If you want to avoid burnout and work sustainably, it’s crucial to plan transition time into your day.
The challenge is in predicting how much transition time you’ll need, especially if you tend to blow past your limits or work in a way that puts your nervous system into overdrive.
Recovery time expands your transition time: Trying to force yourself into action when you’re in recovery mode is like trying to use your phone while it’s rebooting after a software update.
There’s no amount of willpower or discipline that can override a system that is still in recovery.
The unpredictability of recovery time can throw off your entire schedule. But with the right strategy you can minimize how much recovery time you’ll need and better stick to your planned transition time.
How can you structure the tasks and your time so that you can minimize recovery time and transition time?
As a holistic performance strategist, I often find that my best strategies for planning my day come from my workouts. A recent CrossFit workout offered a compelling case study in how to approach this strategically.
The Workout
- 30 calorie row
- 21–15–9 Thrusters and Toes to Bar
- 30 calorie row
In case you’re unfamiliar with this format, the middle section of the workout flows like this:
21 Thrusters > 21 T2B > 15 Thrusters > 15 T2B > 9 Thrusters > 9 T2B
Navigating The Transitions
As written, this workout already contains a lot of transitions.
Even for an elite athlete who might do each set of the movements “unbroken” — without putting down the barbell or coming off the pull-up bar — this workout has 7 transitions:
Row Erg > Barbell > Rig > Barbell > Rig > Barbell > Rig > Row Erg
That said, most people would not do this “unbroken.” At the very least, most people would break up the sets of 21 and 15 into “mini sets.” Many would also break up the set of 9.
The Objective: Momentum Without Burnout
There are infinite ways you can split up these sets.
The smallest increments would be quick singles: putting the bar down after each rep.
At the other end of the spectrum, you could split the bigger sets into the largest possible sets of 11/10, 8/7, and 5/4.
The goal is to split up this work in a way that makes it manageable over the duration of the workout, allows you to maintain momentum, and avoid adding long recovery time to your transition time.
How to Create a Winning Strategy
When creating a strategy for this workout, you want to find the happy medium between minimizing the number of transitions and not hitting failure on sets that are too big.
(1) Consider your capacity at the given load or with the movement pattern.
This is the crucial question:
How many reps can you do in one set while maintaining good form and good speed?
Call that number X.
For example, I know that I will generally max out at 10 thrusters with a 45 pound bar.
(2) Break up the work into sets smaller than that max number.
The big mistake people make is trying to do as many reps as possible until fatigue sets in. This is hyperfocus mode.
It makes sense that you want to ride momentum, but if you max out, you’ll need more time to recover between mini-sets and between movements.
The key is to split up the work in a way that you will avoid hitting failure on any set. This will allow you to contain your transition time without needing “recovery” time between each mini set.
(3) Be intentional with your mini-transitions.
Even your transition time needs a strategy.
Give yourself a target for the rest between mini-sets within a movement. This could be a breath count, like 5 breaths, or a duration of time, such as 15–20 seconds.
In the context of this workout, after each mini-set of thrusters, I put down the bar, stood in the same spot, and took 5 full breaths before resuming. I didn’t walk away from the bar. I stayed in the moment with it so it was easier to resume.
When you reach that target for the pause, resume. Having a defined count or time frame helps you make it automatic, and takes you out of how you feel about it.
(4) Stick to your Plan
This is the hardest part:
Stick to your plan even if, in the moment, you feel like you can do more than you had planned.
The one exception is if you find yourself fatiguing earlier than you expected. In that case, break up the sets more, so that you avoid hitting your wall.
How to Adapt This Strategy to Your Work
You can use this same strategy to plan your work. Consider the tasks you need to do. Instead of rep counts, consider duration.
- How long will this task realistically take?
- How long can you sustain focus on this task before you start to get distracted?
Then plan your work chunks. Be intentional about how you’ll use your brief rest between “sets” within time frame you allocate to your task. When the entire time chunk ends, allow a longer time for recovery and transition.
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