How hard did you go?

At the end of a Nike+ training workout you are asked, “how hard was that for you?” Another way of asking the question might be – how much effort did you put in?

I was doing exercises measured in duration – so if I wanted to go harder, I simply needed to go faster. This is one of the ideas behind Crossfit. The exercise could be as simple as 300 pushups – not difficult for world’s most elite athletes. But competing against each other as fast as you can – it becomes more difficult.

So “how hard was that for you”? You get to slide a bar between 1-10. When I slide this bar, I often want to stop on 7. And then I hear the voice of our first realtor. When we would go visit homes, she would say “rate the house on a scale of 1-10 but you can’t use 7”. 

So I push the bar up to 8. And then I think – why is this not at a 10? Why am I not giving my max effort? 

The answer is ego. The answer to many problems is usually ego. We seek self-preservation over growth. We want to think, “that was easy and I could have gone way harder”. Even though we were just making strange noises a few seconds ago. 

I don’t think that putting 7 or 8 is wrong – I just wonder if it is right? What would happen if you had to slide a scale at the beginning of the workout that asked, how much effort are you about to put in? Would we say 8? Should we seek 10?