McKeown’s account of the South Pole race between Scott and Amundsen is captivating. It reminds leaders that who you choose to follow—and the quality of leadership you provide to followers—truly matters. While the sprint-recover approach might appear faster, it consistently leads to failure.

McKeown recommends a measured pace: slow enough for control but not so slow that momentum is lost. As he notes, “When you go slow, things are smoother. You have time to observe, to plan, to coordinate efforts. But go too slow and you may get stuck or lose your momentum.”

In our VUCA world—volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous—establishing upper and lower bounds helps maintain steady progress. McKeown explains: “Since the end of the Cold War, the military has used the acronym VUCA to describe our global environment: one that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.”

He recommends: “We can establish upper and lower bounds. Simply use the following rule: Never less than X, never more than Y… Finding the right range keeps us moving at a steady pace so we can make consistent progress. The lower bound should be high enough to keep us feeling motivated, and low enough that we can still achieve it even on days when we’re dealing with unexpected chaos. The upper bound should be high enough to constitute good progress, but not so high as to leave us feeling exhausted.”

Lisa Jewell, author of some eighteen bestselling novels, put it, “Pace yourself. If you write too much, too quickly, you’ll go off at tangents and lose your way and if you write infrequently you’ll lose your momentum. A thousand words a day is a good ticking over amount.”

McKeown adds: “Whether it’s ‘miles per day’ or ‘words per day’ or ‘hours per day,’ there are few better ways to achieve effortless pace than to set an upper bound.”

Source: Effortless by Greg Mckeown

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