Can you run (and publish) too much?

There is a Goldilocks principle in running and putting stories out into the world. The trick is finding the perfect amount.

If, like me, you have been watching Nedd Brockmann on his attempt to break the world record for running 1,000 miles, then perhaps we have had the same thought: that there is a point at which running gets a bit much. In Nedd’s case, probably far too much.

If you have not been following Nedd’s challenge, here’s a recap: Nedd just took 12 days 13 hours 16 minutes and 45 seconds to run 1,000 miles around a 400m track at the Sydney Olympic Park. That is an average of 128 kilometres a day. Nedd was hoping to break the 1,000 mile world record set by Yiannis Kourous in 1988 (a smidge under 10 and a half days). Yiannis’ record still stands. But in his attempt, Nedd has raised AUS$2.6 million for charities supporting Australians experiencing homelessness.

Nedd and his team have posted about - and live-streamed - the challenge, mostly on Tik Tok. And the spectacle has been … well, pretty horrific at times. Nedd has put his mind and body through hell and it was all on display. There were many moments when I wondered whether Nedd was running too much.

Of course in order to do something remarkable - world shattering, in fact - one has to be prepared to go to the edge and then push beyond. But at the same time, there has to be a limit, right?

I think the same is true for everyone’s running. There is a Goldilocks principle where a perfect amount of running exists. Too much can be harmful. And too little will mean not reaching our potential or hitting our targets.

I am also of the opinion that the same is true in publishing. There is a “right” amount of content. Too much and it becomes overwhelming and quality suffers (more on that in a moment). Too little and readers lose interest or stop investing their hard earned cash (again, more on that in a moment).

In Nedd’s case, he decided to take on this latest monster challenge because he knows it would garner attention. And attention would help him achieve his goal of raising as much money as possible for charity. Nedd has history in this regard - in 2022 he ran 4,000km from Perth to Sydney, across Australia, also raising money for homelessness charities. Nedd knew that if he wanted to raise more money, he’d need to do more.

In publishing it can sometimes feel as though the same “more is more” approach is required. Those who publish online can get into a spiral of pumping out more and more content in an attempt to grab a shrinking share of their target audiences’ attention. Certainly social media algorithms appear to reward more posting with more (or at least not less) attention. Because those platforms themselves are in the business of trying to grab attention.

But then in almost all cases, the same thing happens. The quality suffers. I have no doubt that Nedd would concede that the limping shuffle he ended up with - once the huge distance he was running took its toll and injuries started to bite - was not high quality running, if you measure that by his form. There was quantity (plenty of it) but not so much quality.

The same goes for publishing. The more output, the lower the quality in almost all cases (there are exceptions, but they are very rare). At one end of the quality-quantity gamut you have book authors who might publish just a handful of tomes in their lifetime (my favourite example is Robert Caro’s dedication to his editor in the third part of his multi-volume biography of US president Lyndon Johnson “For Bob Gottlieb. Thirty years. Four books. Thanks.”) At the other end of the spectrum there are content creators posting several times each day on multiple social media accounts. The most extreme version of this was an account (now disabled) called Nieps Club that had posted 38.8m times to a channel with 4m followers. But there are plenty of content creators who feel massive pressure to post several times each day on each of several channels.

So what is the Goldilocks amount? Well, that depends entirely on what you are trying to achieve.

If you want to be the best marathoner in the world, then you have to put in the miles. Eliud Kipchoge is reported to run 124 to 136 miles per week, most weeks of the year. That involves running at least twice a day, almost every day. But for a runner looking to complete their first marathon, that would be overkill.

If you want to raise millions of dollars for charity, then perhaps running 4,000 laps of a track in less than two weeks is the right approach. The training for a challenge like that will almost certainly involve spending hours and hours or even whole days running. Meanwhile for many people, running for a charity can be a much less epic affair.

And if you want to run a fast sprint- or middle-distance time, then focusing on form and strength, rather than purely on distance is probably the right tactic.

When it comes to publishing, I will argue that a similar quantity-to-quality ratio applies. At Like the Wind, we are focused on quality. That means we (only) publish four times per year and we limit the number of stories in each issue to between 25 and 30. We post infrequently on our social channels. And we send one email per week (alternating between LtW Notes and LtW:LR) plus this Substack story every Sunday. We aim to make everything we publish as high quality as possible. Of course, sometimes I wonder whether we should be publishing more. And then sometimes I wonder whether we should be publishing less. At the end of the day, there is no universally correct answer. There is just what is right for each of us.

So if you got out for your 10th run of the week this morning, good for you. If you have come back from a long run that has taken all day, again good for you. If your run today was your first of this week, I trust it was a good one. And if you have not run today, then I hope you enjoyed the day off. Whatever the case, all I can say for sure is that we’re striving to get the frequency of our output right. So please - if you have the time - drop me a line and let me know what you think about how to get the balance right. I’m definitely still learning!

Simon
Editor, co-founder and general dogsbody
Like the Wind magazine