Why sustainable pace beats short bursts of effort
Launch library · evergreen read
A campaign run at maximum intensity from the very start tends to produce a burst of early energy followed by a steep decline, as volunteers exhaust themselves before the campaign has actually reached the point where sustained pressure genuinely matters most to the eventual outcome sought, right when a campaign most needs its people at their best.
A sustainable pace, deliberately paced effort that people can maintain for months rather than days, tends to outperform short bursts over the length of a genuinely long campaign, even though it can feel considerably less dramatic in any single week taken entirely on its own, which is exactly the kind of trade off worth making deliberately.
Choosing pace deliberately, rather than letting urgency dictate an unsustainable rhythm by default, is a strategic decision as much as a wellbeing one, since a campaign that burns out its people early has little left to draw on when the real test eventually arrives at last.