“Go Big or Go Home” is the Worst Advice I Ever Took
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I worshipped Intensity for more decades than I care to admit. "Go big or go home" was my motto, and I lived it everywhere.
Instead of eating well most days, I would overeat for a stretch and then starve myself for a day to even the books.
Instead of running a few miles regularly, I would run sporadically and then try to make up the lost mileage in one punishing weekend.
Instead of raising a broken agreement when it happened, I would save up every grievance and unload it in one conversation that was too much for everyone in the room.
Instead of simply showing up to the meeting, I would miss it and then apologize with a grand gesture, as if the gesture erased the absence.
I got very good at operating this way. It cost me exhaustion, weight gain, injuries, other people's trust, and the thing I regret most: my own confidence that I could be counted on to do what I said I'd do.
I write and talk often about living as a Pro rather than an Amateur. You’ll often hear me say that Amateurs go fast, but Pros go far. And the single difference that separates them, more than talent or luck, is that Pros choose Consistency over Intensity almost every time. In the short term, we're only as good as our Intensity. In the long term, we're only as good as our Consistency.
So why do so many of us keep sacrificing the long game for the grand gesture?
Usually because of a persistent piece of false math. We tell ourselves that one intense session makes up for three missed ordinary ones. One brutal weekend run cancels the week of skipped short ones. One big apology repairs a season of not showing up. It never actually balances. I know because I spent years running that exact equation in my own life and watching it fail in every area it touched.
Here's what finally changed it for me, and it's almost embarrassing how small it is!
I've been an ultramarathoner for close to fifteen years. Trail running eats time, and between working full-time and everything else that matters to me, the usual injury-prevention fixes never stuck. I tried a gym membership. Hot yoga. Pilates. Each one worked while I did it, but I couldn't stay consistent because they all demanded two hours of a day I didn't have. So I kept not doing them, and I kept getting hurt.
What finally kept me healthy wasn't a better program. It was ten minutes of old-school, Jack LaLanne-style calisthenics in the morning and ten more at night. That's it. No studio and nothing cool or sexy about it.
The switch happened the day I stopped asking what would be most impressive and started asking what I could honestly commit to and actually keep. “Go big or go home” kept me cycling through things I'd start with great ambition and abandon within weeks. So, quite literally, instead of going big, I went home.
But the ten minutes only work because of one rule I don't break. I am religious about this practice. However eager I am to get on with my morning, and however wiped out I am at night, I don't skip the bookends. Not once. The protocol isn't glamorous or clever, but it keeps me running injury-free more than every expensive two-hour alternative combined.
None of this means intensity has no place. There's a time to go all out, like training for a race or preparing for an exam, and used as a short, deliberate burst, intensity is a fine spice. The trouble starts when it becomes the main dish, when the grand gesture is the whole plan and consistency is what we keep meaning to get to.
There's a story often told about the violinist Isaac Stern. After a concert, an admirer gushed, "I'd give anything to play like you." As the story goes, Stern smiled and said, "Would you give twenty years of practicing ten hours a day? Because that's what it took."
That's the part nobody wants to hear, and it's the only part that works. Not the burst. The reps. The unremarkable, repeatable thing you'll actually keep doing. Ten honest minutes you never skip will take you further than two brilliant hours you can't sustain.
