Month: February 2024

“And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” | an excerpt from Desiderata by Max Ehrmann

In a conversation about fitness recently, we talked about water intake. I knew this was an area I wasn’t paying enough attention to. So I did some quick math.

The recommended average intake for males is ~3.7L per day. Multiple sources I checked were remarkably consistent on this. So, using this as the baseline, the next step was to subtract the fluids gotten from food – that’s about 20%. So, we’re looking at a number close to 3L per day.

I walk around with a 0.5L bottle. A quick look at the trends from the previous week is that I typically did 2 or so full refills of that bottle. So, I’m in the range of 1-1.5L or between 33% and 50% of the recommended levels.

In one word, abysmal.

It was a good wake up call. I’ve begun changing up my systems – e.g., drinking one bottle as soon as I’m up – to make a step-change here. Time to start climbing those stairs.

“The grass is greener on the other side because it is fertilized by bullshit.”

This one made me chuckle.

It tracks with my experience – you only get the smell when you move close enough.

A good friend has a parent who is in their 80s with Alzheimers. When I asked this friend how it went after a recent visit, they said – “It was a good day. It is all I can hope for. Our lives are lived one day at a time after all.”

It was a poignant sentiment.

I think of this idea from time to time as part of our goodnight routine with our kids. Those moments are often the most precious of them all. There’s something special about those small conversations or just us listening to some calming music just as waves of sleep hit them. I often just wish I could bottle those moments.

All we have is each other at the end of the day. And a few special moments… or days if we’re lucky.

There can never be enough reminders of this. It is on us to be present and make them count.

There’s one approach to building habits that I call “the elevator approach.” In this approach, you’re on the ground floor when you start. You paint the picture of where you want to go – e.g., I don’t exercise today – but, this year, I expect to exercise five times per week. That goal might be the equivalent of the 5th floor on your exercise habit building.

Then, with a flourish, you press the elevator to come and get you.

The other approach is the “stairs approach.” You simply take a first step – i.e., you go from exercise zero times per week to once. It might just be a ten minute workout. But it is better than nothing. Then, you increase the quantity or frequency or quality, and so on.

For instance, this is how I’ve changed my workouts in the past 4 years.

2020: Time to become aware of how little I’ve been taking care of myself – get an Apple Watch. Then attempt to just close the 3 rings. But with COVID and two young kids, I barely manage this.

2021: Close my rings significantly more often. My exercise ring is closed by walking outdoors on most days. I manage an occasional morning run.

2022: I want closing rings to be a habit most weekdays. I also want to substitute 15 mins of an outdoor walk with an Apple Fitness+ workout. This happens roughly half the time.

2023: I get a virtual personal trainer on Future. For half the year, I manage to do a 15 min workout nearly every weekday. After reading Outlive, I add a 10 min run for some regular Zone 2 + VO2 max training. Also begin to bring back an hour of soccer every week.

2024: Convert to 2 days per week personal training with ~1 hour workouts. For the remaining weekdays, doing a mix of running and Fitness+ workouts.

It’s still early in 2024. But I know that I’ve walked up a few more stairs vs. 2023. And I’ll continue to climb up more stairs as time passes.

That’s the secret about building habits – that there is likely no secret elevator that is going to take us where we want to go.

We love stories about people who manage to make the elevator approach work for them. That’s no different from loving the stories of people who made hundreds of million dollars in one go.

It might work for a few – but it is likely not the strategy you want to bank on. As a rule, we’re better off assuming it won’t work for us.

So, skip the elevator and take the stairs – both in our approach to habits and in our daily lives.

So much of growing up is learning it is perfectly okay to say – “That’s a great choice for you. It just doesn’t work for me*.”

Different people, different values, different trade-offs.

Not wrong, just different.

*Obvious exceptions around sleep and exercise apply.

“Some day, in the years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now… Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process.”

The actions we choose today sows the seeds for the actions we’ll automatically begin taking when we face trials in the future. Don’t make exceptions for extenuating circumstances… because life is a series of extenuating circumstances.

Learning happens fastest when there are real consequences.

The alternative catalyst is surprise.

The true test of learning is behavior change. When there are real consequences, we are forced to change behavior.

And, in the absence of those consequences, surprise makes us pause and rethink how we do what we do… which, in turn, increases the probability of behavior change.

The simplest way out of being stuck in ruts created by our day to day – play longer term games.