Haiku Triathlon
Tuesday, October 2, 2007 at 9:23PM 
You have too much on your mind as a triathlete. A three-sport training schedule, gear, your day job, keeping up with the technology, trying to register for races; it is physical and mental overload.
Let me introduce you to the concept of Haiku Triathlon. In poetry, haiku forces us to write in a 5-7-5 syllable format. This strips the prose down the essentials, making it the most powerful form of poetry around. You can do this with that mess you call your "triathlon lifestyle" as well.
I came across this idea while reading a blog posting about Haiku Productivity on Zenhabits.net. The gist of it is to focus on only the most important things. You won't get more done, but the things you do will be done vastly better than ever before. I highly recommend you read the article here.
As an aside, I cleaned up a huge amount of my personal belongings to move to Santa Fe. I now have far fewer things than before. What I do have, I can take better care of. I know where it all is and the loss of useless junk is incredibly liberating. I have haiku'd my personal belongings and it is great!
So how can you apply this to triathlon? Probably the most immediate way is to haiku your workouts. Before you train, set two goals for that particular session. "I will improve my hand entry and reduce my time sitting at the wall." Don't make your goals too broad. They must be consice, actionable items. Too broad and you won't make it happen.
Now, apply this to your gear. Figure out what you need to train and race and sell the rest. If you haven't used something for years, it is useless. Give it to the kid down the street, throw it away, whatever it takes to get it out of your house. If it is sentimental, take a picture of it with a digital camera and start a album of your old stuff. I did this with a lot of my old "cool" t-shirts. I haven't worn them in years and I couldn't bear to part with them, so now I have them in a digital collection and out of my closet, taking up space. I sold my old tri bike that I haven't ridden in forever and filled up the trash can with busted wheels and shredded tires.
Finally, haiku your triathlon season. Set two or three actionable goals for this year. "PR a sprint triathlon, take my entire family to at least one race, and go on a bike ride out of state," could be your list.
Now you have actionable items for your racing and training so you can really focus and improve. You have cleaned out your household of triathlon junk and emptied your mind of distractions. You will find that you can perform far better in your workouts, your racing, and your life.
How can you haiku your triathlon lifestyle?
Reader Comments (2)
If I could only get my wife to "haiku" the massive storage containers of baby clothes in the garage! I would then have the space for the perfect Tri-Cave to hold all of my tri-CRAP! I love my tri-crap... and being "new" to the sport... I don't have a ton... so there's no need to haiku myself yet! I will say that I could definitely develop some "haiku-ness" in other areas of my life... nice post Brett.
I started to work on simplifying my life after I read John Maeda's book on simplicity, and I soon became an avid reader of the zenhabits blog, ... so when I found you were doing the same, I had one of those "great minds meet" moments (that I usually get while ordering at restaurants with my fiancée). To make it simple, here come my simplicity actions. Step 1: From five to three bikes. I've been commuting in between three cities for my work, and I've left numbres of bikes in the three flats that I live in. The list: Barcelona, 1 Brompton folding bike, my race-ready Cannondale CAAD600, and a touring Specialized Sequoia. In Madrid an old mountain bike turned commuter bike (road slicks and a rack), and in Valencia an old road Decathlon bike. The plan is to get a Cervélo and sell the two road bikes, and the to fit the Specialized with some suspension and sell the mountain bike, as I will move to Barcelona for good next summer. And step 2: Two big races: A Marathon in March, and a Half ironaman in September (my wedding is in between). Next steps: gear (I already started with regular clothes, but I seem to "need" a new long sleeves jersey, ... WIP), electronics, and running shoes.