Start Small, Scale Slowly
The Guaranteed Goal-Achieving Method
No One Likes, but Always Works

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #523: Start Small, Scale Slowly: The Guaranteed Goal-Achieving Method No One Likes, but Always Works

Jeff Sanders
13 years ago, I set out to attempt the longest trail run of my life up to that point.

I set out to challenge myself in a way that far exceeded my previous best.

And I did it.

I ran the distance.

I achieved the goal.

And I promptly fell on my couch, screaming in pain because I nearly killed myself doing something I was not yet prepared to do well.

This is the 5am Miracle, Episode #523.

Start small, scale slowly.

The guaranteed goal-achieving method no one likes but always works.

Good morning and welcome to the 5am Miracle.

I am Jeff Sanders and this is the podcast dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast.

My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with enthusiasm, create powerful lifelong habits, and tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary energy.

In the episode this week, I'll break down why high achievers like you and I tend to take on too much, too quickly, and how that backfires in glorious fashion.

Why a slower and more methodical approach is the best solution to most problems.

And how to find joy in the process of a slow pursuit.

Let's get to it.

Let's go back to that long trail run and break down exactly what happened that day.

So I had a goal to run a 14 mile trail loop, which at the Percy Warner Park here in Nashville, Tennessee, that included running the red and white trails at that park twice each.

And in that process, there is a LOT of elevation change.

It is highly technical.

I mean, there's lots of roots and rocks and leaves and animals and bumps and all the chaos you could imagine in a forest and on a trail.

So it's a tough run.

And if you're not in great shape, it's really hard.

If you're in great shape, it's still a tough run.

Now up to that point, my previous long trail run was about 8 miles.

So if you know running, going from 8 to 14 is a big leap, especially on the trail where every single mile is more difficult than a road mile, for example, because every mile is more technical with more elevation change, more challenge, more of a beating of your body.

It kind of tears you down in ways that road running does not do, which is fun.

I love it.

It's fantastic.

But to make a leap from 8 miles to 14 is not recommended.

It's not a good idea.

Now we can also amp this up a little more because I chose to run this specific trail run in my Vibram FiveFingers shoes.

Yes, those are the toe shoes.

The ones where you have these little thin-soled running shoes where you can see the individual toes.

They have almost no padding or support.

They are designed to be a barefoot style shoe, which is fantastic if you work up slowly to wearing them.

Because if you don't, there could be severe consequences for your back and your muscles and your legs and your spine.

It is not something you just waltz into and run a long way in.

Now that was not my first day wearing these shoes.

I had run in them before, but not nearly enough.

In fact, if you know my running history, shortly after this run, maybe six months or so later, I broke my foot while running.

I got a stress fracture in my right foot and couldn't run for a year.

So needless to say, this was the beginning of that process.

This trail run was part of my journey to break my body in a way that destroyed my running career for a long, long time.

Now the irony of this particular run was that it felt great.

I had a really good pace.

I was tired, but it was manageable.

It wasn't the kind of run where I thought to myself in the middle, "Wow, I took on too much."

In fact, the opposite was true.

I felt like, "Oh, this is a good choice.

I'm glad that I chose this run today.

What a good challenge for me today."

That was the feeling in the moment.

And the funny part about that is that's fairly common.

It's fairly common to take on something and in the moment, it actually feels good.

It feels correct and you are justified in the emotional feedback that you get from the experience and so you just want to keep going.

The problem is, is that you don't have the valuable, amazing hindsight perspective.

You don't get to see the mistakes you're making until later on.

And then when you do, it's really obvious and then you're kind of mad at yourself.

That's basically what happened.

So my recovery from this particular run was brutal.

It was extraordinarily painful.

What ended up happening was that I finished the run and was very tired, but I went back to my apartment and thought, "Okay, I'll begin the kind of painful process to wiggle my body onto my couch and I'll just lay there all day and recover."

But what happened almost instantly was I got back to my apartment and extreme back spasms kicked in.

I was in a ton of pain for hours afterwards.

This is also a pretty common thing that, especially with my body, is my back will spasm when I've pushed myself too hard, when I haven't given myself the chance to slowly work up to the strength and flexibility that I need to do the next big challenge.

And so on this day, when I pushed way too hard, way too fast, my body responded appropriately by reminding me what a terrible choice I had just made.

And so yes, I had extreme back spasms.

I couldn't walk well for days.

My hip flexors were so tight that it took me a long time to get them loose.

So yeah, it was, in all perspectives here, a bad decision.

The lesson that I learned without question was I pushed too hard, too fast, without the preparation needed or the fitness base to draw from.

And so I want to use this story as a foundational example of what not to do as we discuss the goal of the episode, which is this starting small and scaling slowly perspective.

As a high achiever, as someone who loves his caffeine, who loves his goals, who loves to move quickly and do a lot every single day to dominate my day, both before breakfast and after, that's always my goal, the idea of starting small and scaling slowly is so counter to who I am as a person.

I don't want that.

I want to start big and go bigger and move faster and go crazier.

Like I just want to amp things up and do it now.

But as we can see with just at least this one example, sometimes that's a bad decision.

And so what we're looking for here is a guaranteed goal achieving method.

In other words, if you set out to say, I want to do this big next project, launch this big venture, I want to go on this next journey, have this big grand gesture, I want it to succeed.

Ultimately, that's the goal.

We want success in the end.

The question is, what does the journey look like to get there?

And then my bigger question is, is there a way to guarantee we actually get the finish line we want?

And what I've seen is that if you take the kind of very brutal, super fast, hardcore perspective, sometimes that's what's needed.

But most of the time it's not.

Sometimes pushing super fast, super hard, challenging yourself, bootcamp mentality, diving into the deep end without preparation, sometimes that's going to lead to the quick boost and power you need to get yourself out of stagnation.

If that's where you've been and not taking action, you might need to be jumpstarted, right?

But if that's not your personality or you've tried in the past doing that and it's backfired like this trail run, you might need a new approach.

And what I've seen is that this is a guarantee when you move slowly, when you start small.

And I say guarantee because if you are consistent, if you are persistent, if you stick to the plan and you always move to the next thing and the next and the next day by day, bit by bit, you will get there, right?

I could run that same 14 miles on the trail slowly.

I could have walked the entire thing and done so over the course of multiple days if I wanted to.

That'd be a pretty slow pace, but there is a way to approach these kinds of challenges without the extreme intensity that some of us, myself included, assume is required.

And it's not.

It's not required to move that quickly or to push yourself that hard.

What's ultimately required of any goal is progress.

That's it.

Not speed.

Progress is the only element we have to have, which means the question is, how can you guarantee progress?

How can you guarantee forward motion?

How can you guarantee you're going to take the next action at the next most appropriate interval?

And if starting small and scaling slow is what gets you there, well, then that's where we're going to go.

Now I did in the episode title include this concept that this is a method no one likes, but it always works.

Now some people do like this.

When I say no one, I'm being kind of hyperbolic there.

High achievers don't tend to like this.

People like me don't tend to like this, but this method does work.

The persistence of any goal like this is kind of the core, right?

If you stick to something, you just never quit.

If you're always there day after day, year after year, you just never gave up, you're going to succeed.

It's going to work.

Now I'm going to back this up just a bit and discuss the idea of kind of why high achievers like you and I tend to be the kinds of people who take on too much, like why we give ourselves these self-identifying monikers like high achiever.

We don't have to, right?

There's no requirement to be a high achiever.

It's a voluntary decision to embody this.

Now maybe your personality lends you in this direction, or maybe you chose it arbitrarily or intentionally.

Either way, if you tend to be the kind of person who takes on too much too quickly, this is for you.

As high achievers, we want results now.

We don't like to wait.

Waiting, patience, nah, those are words we don't like.

In addition to this, we also have a high bar for quality and for speed, which is really challenging to hit.

To increase quality while also doing so faster really doesn't actually make sense on paper.

It's the kind of thing you have to be an expert in something in order to achieve this, but yet that's the bar we've set for ourselves.

That's what we want.

I want more.

I want it now.

I want it better.

That tends to be the idea behind what we're after.

Now, not every high achiever has the same perspective, but these are common things that I have seen with others and I certainly see in myself.

Now as part of this process, we demand a lot from ourselves, and that kind of high bar we set internally can be very beneficial.

It can really drive us every day to push and do more and achieve greater things.

But another problem that shows up beyond kind of the personal stress we might experience from that is we also demand a lot from others.

I do this constantly.

This is one of my biggest flaws, is that because I push myself hard, I then push others around me and it causes tension.

It causes conflict.

It backfires in a very intense way sometimes.

I've almost been fired from numerous jobs because of this.

There's a reason why I'm an entrepreneur, right?

There's a reason why I work for myself, and that's because my 20s were kind of tumultuous with me as an employee.

No, I was never actually fired, but man, I got close a few times.

And so that's kind of where this comes from, right?

As a high achiever, I am pushing the envelope.

I am asking more of myself and those around me.

Now, of course, as high achievers, we also don't accept or jive well with mediocrity.

In fact, mediocrity is a gross word.

In many cases, we see something as good enough as failure, right?

The idea that something is just going to work, it will get by.

Just in my head, I think, "No, no, no, no.

I'm not that kind of person.

I don't get by.

I don't do what's good enough or mediocre.

Ooh, no, no, no.

I do excellent work.

I do A plus work."

That's how I have been living my life in many ways, which of course has its problems.

Now, in this process of being high achievers, we also ignore warning signs that our choices are not actually aligned to reality, right?

Because we are pushing so hard, we have our blinders on and we don't see these obvious signs others can see in us that we're making a big mistake potentially, right?

It's a good thing to push hard in many cases, but there are pros and cons to all these choices.

One of those cons is that sometimes we miss the bigger picture.

We're so dialed in, we're so focused, we're so highly executing in that way that we are in the crunch mode and we need more of the release.

We need more of the bigger picture, more of the pause, the strategy, the, "Okay, what if I did things differently?

What if I slowed things down?

What if I was not so intense?

What could that mean for me?"

Now, as high achievers, when things backfire, we do keep pushing forward anyway.

What I tend to see is that feedback, failure, bad things actually add fuel to the fire.

Sometimes that is actually what amps us up more than anything else and brute force becomes our go-to.

We just say, "You know what, if I just push harder and do more and make this happen, I can force success into reality."

Yeah, sometimes that works.

If you work the 90-hour work week, you might get more work done than your coworker who only worked 40 or 50.

Sure, that could be true, but is that the answer?

Is that what you want?

I question it.

I question it a lot.

Now, as high achievers, we also view ourselves as the answer to all of our problems.

This is one of my biggest challenges, is I am in many ways a solopreneur, in many ways the CEO of everything.

In many ways, I am the answer to all of my problems.

Get out of my way.

I'm doing this my way.

It's the Jeff Sanders way.

This is a big flaw of mine.

Anyone who's ever worked with me personally for long enough will know that that tends to be how I do things.

I don't like compromise.

I don't like the idea of letting someone else win, as an example.

Because of that, because I've embodied this idea that I am a well-rounded person who can do everything, wear all the hats, solve all the problems, I tend to exhaust myself doing everything, first of all.

It's impossible to do it all.

Then, of course, I burn myself out and the quality then drops.

That perspective of perfectionism, which has been underlying this whole thing, then really kicks in because I realize, as someone who's trying to do it all, I'm doing nothing because everything's being done poorly, because I'm trying to be the answer to everything.

In this process, we also tend to say yes, by default, to all the new stuff that pops up because we are these well-rounded high achievers who can execute a high level.

If a new challenge pops up, heck yes, bring it on.

Let's do it.

Let's make it happen.

Saying yes, by default, becomes the go-to because, of course, I can take that on.

Of course, I have the ability.

Yes, I'll find the time.

Yes, I'll make it happen.

This has worked to my advantage in the past, which is why I kept doing it for a long time.

It wasn't until recently that I discovered that saying no, by default, was a way smarter answer for almost everything.

But that's a huge change of pace and requires a whole new perspective.

As high achievers, we set aggressive deadlines, and then we aggressively work to get done even faster than that, to get done early.

We have the bar set so high that even the fast pace we're at isn't fast enough.

And finally, as high achievers, we never settle.

Settling is not a thing we do.

Even when the bar is high, even when we know that our sanity is at stake, even when we know our happiness just doesn't exist, we fight.

And we fight so hard that, honestly, the whole thing just ends up being a big old waste of time.

Now, I've just painted a really bleak picture of high achievements.

But what I'm trying to do here is to really paint a picture of what it means to be aggressive, what it means to be goal-oriented to a fault.

There are pros and cons.

There are good things here, right?

I did address quite a few things here that are good, but quite a few that need a different approach.

And so the goal of the episode this week is to provide that other perspective, to say, "Hey, you, as a high achiever, you want big things.

You want to move forward.

But what if you did it in a different way?

What if the pace was more intentional?

What if it was slower and more methodical?"

What could that mean for you?

As someone who wants to explore the best forward action, best may not mean fast.

Best may not mean intense.

Best may not mean the way you've been living and operating.

So that becomes the question.

Is there a better way?

And if there was, and if that way was slower, are you open to that?

From what I've seen, slower oftentimes means fewer, because you can't do as much in the slower pace.

But fewer means focus.

And focus increases quality and quantity.

Focus is phenomenal.

It is the goal.

Extraordinary focus is going to be, by definition, more simplistic, more of a minimalist perspective.

Focus is your friend.

And slower, once again, is fewer.

Fewer is focus.

And focus is our goal.

Slower also allows for a comprehensive approach.

This is something I have been loving for the last few years as I've approached various problems.

As an example, what I would do is say, "Well, here's a complicated problem I have.

It could be a tech issue that I'm working with or some other financial goal I have.

And I'll take a single approach.

Here's the one thing I want to try.

Well, the one thing might do okay.

What if I had another angle?

And another, and another, and another?

What if I tackled this problem from every direction?"

A methodical strategy to attack a problem from every angle can virtually guarantee the best possible end result because you've tested everything.

Well, testing takes time.

So you're not going to have time to do this full 100%, 360 comprehensive view if you're moving super fast and need an answer today and then move on.

So slower in many ways actually allows for the best approach to emerge over time because you've had the time to test and find out what is the best approach and how can I make that my go-to.

Slower also prevents disaster.

Many kind of catastrophic problems occur because of distraction or the faster pace or the intensity that breaks stuff in the process of moving too quickly.

So slow work actually allow for tangents and distractions, which can actually be a good thing because you're able to recognize the distraction, get back on track and not actually lost progress because you weren't trying to do it all so quickly.

As an example, let's imagine your calendar is booked from start to finish all day every day and there's no wiggle room.

There's no margin.

There's no white space.

Well, that means if a single thing happens that you didn't expect, the entire calendar is now messed up.

Everything is behind schedule.

Everything is more difficult.

A slower pace allows for margin, allows for tangents, distractions and things you didn't see coming.

Slower allows for disaster to occur and you're fine.

You're still able to bounce back.

You're still able to get things done.

Slower can be your friend.

Margin is your friend.

There's a reason why my second book is called The Free Time Formula because free time, this idea that you have time that's open and flexible and filled with white space and margin, well, that's where creativity shows up.

That's where a lot of the beauty of life shows up is in that space you didn't plan for, the space you just let occur.

That's not the norm for a lot of high achievers.

For a lot of those who are perfectionists, who are organized, who are diligent, who are time-oriented, that kind of margin doesn't tend to exist and yet as I've seen it, that's where some of the biggest breakthroughs will come from.

Slower also crosses T's and dots I's in ways that faster just can't.

The world that I live in, details are everything and a slower approach ensures that what matters is attended to and the quality bar still remains high.

In fact, the quality bar can be higher than normal because you have the time to get there, because you're able to attend to those details, to cross the T's, to dot the I's, to make sure every single approach has been addressed.

The quality bar can be the highest possible if you have all the time in the world to get there.

So give yourself that time and let yourself get to that amazing end result because you have acknowledged and given the appropriate focus on those details.

Now slower can certainly be boring.

No doubt about it.

It's unpopular for a lot of people.

People like myself, generally speaking, aren't a fan of this.

However, the overnight success story is overly glorified, right?

We give a lot of attention to those who went from zero to hero overnight.

There's a phenomenal book called The Millionaire Next Door.

The Millionaire Next Door tells the story of actual millionaires.

Now this book is probably 20 to 30 years old at this point, but the principles remain, which is that the vast majority of the actual millionaires, people with actual money, are not flashy.

They're not out there in the world with overnight success stories.

They're the boring ones.

They live in boring houses.

They drive boring cars.

Their life doesn't look flashy.

It doesn't look exciting.

It looks kind of dull on the outside.

But on the inside, it's methodical.

It's meticulous.

It's well-planned.

It's intentional.

It's satisfying.

It's fulfilling.

And it's actually successful.

Slow can be your best friend.

Slower is also healthier.

You know, being sustainable is not necessarily sexy, but to maintain your mental, physical, and emotional well-being over time, that is more attractive than breakdowns, burnouts, and washouts.

When you are able to take care of yourself.

Oftentimes that means you approach your health from the long-term perspective.

You don't look for the quick solution.

The quick fix, the fast diet, the lose 20 pounds in 10 days kind of perspective.

No, no, no.

You want to be healthy not today or tomorrow, but you want to be healthy 10 years from now, 20 years, 50 years from now.

Well, what does that mean?

That means that you take an approach that allows you to do the work today that guarantees success down the road.

And that's not a fast approach.

It doesn't have to be.

Of course, you always have that option.

We can always move faster if we want.

But the point of this is not to move faster for the sake of fast.

The point is long-term success.

Starting small and scaling slowly means we have an end goal we're willing to wait to get to.

We're willing to allow patience to win the game.

Because that's going to ultimately give us the end result we've been striving for.

And it's a lot less stressful, which by the way is better for your health.

Slower also allows for research, testing, experimentation, and even perfection.

Because when you do something right, and you want to do something right, and doing something right matters, well then slow is the thing that's going to get you there.

Slow always wins in those scenarios.

Optimizing something, really finding the best path forward, that's going to happen through the slower methodical approach.

Now another concept here that I have really toyed with, with this whole idea of starting small, scaling slowly, really adopting this methodology that is counter to how I normally operate.

One thing that has come up is the question of joy.

Do I enjoy life at a slower pace?

Can I learn to enjoy that when my default behavior is to move faster, drink more coffee, get bigger wins, do it overnight?

If my tendency is to be that intense, am I going to actually find peace, happiness, and fulfillment in a slower pursuit?

I think the answer is yes.

But you've got to give it a shot.

You've got to really try to find that different rhythm in a way that works for you.

And one of the ways that I have found that can work well is the 1% rule.

If you know James Clear's book, Atomic Habits, you've probably heard of the 1% rule.

It's discussed in other places as well, but that's one place that I know really kind of drives this point home well.

The 1% rule is that simple idea that you're going to make 1% progress on the thing you're after.

If your goal is to improve your health, you can improve by 1% today.

If your goal is to improve your business, how do you get 1% better today?

There was an idea that I had for this podcast that I have never actually pursued that I was going to call something along the lines of repeated progressive exposure to increasingly difficult stimuli.

It's a mouthful.

That's why I didn't publish that one.

In other words, the 1% rule, you're going to have tiny actions over time that grow slowly and your seemingly insignificant efforts can lead to astounding achievements in the long term.

As you progressively challenge yourself to grow a little bit each day, you can find results in that and find joy in that progress.

That's the focus.

The joy comes from the progress.

If the progress is slow and methodical, it will still scale over time.

It will still get better over time.

Of course, to those points I made previously, there are a lot of benefits to that slower approach.

But where does the joy come from?

The joy comes in the progress.

It comes in seeing the results showing up.

And of course, if you have extra time and want to move faster and can, that of course is always your choice.

But if you rest on the idea that I will always go back to the 1% rule, always go back to how can I just make this a little bit better?

Well, then you can find joy in the fact that you made progress today.

Find joy in the fact that you did the right thing today.

And if each and every day that's your focus, that's where you put your effort in is a little bit of progress.

Over time, you will see phenomenal results from this pursuit.

Now of course, you also want to choose goals that include a journey you love by default.

We don't want to confuse the finish line for the daily grind.

This is such a common problem.

We kind of assume that if I, for example, am a marathon runner, I've run a marathon, I can put that on the resume.

I can tell people, "Oh my gosh, I'm a marathon runner.

Isn't that impressive?"

But if you don't like the journey, if you don't like to run, oh my gosh, you're going to hate trying to become a marathon runner.

It's not going to be fun.

It's going to be painful the whole way through, right?

Versus saying, "I identify as a runner.

I am a runner.

I just happen to be someone who runs more over time.

And then sure, maybe one day I'll run so far, it's actually a marathon.

And if someone wants to give me a medal because of it, fine, but that's not the goal.

My goal was to run because I love to run.

I love the journey.

I love the challenge and the everyday grind because it's not a grind at all.

It's joyful.

It is fun.

It is what I look forward to.

It's what I'm enthusiastic about."

That's a whole different ballgame.

I'm not out to pursue finish lines.

I'm out to pursue daily progress that I love.

That's the joy.

That's the journey.

That's the pursuit.

Pursue the journey itself and let the finish lines fall where they may.

The joy is in the details.

The love is in the work.

The pleasure that you're seeking is in, honestly, the quiet, kind of invisible pursuit that nobody else sees, that you know all about, but you find the joy in that labor, that labor of love because that's who you are.

That's what you're after.

As a review, we covered a lot here, but I really want to drive this point home that slowing down and being more methodical is an option.

It's a choice you can make.

It doesn't have to be your default, but it could always be one of the things you choose and there's such a potential for long-term amazingness from that.

Pursue less.

Revel in the details.

Find joy in the journey.

Start small and scale slowly.

And for the action step this week, reinvent your goals with a more methodical approach.

If you're a high achiever like me, you may hate this idea.

I get it, but it is worth trying.

Some goals just need to move slowly to guarantee their success.

If your pace is a problem, change it.

If your life is too complicated, simplify it.

If your goals are a mess, ditch them and start over.

Slow and methodical is your new best friend.

If you're enjoying this podcast, of course, subscribe to it in your favorite podcast app or become a VIP member of the 5AMiracle community by getting the premium ad-free version with exclusive bonus episodes at 5ammiraclepremium.com.

And that's all I've got for you here on the 5AM Miracle Podcast this week.

Until next time, you have the power to change your life, and the fun begins bright and early.

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