Why Amundsen Won and Scott Didn't
Do you ever feel like there are not enough hours in the day? I'm not complaining. If you're reading this, you probably know exactly what I mean.
Last Wednesday my daughter got into an accident at preschool and ended up needing stitches. She's okay, thankfully.
But today felt like another one of those days where everything that could be made harder was.
I started Winning Wednesday because Wednesday is hump day. The middle of the week where momentum either builds or dies. And some weeks, the hump is real.
Which is exactly why I've been thinking about this story all week. Because when everything feels like too much, the answer is almost never to push harder. It's to find your march.
The Race to the South Pole
In October 1911, two teams set out from the coast of Antarctica racing to be the first people in history to reach the South Pole. The conditions were brutal. Temperatures dropped to 20 below zero. Gale-force winds. No radio, no cellphones, no way to call for help if something went wrong. A rescue from the South Pole in 1911 was basically impossible.
Robert Falcon Scott's team pushed hard on good days (sometimes 40 or even 60 miles) and huddled in their tents when the weather turned. On one particularly bad stretch, Scott wrote in his journal: "I doubt any party could travel in such weather."
Roald Amundsen's team marched 15-20 miles. Every single day. Good weather or blizzard, it didn't matter.
And here's the part that gets me: on perfect days, when his team wanted to push farther, Amundsen said no. Stick to the march.
With 45 miles to go and clear skies ahead, Amundsen could have reached the Pole in one hard push. He went 17 miles that day.
Amundsen reached the South Pole on the exact date he'd written in his planning journal back in Norway. His team made it home safely.
Scott's team arrived at the Pole 34 days later, only to find Amundsen's flag already planted. They died on the return journey, found just 11 miles from a supply depot, having run out of time, energy, and margin for error.
Same weather. Same goal. Same year. Completely different outcomes.
Jim Collins studied this in Great by Choice and called it the 20-Mile March. It's the concept the Self Journal's 13-week structure was built on: consistent daily progress beats intensity every single time.
The Floor, Not the Ceiling
A lot is going on over here right now. Some days my march is 20 minutes of learning and reading about AI before the chaos starts. It's become a bit of an obsession, and honestly, that helps. But sometimes obsession becomes its own kind of too much. I'm learning to hold the floor without letting the ceiling disappear.
That's the whole game.
Most goal failures aren't about effort. They're about uneven effort. Big push on Monday, off on Tuesday, guilt spiral by Thursday. That pattern doesn't compound. It cancels out.
The fix is a floor, not a ceiling.
Pick your march.
Choose one goal. Define the minimum daily action you can hit on a hard day, not just a perfect one:
- Writing a book: 250 words
- Building pipeline: 10 outreach messages
- Getting fit: 20 minutes of movement
- Learning something new: 15 minutes of reading
John Grisham wrote three pages every morning before his law career started. Jerry Seinfeld's was one joke a day. And he'd mark an X on a calendar every day he did it. The chain became the motivation.
Those numbers don't sound impressive. That's the point.
On good days: do the march and stop. (Harder than it sounds.)
On bad days: do the march anyway. That's the whole point.
The goal isn't maximum output on your best days. It's not losing ground on your worst ones.
Before the end of the week, write down your 20-mile march for one goal. Name the specific number. Then hold it for 7 days.
No heroics. No catch-up days. Just the march.
Make it easier: Not sure what your number should be? Cut whatever feels right in half. The floor should feel almost embarrassingly achievable. That's how you hold it on a Thursday when everything goes sideways.
The Self Journal was built around this idea. The 13-week structure gives you a consistent daily minimum to march toward. If you want a place to run this, here’s the Self Journal in our store.
Where in your life are you waiting for a good day to start, when the whole point is to start on a bad one?
📚 Reading Corner: Great by Choice by Jim Collins. Chapter 3 is the one you want. If you read it years ago, it hits differently now.
