I’ve been interviewing high performers in a range of fields to find out how they work, and how they win the mental game of time management. This week’s high performer is Alex Ostberg. He is a full-time program manager for the Geriatric Emergency Department Collaborative, which is how I know him, and he is also an assistant coach for a group of professional distance runners chasing Olympic and world championship teams. He writes a weekly newsletter on training, habits, and performance. I wanted to know two things: how he protects his own focus, and what he has learned from being that close to some of the best runners in the world.
Avoid the dragon instead of trying to slay it
Alex is one of the most disciplined people I know, so I asked him how he protects his focus. He focuses on adjusting his environment and setting up systems to focus, rather than relying on willpower. “Your environment is always going to win over your willpower.”
Small changes can make it easier to focus and drain less of your cognitive bandwidth
He sleeps with his phone in a different room and bought a $15 alarm clock to wake him up. He took social media off his phone in 2021 and never put it back, and during work hours it is blocked in his browser too. A focus filter turns on at 7:30 every morning, and only about 15 contacts can get through to him until 3:30. He also said a good morning starts the night before. If he spends 10 to 11pm scrolling, the next day is almost guaranteed to be worse.
The way he summed it up: it is a lot easier to avoid the dragon than to try to slay it. Most of us fight distraction in the moment, when we are tired, and the phone is right there. He moves the fight earlier, to decisions made the night before about where the phone goes while he sleeps. I say a smaller version of this all the time. If you are trying not to eat cookies, don’t leave the box on the counter. Put it somewhere else, or don’t bring it into the house.
The best runners in the world don’t always feel like training either
Alex is the day-to-day operator for the group he coaches: training load, injuries, nutrition, all of it. He said the inside view clears up a myth. You imagine the best athletes in the world jump out of bed excited to train. Up close, there are plenty of days when they don’t feel like running, and they do it anyway. Sometimes they check the box. Sometimes they reduce the scope. But they still do it, and their output is incredible, not because they show up inspired every day, but because they have systems that make sure the work gets done whether or not the motivation shows up.
“Extraordinary days are built on ordinary days.”
His point was that you have to stack a tremendous number of ordinary days where you just show up and punch the clock. A coach he worked with years ago told him that what separates the best athletes is not a heroic moment. It is their tolerance for boredom and their willingness to show up on the thousandth day with the same intention they had on day one. He also said something I hear from a lot of high performers: you think you need to feel good to get going, but a lot of the time you get going and then start to feel good. Starting a painful task is much harder than continuing it.
Part of the mental game is separating the decision to show up from how you happen to feel that morning. You don’t have to be an elite athlete to borrow that. I know I sound like a mom when I say “you don’t have to feel like doing it to do it.” But maybe moms are right sometimes.
This week, pick one battle you fight every day and see whether you can set up your environment to remove it instead. Where does your phone sleep? What is open on your screen when you sit down? A dragon avoided is a dragon you never have to slay.
Christina
A self-guided online course that transforms how you think about and use your time.
