I’m starting a new training block in the gym today. For the past two years, all of my strength training has been geared specifically to support my running. I was careful not to overdo it volume-wise because I needed to save the bulk of my energy for running, and I needed to make sure I had sufficient recovery time from lift sessions so that it didn’t have a negative impact on any of my running workouts.

But this new training block is pretty much everything I wouldn’t normally do as a runner. It’s all about volume, volume, volume. There’s no way I, at my current capacity, would be able to manage this lifting load along with a full running load.

I’m not doing it to support my running. I’m doing it – as I realized chatting with my sister about it this morning – simply for the bragging rights of completing the hardest program in the library. And you know what? It’s still going to help me as a runner.

I’ve written before about using variety for productivity, and this is somewhat in the same vein. Doing the same work, the same routine, over and over again will eventually lead to mental fatigue and possibly burnout. Switching up your routine can help avoid those pitfalls, whether it’s in the gym or at your computer.

But now I’m talking about more than variety. By doing something that is almost completely opposite to your normal routine, you’re going to improve your behavioral flexibility, your mental toughness, and your courage. Let’s break this down one by one.

Your behavioral flexibility is how easily you can shift your routines from day to day, week to week. Humans are creatures of habit. We like to find our groove and settle into it, and this in large part can help us get our to-do lists done and even get work complete when we don’t feel like it. But a groove can become a rut.

If I’m used to being a morning writer (I’m certainly not; this is purely hypothetical) and have been one for months or even years, what will I do if my schedule changes and it’s impossible for me to write in the mornings? Am I flexible enough to shift my entire set of established behaviors in order to become a person who writes in the middle of the day or at night?

The length of my new workouts has me shifting the entire structure of my day to accommodate it, and my habitual brain is resisting it. That’s good. I want to push myself to do something new and in a different way. Not only can this be fun, but it also means that when an external force — professional demands, familial demands, time demands — necessitates a drastic change, I’m comfortable changing my schedule, mindset, and behaviors so that I can remain productive and successful in a new environment.

Mental toughness seems self-explanatory, but let’s explore it, anyway. I would call myself pretty tough mentally. Endurance sports demand it of you. I could go run for three hours and enjoy myself almost every second of the way. But let me tell you — staying in the gym moving weights for sixty minutes demands an entirely different sort of toughness that I apparently possess very little of.

Here’s the thing. We can choose one skill and get better and better and better at it. For me, that was running long distances. And I could choose to just keep pushing that skill, by running for four hours, five, six…

OR, I can pick another skill and push myself that way. I’ve moved from muscular endurance with bodyweight to muscular endurance with added weight. As a writer, I’m really good and comfortable for writing for hours. I’ve done 12-hour writing blocks with just a few snack breaks without batting an eyelash. I don’t really think it’s necessary for me to push myself to 14-hour blocks. That, at least for me, is getting a little ridiculous.

But how long can I sit still and read? Not nearly as long, even as much as I love reading. How long can I sit still and rewrite? How long can I focus on social media posts, blog posts, marketing tasks? I’ve always had to do these things in very quick, 30-minute sprints because I can’t focus on them for nearly as long, and they’re still an important part of being a published author. I can’t just shrug it off as unimportant.

Holding focus on something that doesn’t necessarily excite you, or even in an area where you just haven’t demanded much of yourself in the past, is a fantastic way to build your mental toughness. We have to stay in uncomfortable places sometimes so that we realize a) not only are we capable of it but also b) it grows us as craftsmen and as human beings.

I’ve listed tasks that are still pertinent to writing, but this extends beyond writing-related tasks and activities, as well. I’m terrible about folding my clean laundry in a timely manner. It’s basically a disease at this point. But I find that when I force myself to do it, I see positive ripple effects in the rest of my day. Once I’ve done that thing that I hate doing, I can do anything. I truly believe that.

And last but not least, we have courage. Once upon a time, I was a girl who had never finished a book. I’d started dozens, but they fizzled out over time, either because I lost interest or because I ran out of plot. But when I was fourteen years old, I challenged myself to let the next attempt be The One, and I finished it. And just like that, I became a girl who could finish novels, and after that I finished several in very quick succession.

Now, fifteen plus years later, I don’t get that nervousness in starting a new novel. I know that I can finish it if I want to, and if I don’t finish it, I’m not concerned; noncompletion is a matter of disinterest, not inability. Starting another project no longer requires courage on my part, and that means I have to practice courage elsewhere.

Funnily enough, that next step for promoting courage didn’t come from sharing my work with beta readers or even publishing. The next place I practiced courage was on the road, when I took up endurance running. Each time I toed the start line for a race, I had no idea if I was strong enough to make it to the finish line. I had to be prepared to eat my pride every single time; the tingly nerves were back full force.

Courage is a thing you practice. Doing things that scare you, that you aren’t sure if you can finish, is how you practice courage.

Coming off the back of my first marathon, I had so much courage we might have to call it hubris. There wasn’t a thing on this big green earth I didn’t feel like I could conquer. In no way was that limited to running. Whether I sat down to write, picked up the world’s fattest novel to read, or started prepping a new marketing strategy, there was a voice in the back of my head saying go bigger, because you can.

Sometimes the thing you need to do to drastically change your writing for the better has nothing to do with writing. Not everything you do will be pertinent. But the lessons you learn from it — be it running, lifting, therapy, getting a dog, whatever — can have positive ripple effects throughout everything else you do in life, including your writing.

With that in mind, get out there and try something. Be curious. Be impertinent. Then come back and tell us how it changed you for the better.