Personal Best

I ran a personal best (PB) time for ten miles yesterday.  The past couple of months, I've been building up my speed over distance and yesterday I went for it.  I blew my previous time ten mile time away by 4:27.  It was hard - VERY hard - but felt pretty darn good when I saw what I'd accomplished.

It got me thinking...  What does it take to achieve a personal best?  What does it mean when you hear someone say they got a new PB at something?

It means you did more then you've ever done before.  Or less, or faster, or higher, or whatever the goal was.  It means you tried harder, went further, lifted more, lost more weight, whatever, then EVER before in your whole life.  That sounds pretty daunting.  What does it take to achieve that?  It takes your best effort.  It takes better than your best.  It takes all you've got.  It's worth it though.  Setting a personal best is enormously satisfying.

I don't know if I'll ever run ten miles faster than I did yesterday.  I may try for a different record next.  Maybe push-ups.  Maybe I'll shoot for a new PB half marathon.  Maybe I'll set a goal for an app to set an uptime record.  I'm not sure yet, but I'll definitely set a goal and go for it.

I think this applies to business too.  We can set PBs at work.  I've found them to be satisfying also.  In my line of work, the goals tend to not be so physical, but more like:  number of projects delivered on time, or least amount of production incidents in a month.  That sort of thing.  The same MO applies: you've go to do something better than you've ever done it before.  It takes hard work and determination, but you can do it.

For the detail-oriented or the just-plain-curious, here's a link to the run stats from my Garmin Forerunner: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/228975117

Shameless plug:
I have spent the past thirteen years writing code and managing teams of software engineers in the financial services industry.
To learn more about me, look up