I like hiking for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the willpower training it provides. To cope with especially long or difficult distances, you come up with all sorts of tricks to keep yourself going. Not “Can I make it to the top of this mountain?”, but instead “Can I make it to this next switchback?”.
Interestingly, these games are all about finishing the work. Getting to the end. Reaching the top. They’ve rarely got much to do with speed, and everything to do with endurance.
Yet for most of the stuff in our lives, we get hung up on speed, and less on endurance. Are we progressing faster than the other guy in our careers? Can we get that project done by noon? There’s nothing wrong with a little speed at points, but most of the time, our success hinges far more on our ability to stay in the game for the long haul.
It rarely does much good to focus only on speed in the short term, unless you’re in the 100m dash. Better to build the endurance muscle and stay in the race until the end. Maybe we don’t win every time that way, but being first is overrated anyway.