, no gain.” In other words, your training must make you hurt to make you better. In a 2005 article in ELITETRACK (see comments for links), Lewis calls this notion “Ridiculous.” He goes on to say, “Your training should be sensible. In many cases, it is more important to rest than it is to drive yourself to the point of pain.” His coach, renowned track and field coach Tom Tellez, recommends the following six-day cycle: hard, medium, hard, easy, hard, medium. Take off the final day of the week.
Lewis and Tellez tell runners to be as relaxed as possible. Keep your mouth open, relaxing your jaw, face, and even your eyes. “Don’t grit your teeth,” Tellez says. “If you do, that tension will run all the way down your neck and trunk to your legs.”
And Lewis’s most telling secret? “A lot of times I’ve been credited with being a fast finisher,” Lewis says. “But it’s almost an optical illusion. I’m not gaining speed. I’m just slowing down less than everyone else. That’s the key. And I work hard at being able to do that.”
Roger Bannister was another example of the 85% rule. Before running the first 4-minute mile in 1954, he decided to do something completely different. Instead of training hard right up until the last minute, he went hiking for two weeks in the mountains. It was more rest than he had in a long time, and when the day of his race came, he smashed the record and became the first to run a four-minute mile.
Stop Giving 100%
Not only can the 85% rule be applied to athletics; it can be applied to work and life as well.
Here’s some contrarian advice.
Don’t give a 110%. Or even 100%. Give 85%. Stop pushing and striving. Slow down and pull back a little bit. You will be better off and so will the people around you.
Here are some ideas:
- Don’t schedule meetings back to back. Give yourself some breathing room.
- Take a day of rest every week. Don’t check emails, catch up on work projects, or do job-related activities. Rest. Worship (or find something transcendent). Do things you enjoy.
- Instead of waiting until the last minute on everything, work backward and decide in advance how much time you need to finish the project a week or two ahead of time.
- Plan to arrive for meetings or events 15-30 minutes early so you feel like you’re not in a rush all the time.
In episode 702 of the Tim Ferris podcast, author Morgan Housel ( The Psychology of Money, a fantastic book I highly recommend) shared his own version of the 85% rule:
“I’m not interested in anything that’s not sustainable that I can’t keep doing, whether it’s reading, , writing, exercise, podcasting, or investing. If I can’t keep it going I’m not interested in it. The only way to do that is to go out of your way to live life at 80-90% potential. If I’m always trying to squeeze out 100% potential of everything, it will most certainly lead to burnout. Going out of my way to live life at 80% has always been a strategy that I want to do because I want to do it for a long time.”
This Week’s Challenge
Write down three ways you can pull back to 85% and put one of them into practice this week.
Because 85% is good enough. And good enough is always better than perfect because perfect doesn’t exist.
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