Choosing Effective Targets

Good target choice is a crucial part of getting maximum value out of the Pentathlon. At the end of the day, your targets are your choices, but if we think you’re making an error, we’ll point it out to you.

To help you choose effective targets, this chapter includes descriptions of each of the target categories, as well as some guidance on where to start.

Target 1: Most Important Work

Most Important Work is the work that you’ve chosen to do over the course of the Pentathlon.

T1 Scoring

This is the only category that will be scored twice, both for Consistency and Depth. This is because being more effective in your Most Important Work is the core purpose of the Pentathlon.

Consistency means putting at least 10 minutes into your Most Important Work each day. This is binary. If you do 10 minutes – it’s just 10 minutes! – you get full points for consistency.

Obviously, more time on your Most Important Work is better. Thus, we also score for Depth. We track this simply enough: it’s the number of minutes you spent on Most Important Work that day, up to a maximum of 100 minutes. (A little over 1.5 hours)

Put in 100 minutes on your Most Important Work, get a perfect score. Higher amounts of time do not carry over to the next day. We know everyone has a different mix of obligations, but 100 minutes of most important work should be doable for everyone basically every day. After all, it’s your most important work – if you don’t have time for it, what do you have time for?

T1 Guidance

You might already know exactly what your most important work is, or you might have 2-3 things you could reasonably choose. Again, we want you to start with just one thing and stick with it. As you fill out your targets, if you’re not sure what to choose, list your 2-3 options and we’ll dialog with you. If you know 100% for sure what you want to do, though, you can mark that down and skip other options. You won’t be “stuck” with what you mark down now – there is still time to discuss and adjust – but once the competition starts, then you will be doing the same “most important thing” (or class of thing) for the duration of the competition. If you have some odd circumstance where your most important work genuinely shifts – EX, you’re taking the bar exam as an attorney, and then looking for jobs once the bar exam finishes – let us know.

Target 2: Sleep and Wake Times

Sleep and wake times are scored and have been chosen because of their large impact on your ability to establish a routine. Believe it or not, we actually find time which you go to bed more predictive of success than wake-up time. If you sleep early enough, you’ll tend to wake up early enough. Whereas keeping your wake-up time, but only on a few hours of sleep, is not a good recipe

T2 Scoring

This will be scored binary; either you got it, or you didn’t. If your wake time is 5AM and you’re up at 5:03AM, you didn’t get it. It keeps it clean and simple that way.

T2 Guidance

Consistency is more important than ambition here. If you’ve been waking up at 8AM every day and rushing off to work, setting your wake time at 6AM and holding it every single day will be better than ambitiously aiming for 4AM and often missing it. Likewise, for bedtime, setting a cut-off that is realistically achievable every day – which might be 10PM or Midnight – will be better than setting 8PM and usually missing it.

If you know you really want to wake up very early (say, 4AM), you might still set your official target at 6AM, and consider it a bonus if you wake early. But then, come hell or high water, make sure you hit that 6AM target.

Target 3: Planning

We've found that people who plan their days are much more effective at execution. This in itself is unsurprising, but sticking to planning can be surprisingly hard if you don’t already have a good routine.

T3 Scoring

Planning is also binary – you planned the day, or you didn’t. How you plan is entirely up to you but we do have some recommendations in the commentary.

T3 Guidance

Both evening planning and morning planning can work, but evening planning tends to be a little more robust because the morning can come fast. That said, Ultraworking co-founder Kai Zau plans each day in the morning. You need to decide whether you’re going to be planning the next day the night before, or planning each day the morning of. If you’re doing evening planning, you need to at least look at your plan in the morning for it to count.

Target 4: Fitness

The cognitive benefits of fitness are quite clear, and being in good health also supports your ability to do important work.

T4 Scoring

You’ll be scored binary – did it or didn’t do it – daily. Yes, you will be expected to do physical fitness daily. The minimum time for a physical activity is 10 minutes.

T4 Guidance

If you already know the training plan you’ll do, mark it down. If your training plan is intense and shouldn’t be done daily, make your non-intense days as easy as possible. Think: 10 minutes of foam roller and light stretching, walking, etc. If you’re not sure what you’re going to do, you can mark down multiple options and get some commentary and dialog going. Again – to emphasize it – consistency is more important than “being hardcore.” Don’t try to be hardcore in a stupid way and get injured. Set reasonable training standards for yourself. You can also increase intensity and difficulty later, once you’ve nailed the consistency.

If your primary physical fitness activity is intense – doing powerlifting at the gym 3x per week – then please do not pick something else to go “super hardcore” in a stupid way. Active recovery, light stretching, using a foam roller, taking a walk, or light swimming would be decent compliments on your non-lifting days. The more intense your basic training plan is, the easier and more “ain’t no big deal” the other days should be. With that said, we do find value in getting some physical movement 7 days per week, and you will be scored for that.

T4 Warning

We’re not doctors, not qualified to do anything medical-ish, and not responsible for your health. Please talk to your doctor or physical therapist, etc, especially if you’ve had past medical issues or injuries. Please don’t do anything stupid. We’re anti-hardcore in this area. Please be smart and don’t be stupid, talk to relevant professionals, don’t get injured, etc.

Target 5: Nutrition

Like fitness, having good nutrition habits makes everything else easier.

T5 Scoring

Nutrition is the trickiest one for us to score. You’ll be marking down whether you followed your nutrition targets on a daily basis, and that’s binary. But additionally, some aspects of nutrition – like running a reasonable caloric deficit – can be undone by a single bad day of huge backsliding binge. If you do go on a backsliding binge, there will be a penalty score for that that eliminates much of the binary progress for the week, but which isn’t fatal.

T5 Guidance

If you know what you’re going to be doing here, mark it down. If you’re not sure, list three options. If you don’t know the exact particulars of how you’ll implement it, there’s actually a decent amount of time to get some guidance and refinement – write with the broad strokes, and let us know what you don’t know.

We’re hopeful that this nutrition scoring will map well to actually success in eating better: first, stay consistent and run your plans each day. Second, if you do slip, don’t go all the way to a total binge wipeout; limit the damage.