Summary
The secret to health, fitness, and performance is to make it boring. Routine fitness makes consistent progress, but requires a mindset shift.
Inspiring Quote
Those who know me well know I’m a big Seth Godin fan. After taking his altMBA in October 2018, I’m fully bought in. When I see him on the internet, I click, read, and listen.
He’s come out with a new book, The Practice, which I’m excited to read, but his related appearance on Tim Ferriss’ podcast #476 is excellent.
Tomorrow morning when you wake up, you probably won’t feel like engaging in the practice, and if you do, you probably won’t feel that way the next day. That what we do is once decide. We decide that we’re a runner, and runners go running every day. We decide we’re a blogger, and bloggers blog every day, and that decision lightens the cognitive load so much because there’s no time, no reason to negotiate with ourselves because we already had the meeting. We already decided. Now the question is not should we go or not. The question is should we go left or right, but we’re going.
Seth Godin (The Tim Ferriss Show ep. 476
Fitness Requires Routines, Not Willpower
In fitness, the people who are most successful at losing weight, gaining muscle, and increasing their performance don’t use much willpower. Instead, they merely do the work required.
Side note: here’s more about willpower and fitness.
Instead of fighting battles every day, blaming your reflexes for making those sweets so delicious, what if you removed all decisions?
What if you said, “I am not a person who eats sweets except for special occasions.”
It’s not the rare moments — the birthdays and holidays — that stop fitness goals. It’s the everyday actions.
Everyday actions are routine by definition.
Are your routines helping or hurting?
How can you make your fitness more routine?
Want to work on YOUR routine fitness?