Two runs a week.

A couple years ago I told my friend Jeannie I wanted to run a half marathon together someday. No date. No plan. Just someday.

A few days later she forwarded me her race registration receipt. Now I was on the hook.

I don’t think of myself as a runner. A couple of miles felt like a chore, and one that was too easy to skip.

I needed a plan. The simplest, smallest one I could stick to. I edited my sister’s past training plan. Deleted. A lot. What I was left with was two runs a week, one short and one a little longer. I built the long runs up by time, not distance, until the end, when I wanted to hit 10 miles before the race. That was it. Two runs a week.

We finished the half. The part I didn’t expect came after. Almost two years later, I’m still running once or twice a week. And still enjoying it.

I kept going because the plan I built made showing up easy. I see the same thing with work.

My parents’ restaurant has been open for over 40 years. They have adjusted their hours and tried new menu items. They also knew what not to change. They have the same lunch and daily specials 40 years later, their signature chicken wings with fried rice and sweet and sour chicken. Two of their customers’ and long-timers’ favorites that remain the same to this day.

It takes courage to try something new and discipline to keep at it. For years, I managed complex projects, impacting many teams. One time, there was too much we didn’t know, too much we needed to learn, and too much that was constantly changing. So we simplified our plan. We started planning in short 2 week cycles.

That approach built a system that is used in over 1,000 stores. I was shopping in one of them. The grandmother scanning my items, a new part-time employee, told me unprompted that the register she was using was the easiest and most intuitive she’d ever been trained on.

Simple and repeatable. A next step small enough to keep showing up. For a business, it might be taking 5 minutes to write down the decisions your team asked for help with, so you can spot patterns. Or, spending 10 minutes on an important item you wanted to work on but didn’t get to yet. Just once or twice a week.

A few months ago, I broke my weekly running streak. A full month went by, filled with bad weather, family activities, and no miles. Then a sunny spring day pulled me outside. It was almost too hot until the cool breeze blew. I expected to dread the run. The first run after a break is the worst. I remember how easy it used to feel, and the run feels nothing like that memory. My heart rate rises too quickly and my breathing is off.

Instead, I just enjoyed it. The weather and my legs moving again. I even stopped for a quick selfie to capture the gorgeous day and feeling (and to let my heart rate settle a little). That was it. Two runs a week.

What’s your small, repeatable way to show up for your business goal? Send me a note at jenny@balancedprocess.com. I’d like to hear about it.