Add variety and force quicker results to keep your elephant happy

After the initial novelty of jogging wore off, I started looking for ways to keep the elephant inside my head interested in the 20 minute repetitive process that my rider wanted done.

One of my learnings was that I needed an immediate sense of progress. First I tried counting steps, and then counting squares and even cubes in sync with my steps. Then I realized the most important part of a jog was actually the breathing, and not the running. So I started counting breaths. Paying attention to my breathing ensured better control and I was able to run longer and faster. But ofcourse I got bored. 20 minutes was too long a time to be counting breaths. 

I realized there were 2 aspects involved:

1. Quick short-term goals that require some effort to achieve.

2. Variety.

So I broke it up - to roughly 5 cycles of “slow - medium - fast - medium - slow” running and counted to 20 breaths within each. It was complicated enough that I had to pay attention.  Just when the breaths started getting boring, I would finish 20 and had to change speed. And just when changing speed got boring, I felt the accomplishment of finishing a set. And just when finish sets started to get boring, the jogging ended. If I didnt count corrently, I couldnt change speed correctly, so I was absorbed enough in the counting to keep me from getting bored.

I have been doing this for over a year and it’s been working so far. In time, I know I ll get bored. And I can always cook up something else.

Using such tricks rather than a complete distration of say, listening to earphones made me feel closer to the process. And at the end of it, I felt more satisfied.

“When walking, walk. When eating, eat.” ~Zen proverb 

(The elephant comes from the elephant rider metaphor to describe our mind - http://sourcesofinsight.com/the-elephant-and-the-rider/ )