I am Sheamus - Very Personal Development

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This is the second installment of a two-part article on how to build ‘The List’, a working and practical guide to accomplishing all of your dreams and goals. Read part one here.

Break It Down - Consider ‘Micro-Lists’

Your list should follow an intelligent design sequence. There’s a tactic that you can use when lifting weights that involves warm-up and working sets. The warm-up set uses lower weights and higher levels of repetitions to get the muscles ready for the much heavier weights used in the working sets. But one can shorten a workout - and get the same great results - by observing when a muscle group is warmed-up enough to skip any more warm-up sets and just go straight to a working set, even when changing exercises. For example, after warming up and working the back doing a series of chin-ups and then dead-lifts, there would be no need to do additional warm-up sets if you then switched to bentover rows. The back would be warmed up sufficiently for you to go straight to your working set. This not only saves time, but ensures that you are ready for the harder part of your workout - the next level, so to speak.

You can and should apply this logic to the planning of your list, too. Think of the order of your list both in a sense of time and the skills necessary to complete each item. For example, if you wanted to run a marathon, it makes sense to not only learn to run first, but to have experienced smaller race lengths along the way. It’s a cliché but ‘don’t try to run before you walk’ is very applicable in all of this. By doing a 5K first, then a 10K, then a half-marathon, you’d be preparing yourself for the full 26.2 miles. Jumping straight into the latter with no preparation is going to mean failure more often than not. And once you’ve failed a couple of times, the rest of your list will become too daunting to resume.

But these things don’t have to actually become part of your list, at least not in the finished article sense that you might share with friends and family. Look again at Michael Bane’s list above - there’s no mention there of the little things he had to do to accomplish all these goals. Those things got him from A to B, and then from B to C, and so on. For example, before he could cave dive, he needed to get his scuba license. And then his cave diving license. He then completed the cave dive, and all this training, qualification and experience then allowed him to later dive 240 feet down off of Key West (‘Dive really deep’). He couldn’t have successfully completed this part of his list without also putting those other, earlier (and smaller) parts to rest, too.

One way to manage all of this is to break your list down into smaller, micro-lists. Take any one item off of your list, and work out the little steps you need to achieve that. Consider the example above of running a marathon. First you learn to run, then run regularly, then do a 5K, 10K and so on. Or maybe you want to fly and land an aeroplane by yourself. You can’t just do that tomorrow. You have to take (and pay for) pilot lessons, log many miles with a season pilot, practice, practice, practice, and so on. Eventually, you’ll get there, but it will take a fair bit of work. And that’s exactly how it should be - if this stuff was too easy, you wouldn’t need a list at all.

Starting Your List

Take a fresh sheet of paper, and a pencil. Do two lines down the page so you have three columns. Now tear the page into a series of lots of strips, from left to right. You should end up with however many you think you’re going to need - at least ten, and probably no more than fifteen.

The main items in your list go in the left column, and we’ll use the other two for your micro-lists.

Sometimes it’s easier to fashion a finished list by starting with the one thing you want to do the most first. For example, whenever I consider the idea of ‘my list’, the one thing I always come back to is the Hawaii Ironman. This seems to me to be the thing I would like to have done the most.

So, that would go on my list first. On one of my strips, I’d write

Hawaii Ironman

on the left hand side. And then I could build the other things around it, including my micro-lists.

For example, you have to qualify to compete in Hawaii. There is a lottery system, but it’s a real long shot. To increase my chances, I’d need to get into great physical shape and start posting some pretty decent times within my age group at other Ironman-distance events. But even that’s getting well ahead of myself - as of right now, I’ve never even competed in a triathlon of any distance. So I’d need to look at all that, and might write the following down in the next column:

Do A Triathlon
Do A Half-Ironman
Do An Ironman

But hold on - I don’t currently own a racing bike, and my swimming isn’t great. I’ll need Masters lessons there, definitely. So this could go in column three.

Buy A Bike
Masters Swimming Lessons

To accomplish the thing I have in the first column - the Hawaii Ironman - I’d first need to take care of the stuff in column three (buy a bike, swimming lessons), and then take care of the stuff in column two (do a triathlon, half-Ironman, etc).

As time progresses and things I done, I can erase stuff from the page and make adjustments. This is an ongoing work in progress, and it’s pretty essential that you remain focused and cross things off when they’re done.

Once my main item is done - at least in writing - I can then look at that and consider what other things I want to accomplish, and if they are related to what I already have. For example, I want to run the New York marathon. So that would go on my list:

New York Marathon

Now, I already know I need to run a marathon to do an Ironman, so there’s a cross-training opportunity here. But when I think about it, it makes sense to take care of the NY Marathon before my attempt at an Ironman. So, that would need to come before Hawaii Ironman in my list.

Now let’s break the marathon down. Currently, the furthest I’ve ever run is 13.1 miles, a half-marathon, and that was ten years ago. So I’d need to do that again, probably more than once. And I should probably do a few 10Ks before that, too. So in my second column, next to NY Marathon, I’d write:

Do Some 10K Races
Do A Half-Marathon

There’s no need to put anything in column three. Once the items in column two are crossed-off, the main item on my list - the marathon - is up next.

Sometimes, some of things in column two might turn out to be big-enough of a deal to make it into your main column. Again, you’ll know when this is the right thing to do.

Building Your List

As I add things to my list, I can decide where they go in the order by considering the skills I will need to make each one happen. For example, we’ve already seen that it makes sense for me to have run at least one marathon first before attempting any Ironman-distance racing. So that would come higher up the list.

But even that feels a little head of myself. My hometown of Hastings has a half-marathon that is highly regarded throughout the country. It runs every year in March, but I’ve never done it! Time to put that to rest before moving on to anything else. So that would go above the NY marathon.

I’d also like to do the London marathon, too, so that would go after the Hastings half, and before NY.

Anything that I felt was harder than Hawaii - for example, the Badwater Ultramarathon - would be placed further down the list.

Finishing It All Off

Once you’ve arranged all your strips of paper in an order that both makes planning sense and pleases (and excites you), type it up so it’s all official. You may at this stage want to consider pencilling in working dates. I know, for example, that the next Hastings Half Marathon is next March. So I’d write that down, and then work on the rest from there.

My List

As you have probably worked out, most of the things on my list are endurance related. The personal challenge in all these things really appeals to me, and always has. My recent return to running has relit fires inside me that were long dormant, but are now very much alive.

So, as of July 24, 2008, here is my list.

1. Hastings Half Marathon (March, 2009)
2. London Marathon (April 26, 2009)
3. London Triathlon (August, 2009)
4. New York Marathon (November 2, 2009)
5. Swim With Sharks (2010)
6. Wildflower Triathlon (May 2, 2010)
7. Quelle Challenge Roth (July, 2010)
8. Hawaii Ironman (October, 2010)
9. Western States 100 (June, 2011)
10. Primal Quest (June, 2012)
11. Marathon des Sables (March-April 2013)
12. Badwater Ultramarathon (July, 2013)

If this all goes to plan, I’ll be 42 at Badwater. It’s a work in progress.