When you actually want to fail

#113 - a week of going to various halls

Hi there,

It feels like an age since my last post, and it has been. We went to the temple last Sunday and TV/ironing time took priority, unfortunately. I do appreciate those who asked where the blog was though 🙏

And it’s the Easter holidays! It’s been an ‘intense’ term as I put it to friends this week, with March being busier than expected. I have a week ahead of me to turn it around, studies-wise. This week, I had a second concert this month at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire as well as a team dinner with my fellow Officers in Year 13, to celebrate our work this year.

The highlight of the week prize¹ goes to our annual Speech Day awards night at the local Town Hall. The speech by our speaker, one of the youngest we’ve had, Rory Gaskin, was powerful and left us feeling inspired. Esther and I had to scrabble together some words live on stage in about 10 seconds after he finished - think we did a decent job. It was great to see those who left again, to say hi to the Year 13s who left last year.

---

What I was supposed to write about last week was the idea of ‘training to failure’ and the intrinsic and extrinsic gains from doing ‘one more rep’. It is a concept I’ve heard a lot in the gym lingo, as I’ve become accustomed to that world; the idea of working until you’re physically not able to, so that you’ve ‘maxed out’ the level of exercise you’ve gotten from the movement.

It means that

1. you know your limits and how far you can go - it makes it easier to track progress when you know that you did your absolute best every time. It is working to your individual limits.

2. you know that you tried your absolute best. There is the simple advice of ‘do your best’ because that’s all you can do, but this is an example of truly doing that.

3. you are building your strength and, more importantly, your endurance

One of the main benefits I derive from trying as hard as I can, in one particular activity, is the kick I get from being able to say ‘look at me. I went past my instinct, I used my willpower to override the voice in my head saying “That’s it, you’re tired now” and proved it wrong’. It is the satisfaction you get from knowing you showed discipline, dedication, effort and all those cool things.

There are a couple of other examples, outside the gym, that come to mind:

1. One of my Physics teachers, Mr Bradley, has featured many times on The Sun’s Out (below is a link one of these!). The other teacher, Mr Williams, once said to us as a class

   “There is no point in doing easy questions, you aren’t learning anything or getting better - it’s a waste of time. You should do challenging questions becuase when you get to a question you don’t know, that is like striking gold.

   ‘Yes! I’ve found something that I can’t do. I can now learn how to do it and get better’” (or words to that effect)

   This is true, it’s operating on the cutting edge, as far as you can possibly go. And then try adding a few more inches to that area of your life.

2. I’ve found this with STEP, where I only need to get ~75 marks out of 20 to get through, where my best 6 questions (each worth 20 marks) are marked. So my attitude has been trying to ‘max out’ on as many of the questions as I can. If that looks like doing parts i and ii, getting 13/14 marks and then moving on, that’s good enough.

Another aspect of my STEP preparation that I have found fascinating is life rewarding me for persevering and doing just one more problem. With how difficult it is, I’ve found myself often on the verge of giving up, saying “I’ve tried my best, that’s enough for today”.

At that moment, there have been a few instances where I‘ve said to myself “Ok, I’ll do one more problem (future me will be thankful 😊) and then call it quits” And somehow, like magic, I’ve seemed to successfully crack that last question and make a decent amount of progress on it. It is an unexplainable phenomenon that has pleasantly surprised me.

It’s another example of trying to work the discipline muscle of not giving up when you feel exhausted but you are exhausted. As I write that, it gives me workaholic/burnout vibes. Clearly, we must apply this ‘just one more’ rule with positive endeavours such as finding a job, studying for exams and working on your body. Pushing yourself to do 1 more rep means you can take a ‘well-earned’ break.

There is both physical gain and mental happiness to be had from pushing yourself to your absolute best, i.e. till you can do no more, and even then (training yourself to) ask the question “Do I have it in me for one more?” After all, it is a lot of units, like these ‘1 more’s, that take you to hundreds and thousands.

---

Podcast of the week🎙️

The Tim Ferriss Show: #696 Arnold Schwarzenegger on 7 Tools for Life, Thinking Big, Building Resilience, Processing Grief, and More

Great episode, running through a book I gifted to Dan (a friend and keen reader of the blog) last year; Arnold’s voice is a motivational one and there are lots of useful nuggets to back it up.

Thing I’m grateful for this week 🙏

My friends for being so prompt with their payments to the curry on Friday. I ended up doing the mass payment - a pretty large one for 22 people. Esther said, “No Adi, don’t do it, you’ll lose money”. In the end, it all worked out fine, thanks to their understanding.

Quote of the week 💬

We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something - Marie Curie

Have a great week ahead (and if you’re revising and feel like you want to tear the world down, tell yourself one more and then you can recover with a reward or a pause)

Adi

1. Some might get the pun