Grinding until you crash isn’t a work ethic. A pace you can hold for a year beats one you can hold for a week.

Intensity is easy to admire and easy to fake, because it only has to last until you collapse. Sustainability is the harder discipline, and it usually looks unimpressive from outside. What accumulates is total hours, not peak hours, and a crash costs you weeks of them. The person still going in month eleven has done more than the one who sprinted through March.

Pick a weekly load you could imagine keeping in a bad month, not a good one. Set it slightly lower than feels satisfying. Judge it over a season rather than a weekend.