Miles to Go…

We often hear, “______ is a marathon, not a sprint”. As I crossed the finish line of the Tata Mumbai Marathon on 21 Jan 2024, I found a lot of wisdom behind this proverb. You can apply it to anything…life, relationship or eating an elephant. Correct pacing is so critical. Marathon and designing a learning experience are no different, too. Conserve your resources earlier, and you will reap richer rewards later. It is like setting aside sufficient time for the analysis and design stage so that you get rapid during production.

I have been practising instructional designing for over a decade as well as have completed four full marathons (42.19 km or 26.2 miles) in addition to many shorter distances. And I can corroborate that I have become a better instructional designer after becoming a marathoner. Why? Because, a marathon tests your endurance and challenges your mental toughness and the ability to keep moving forward when everyone would most likely quit. Instructional (or learning experience) designers also face many demanding situations where their mental toughness is summoned after technical expertise gets exhausted. By developing marathon-like tenacity, you tend to evolve and focus more on the process and not just the finish line. It doesn’t mean you abandon your goals; instead, you become strategic and better involved in the journey leading to them.

Based on my experience in both fields, I will try to explain what is so common in designing a course/learning experience and running a marathon.

A word of caution: running long distances is NOT a criterion for becoming an instructional designer. However, it may give you an edge during testing circumstances. Let’s see how.

Both these processes start with a solid, strong Purpose. Without it, a course may become merely a check box item for everyone involved, and no one will derive much joy from the experience. Similarly, attempting a marathon without a strong WHY may lead to failure; you will not show up on hard training days or may even leave the actual race mid-way. An article in the New York Times (Nov 2021) suggests that up to 4% of runners do not finish their races in annually held key global marathons. One of the reasons for quitting must be not being able to push through when things get tough.

Once the purpose is clear, you analyse the raw content, design a rough course outline and get it validated by the subject matter expert. This helps you create a mental framework for the concepts that unfold. Similarly, you analyse the marathon route for elevations, placement of hydration stalls, and portaloo and devise a rough km-by-km approach with the help of experienced runners.

Sometimes, you assign a narrator/mascot/avatar in a course to seamlessly guide learners through the learning path. In a marathon, we have *Pacers. In such a long distance, they handle the softer aspects, such as constant pep talks and motivation, while you employ your physical (and technical) abilities.

*A pacer is an experienced runner who sets a specific pace and guides runners to achieve a target finish time.

Then, you firm up learning objectives. In a marathon, the principal objective is successful completion; however, enabling objectives for someone could be doing it in a specific time, at a certain pace or within other health markers like a specific heart rate zone.  

After the above phases, you move to the course development/production. For the right pacing, like a good runner, an instructional designer must have a plan and work with (and not against) time to be efficient and effective. This could also mean operating conservatively at the start of the project and focusing on meticulousness, insights gathering, and research before picking up the pace later in prototyping/piloting.

At this stage, you first finalise the project plan, which is no different from a training plan for a marathon. Usually, a training block for an amateur marathoner can be anywhere from 12-30 weeks, including 100 plus km of running per month. This excludes all the time required for warm-ups, stretching, cross-training, eating, resting, etc. Any runner with a day job/business will agree that adhering to a marathon training plan takes a lot. This is no different than working on multiple projects and balancing regular chores at the workplace. Like the agile approach in course production, the training plan builds up the race day. Each week’s mileage and intensity build on the previous week with periodic checks on the progress made. You run many smaller races before the big one, very similar to the formative and summative assessments. 

These plans perfectly lay out the goals, strategy and specifications and describe the process and approach you intend to take to travel from kilometres 1 to 42.19 or from the concept ideation to final production. 

And now, the most exciting part: the race day. Generally, about the first 2/3^rd of the race distance, you have plenty of time to do what you like the most - think. You find solutions to your (and your dear ones’) complex life problems with ease; you experience the peak of your philosophical and spiritual levels, and you may even be ready to provide a single-most solution to solve all third-world problems.

But around 30 km, the scenario changes. As you hit your lactate threshold, your body yells at you to stop, quit and survive to fight meaningful battles or simply not to die. It is fondly called ‘Hitting the Wall’. But at this point, when your brain is shouting “STOP!”, you turn to your legs, who assure you, “It is okay; we have trained for this!”. And bingo! 

Cut to your project; say you are deep in the development phase. All approvals are in place, and things get pacey; you hit ‘the wall’, or let’s say ‘the wall’ hits you. Maybe a minor issue snowballed due to ‘nobody knows whose fault’. Or simply an (over) enthusiastic client decided to overhaul the screen aesthetics. Or maybe a contingency in your team member’s life. It is easy at such a moment to overthink and hit the brakes. But if you realign yourself to the purpose and trust your ‘training, ' then it is possible to solve any problem, push through the wall, and see the course to the rollout.

You find thrill in evaluating your race performance once the dust settles. You also assess your learners' performance against the objectives. In both cases, you collect brownies, note down weak areas and take a vow to improve.

It is evident that delivering a perfect learning experience and running a marathon is challenging.

But if you do it once by overcoming challenges, you will likely find a means to do it again. 

As wild as it seems, both can be super addictive - very few people only stop at one. You experience a range of emotions, make mistakes, face unexpected challenges and twists, or witness total derailment. But what makes you stand out is learning from your shortcomings, acting creatively, focusing on the purpose, and showing up again!

Dedicated to all superstar runners, instructional designers and mentors, who constantly influenced and inspired me to become my better self. 

Thank you.