Tied to the mast.
Victor Rivera
How running taught me to lead (sort of)
I didn’t grow up playing organized sports—unless you count the chaotic street games of childhood. My kids, however, participated in cross-country and track. They experienced that wholesome, sweaty slice of Americana I missed. And watching them made me feel as if I had skipped a rite of passage.
So I tried golf.
It offered friendship and camaraderie, for sure—but early weekend mornings and seven-hour rounds weren’t great with a growing family. The driving range left me sweaty, annoyed, and questioning all my life choices over a 7-iron. No sir. No can do.
So I turned to running.
And hilariously, it started with me wheezing half a mile from my house, wondering how anyone survives a 5K without being airlifted home.
Then I remembered the story of Ulysses in The Odyssey. He wanted to hear the Sirens’ song without steering his ship into a rock party, so he told his crew to plug their ears with wax and tie him to the mast. Commit now, because later you’ll wish you had.
Beautiful, I thought.
So I ran one mile away from home. Just one. Because then I had to run back, the return trip was baked in. I tricked myself into progress.
That became my entire running strategy: run far enough so that coming back counts as a win. I thought that was pretty cool. Then I learned that behavioral scientists have a name for it—pre-commitment. The idea is simple: make a decision now that locks you in because future-you is kind of flaky.
And it worked. Not just for running.
You can see it in my work now. I promised I’d send out a newsletter every Sunday for a year—52 letters in 52 weeks. Not just weekly—Sundays. Morning. That little detail boxed me in. When Sunday hits, it’s go time.
The structure gets the work done when I’m not feeling it, tired, or uninspired.
It’s the same reason people talk about generals backing their armies up to cliffs: remove the exit, and suddenly you’re very committed to moving forward. Or my friend Robby Swale, who writes his 12-minute blog during his train commute. No time for second-guessing; the train runs the clock, and the copy hangs on for dear life.
Over time, that trick of tying myself to the mast grew into something bigger—a strategy, maybe, not about heroic willpower but about defaults to outsmart my future cowardice.
Eventually, I started using the same trick in tense moments as a leader.
I’ve learned to recognize how pressure lands in my body—a quiet discomfort, a flicker of rejection, the sense I’m being dismissed or disrespected. It’s subtle, but if I don’t catch it, I begin to withdraw. That’s how I’ve learned to protect something tender. I’ve gone down that road before, and it rarely leads anywhere good.
So I started giving future-me some ground rules:
Anchor in values, not vibes. When things get messy, I pause and ask: What do I actually want to stand for right now?
Step back first. Then step in with others. I buy time to think. But I don’t vanish. I bring people in to shape the answer with me.
More than just being wise, it's about planning ahead for when I know I’ll want to escape. Tying myself to the mast in a different way.
Running became more than just exercise. It turned into a mirror—a system I kept choosing, even when I didn’t want to.
That half-mile embarrassment in 2015 led to countless races, even marathons. Last November, I ran my fastest New York City Marathon.
Thousands of us ran through the streets, each tied to our own mast, in our own way.
Millions of strangers lined the course. Voices from the curve, balconies, and stoops shouted your name at just the right moment—and somehow, you believed them.
Sirens, all of them!
Not luring you to wreckage, but carrying you forward.
Still beautiful, I thought.
A quiet trap for future me—before he could turn into a flight risk.
What’s yours?
