Leanpub Book LAUNCH ๐ Ishi: The Discipline of Determined Intent by Gareth Holebrook
This book presents the Ishi Spiral, a four-phase discipline that governs how intent is set, how practice is structured, when persistence is justified and how reflection prevents drift before collapse forces correction.
Welcome to the Leanpub Launch video for Ishi: The Discipline of Determined Intent by Gareth Holebrook!
About the Book
In 2022 I collapsed at mile 22 of the Ironman World Championships marathon in Hawaii after years of qualification attempts. The failure was not physical breakdown but absence of self-governance. Effort continued while awareness had already stopped.
The same pattern sank HMS Artemis at her moorings in 1971, evaporated โฌ1.9 billion at Wirecard and destroys careers in software engineering, clinical practice and technical leadership every year. Capable people operating inside accepted standards drift into failure through accumulated lapses in attention. By the time collapse becomes visible, erosion has been active for years.
This book presents the Ishi Spiral, a four-phase discipline that governs how intent is set, how practice is structured, when persistence is justified and how reflection prevents drift before collapse forces correction. The 4 phases: Decide (Ishi ๆๅฟ), Forge (Shugyo ไฟฎ่ก), Persist (Gaman ๆๆ ข) and Reflect (Hansei ๅ็) are working concepts tested under real load, not theory assembled at a distance.
The problem is structural, not motivational. People push through fatigue because stopping feels weak, or abandon work before effort compounds because discomfort gets misread as misalignment. Both patterns destroy capacity. Both emerge from the same failure: the absence of a mechanism to distinguish endurance from self-harm while choice still matters.
The book documents failure alongside whatever success survived it. Personal collapses, organisational case studies and the patterns that connect them. It does not promise transformation in thirty days, reassurance when discomfort appears, or ease. It offers coherence between what was intended and what was done when motivation left and fatigue developed
If effort feels misaligned, burnout is approaching or persistence has turned into obligation defended by sunk cost, this exists to interrupt that pattern before collapse becomes inevitable.
Ishi is not a framework. It is a discipline. Disciplines are tested under load, not admired from a distance.
About the Author
Gareth Holebrook works with executives, senior engineers, and coaches on the governance of sustained performance.
A former Royal Navy engineer and agile transformation specialist, he has led teams at Visa and partnered with L. David Marquet on Intent-Based Leadership. His work addresses the gap between committing to difficult outcomes and maintaining coherence under pressure without drifting into burnout.
He has competed in dozens of ultra-endurance events, including the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii and the Kiwiman Double Extreme Triathlon. The discipline required to persist without breaking translates directly to leadership, engineering and organisational change.
The Ishi Spiral emerged from this intersection. His book, Ishi: The Discipline of Determined Intent, launched in January 2026 and establishes the discipline of self-governance grounded in Japanese philosophy, deep theory and lived practice.
He writes regularly on Substack at https://substack.com/@garethholebrook and speaks on disciplined persistence in North America and Europe.
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