"Avoid burnout"..."Pace yourself"

"Avoid burnout"..."Pace yourself"
We talk about this, but what does it actually mean?

Ever watched kids run?
It becomes immediately obvious that humans are NOT born with an understanding of pace.

Later in life, we begin confusing our awareness of what pacing means with our ability to do it.

So I started a list of reasons we struggle to pace ourselves.

Reason 1: "Done" is usually unclear.
Making matters worse, we don't take time to clarify it.

Pacing relies on the rate of effort we can sustain, without burning out, until we're done.

Which means defining "done" is critical.

In a race, done is marked.
In work, not so much.

Reason 2: …sure, there are more reasons we fail to pace ourselves well,
but none matter as much as Reason 1.