Confession: I was never a good runner.

Even though I love running now, I’ve had lifelong asthma and flat feet that require orthotics. For most of my life, I couldn't run for even a minute without stopping.

I remember being in JROTC when I was 15. On our last day of bootcamp, we had to run 5 miles. On Mile 3, I collapsed - I didn’t own an inhaler because my Asian parents were wary of medicine. If I hadn’t borrowed another cadet’s in that moment, I might have died.

For years, I told myself: “I’m just not a runner. I can’t run. I’ll die if a zombie apocalypse happens.”

Then, one day, my friend Anna taught me something that changed everything.

Anna was an officer in the Army, and a certified badass. She could outrun everyone, outlift everyone, do an insane number of pull ups, and - my favorite part - whenever anyone gave her shit for being a woman, she could make them drop and give her ten because she was their superior. (That’s my kind of friend. 😏)

It was 2020, and Anna wouldn’t accept my defeatist attitude that I couldn’t run.

She said:

She was right.

I started. Every single day, I showed up to the treadmill. One minute became two. Two became five.

The work was boring. The progress was slow. There was nothing exciting about running on a treadmill at 6 AM, tracking whether I could add 30 more seconds without stopping.

But I kept showing up.

Pretty soon, I was running one (very, very slow) mile without stopping.

Then, one (very, very slow) mile, with incline.

Then, one (less slow) mile with incline, without stopping.

I kept going. One mile became two. Two became a 5K. So what if it took me 35 minutes to complete? Those 35 minutes eventually became 34. Then 33. And eventually, sub 30.

Maybe the zombie apocalypse wouldn’t kill me. Or at the very least, I wouldn’t be the first to die anymore.

A few years ago, I set a goal for myself: run a half-marathon, with steep inclines, without stopping, in 2 1/2 hours.

I ran it in a little over 2, averaging a 9 minute mile for the whole race - faster than the 10.5 minute mile I was planning for.

And look, I know it’s not the fastest time in history. But going from unable to run for 60 seconds to completing 13.1 miles was an incredible feat.

Running and finishing the race was exciting. But all the training leading up to it was not. It was really boring, actually.

The secret wasn't intensity. It wasn't some revolutionary training hack. It was consistency.

This principle transformed my running. It also transformed how I think about operational excellence.

Without the Boring Work, Ideas are Just Ideas

I was once at an offsite where the whole team loved whiteboarding. The energy in the room was electric. Ideas flew around. People got excited. Creative juices flowed.

Whiteboarding feels productive. It feels like progress. It's the kind of work that gives you a dopamine hit.

But without the boring work that comes after - the work of taking those insights and decomposing them into actual plans, breaking down every initiative to the nuts and bolts, identifying the specific tasks that need completion - it all remains just ideas.

This team had an operations person and an EA, who took all the whiteboarding session information and created a real plan of action. They identified next steps. They built timelines. They assigned owners. They set up the systems to track progress.

That boring maintenance work was what allowed them to launch everything in a timely fashion. They were able to operate and execute with tremendous efficiency.

Not because they had better ideas than other companies. Because they did the unsexy work of maintaining momentum.

What Maintenance Actually Looks Like

For operators, the boring maintenance work might look like:

• Keeping an action task board clean and up-to-date

• Running weekly meetings and making sure everybody operates on the same cadence

• Doing the follow-ups, studying data, analyzing what's working

None of this is exciting. None of this is splashy content that gets engagement. This is all behind-the-scenes work.

The boring stuff is what makes you ready for when you catch a good wave or when your sail gets really good winds.

I like my running analogy from earlier, because it’s easy to visualize: if somebody wants to become a faster runner, they can't just jump from a 13-minute mile to an 8-minute mile. It's about shaving off seconds from your time.

That work takes a long time. You have to make that change gradual, otherwise you risk injury, risk tearing something. That's not sustainable in the long run.

The same is true for your operations. You can't sprint intensely for a short period and expect lasting results. You need the unsexy stuff - eating right, stretching before and after, varying your training patterns, showing up consistently even when you don't feel like it.

Excellence compounds through maintenance, not through intensity.

The Playbook: Building Maintenance Into Your Workflow

When I coach operators who are sold on "consistency over intensity" but don't know where to start, here's what I tell them to implement this week.

Consistency over intensity.

It's not sexy. It won't get you a lot of engagement on LinkedIn. But it's what separates operators who burn out after six months from operators who build companies that last.

The boring work is where excellence compounds.

Until next time,

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