A Single Seed: The 10-Second Rule, AKA Why You Can Probably Try Harder

"Push ups, go. Don't stop until I say so. We're not on a timer." I can vividly remember my coach saying these words to my teammates and I, stoically, without any real emotion. His perceived lack of sympathy only aids in our understanding of how serious he is, and how serious our effort must be in return. It's a sweltering night inside of our gym, and as we start the next circuit of push-ups against the sweaty blue mats, I start to realize what is going on. We had already been subjected to a hellish routine of exercises, and would have more to come that night. As a competitive Muay Thai kickboxer, I had become used to our coach trying to break us, either physically or mentally, but that night he seemed bent on doing both.

When I started paying attention to the remaining time we had left that he called out, I noticed a pattern.

He was lying.

Earlier, as we sat in a squat position with our arms out in front of us with weights in each hand, he proclaimed "Thirty seconds." (is there a word for said really loud without emotion?). Our minds collectively breathed a sigh of relief as we knew the pain would momentarily subside. Except, by the time he said "Twenty seconds.", it seemed as though much longer than ten seconds had passed. By the time he got to "Ten seconds.", I had my suspicions that he was playing mind games, as it had easily been thirty seconds since we supposedly had only twenty left.

Then we got to the push ups.

And he did the same thing.

It's not hard to imagine how much your body would want to give up if you had to do continuous pushups for minutes straight after already being put through an hour-long workout (to be clear, this is not meant to be a humblebrag in any way; you couldn't even consider what I was doing a push-up by the end of the circuit).

But again, he challenged us, almost daring us to quit. "Thirty seconds." "Twenty seconds". Then, "Ten seconds." But something interesting happened after he gave the ten-second declaration. Everyone, myself included, magically gained more energy and started cranking out our pathetic version of pushups as fast as we could, as the end was surely near. Even when we thought we had nothing left in our tanks, when we thought we could work no harder, all of a sudden, we could. Of course, the actual time we spent in that last ten-second block was really more like thirty seconds, the final touch of his mind games for the night.

Afterwards, he explained his rationale.

He told us that whenever he said "Ten seconds", everyone automatically worked harder, as we suddenly had more in our energy reserve than we thought, and therefore weren't trying as hard as we thought we were before our minds were told we only had a short amount of time left. He went on to explain how if we were able to conjure that type of effort without having that outside prompt, our training would become much more beneficial, which would translate into better fights.

This is what I call the 10-Second Rule. Imagine an area in your life where you feel like you're working really hard to succeed. Maybe it's your job, your relationship, parenting, even at the gym. If it's something you really care about improving, you undoubtedly are putting forth a valiant effort towards achieving your goal or bettering the situation.

But I bet you can do more.

Think about if you were told you only had one month to convince your partner to stay with you. How much more attentive would you be? How many more random acts of kindness would you find yourself doing for this person, just to get them to be with you? Or maybe it's your writing career that you dream of having someday, but have't quite made the leap. What if no editor would ever read your manuscript again unless you had a completed one by the end of the month?

These situations are obviously unrealistic, but can paint a good picture of how much more we could do, despite feeling as though we already do enough. Enough is good, but you can be great.

How much more do you have in the tank?

"A Single Seed" is my attempt to get out one idea every day that I've learned or accumulated over the years, with the hope that it may stick in someone else's memory bank as well. The idea may be related to fitness, business, life, or philosophy, but I think you'll find that many can change domains if you wish them to. With each seed planted, a new life awaits.