“Be not afraid of going slowly. Be only afraid of standing still.” – Chinese Proverb

“To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.”  – Confuscius

In his book is called “Try Easy.” Robert Kriegel tells a great story a “mental coach”, who was working with a group of sprinters training for the Olympic Trials. One day during a practice run when he found his runners to be “tense and tight”, he had an idea. Rather than asking them to run harder, he asked them to relax their efforts, and run with about nine-tenths of their normal intensity. Of this second attempt, he writes:

“The results were amazing! To everyone’s surprise, each ran faster the second time, when they were trying ‘easy’. And one runner’s time set an unofficial world record.”

An excerpt from  Accidental Genius by Mark Levy.

Trying easy is a great concept, one that I’ve been experimenting with for several months now. As a formerly driven tech exec, it’s not easy for me to throttle back the engine and let things unfold more organically. But when I do, I find that I get things done with far less effort, I retain my vital energy for other things, and somehow I’m given more choices and options along the way.

This is an especially important when writing. Most people tense up when they merely think about writing. As Mark says, when you write, “Don’t expect lightning bolts,” just get words down on paper. Write regularly — good, bad or otherwise — and it will start to pay off.