You can transform your life (If you want)
My thoughts on daily requirements, unrewarded effort and incremental growth.
I have always loved the idea of daily requirements. Whether it comes to fitness, writing, playing an instrument, reading, or just about anything that you want to do every day, you can set a minimum. This can literally be one minute. It does not take much to build the habit and cultivate the desire. As you get used to the habit, it will become easier. in my experience, Daily habits provide outsized returns compared to any other type of habit. The key to building skills is to practice often and to sleep in between practice sessions. Our bodies naturally recover while we sleep. Our muscles rebuild themselves, and new connections are formed in our brain. At night, all of the junk information is sorted through, and the things that are important are reinforced. All of the material changes to our mind and body take place primarily when we are asleep. This is very important. Consistent learning with sleep in between learning sessions compounds. This is why cramming for a test is a bad strategy.
Luckily, we have the ability to choose what we cling to. We choose, consciously or unconsciously, The patterns we leave behind, and the patterns we cultivate. Building new habits and breaking old ones is the essence of self-development. It can be useful to split up the day into sections for the sake of visualization. Each day can first be divided between waking and sleeping. Let’s say you have eight hours of sleep reserved every 24 hours. This gives you 16 hours where you can be doing anything. This is also 192 five-minute blocks, 32 thirty-minute blocks, or 64 fifteen-minute blocks. In theory, you could be doing 192 different things in a day. Although that would probably melt your brain. I have great sympathy for those who volunteer to do so many things in one day. Generally, if you could focus deeply on three things that you really care about for one hour each every day, you are doing better than most people.
I have a feeling that the “Transform your life” formula is actually pretty simple. Humans just tend to make things seem very hard because we cannot achieve them on our day-to-day timescales. Progress on anything important will always happen gradually, and this sucks because we are constantly getting used to what we consider to be normal in our life. This rate often exceeds the speed at which we grow, and therefore our growth is imperceptible on a day-to-day basis. We can only see how far we have come when we purposefully put ourselves in the past. Then you can see the difference. Basically, the “Transform your life” formula goes as follows:
Person:
“I want to be better at X”
Answer:
Do X for 30 minutes every day for a year.
It’s simple. Slightly discouraging, but it is actually easy. Don’t worry about it. Nobody cares how good you are or how far you have to go. If you can’t stand to do something for 30 minutes for a year, maybe you shouldn’t be trying to do it in the first place, or maybe you need to ground your expectations in reality. Start small. Enjoy it.
In the beginning of 2023, I wanted to take fitness seriously. I was motivated not by the desire to get a six-pack, although that would come with time. I wanted a ritual. I wanted the mental clarity that comes with knowing exactly what needs to be done today.
And also, I wanted to run further than Lex Fridman.
Here were my goals:
By the end of 2023 I will do the following:
36,500 Pushups (100/day)
18,250 Pull Ups (50/day)
36,500 Sit ups (100/day)
13,140 Leg Lifts (36/day)
1,168 miles ran (3.2/day)
548 Hours of reading (1.5/day)
What i ended up doing;
36,683 Pushups (101.3/day)
20,050 Pull Ups (55.2/day)
30,383 Sit Ups (83.7/day)
12,547 Leg Lifts (34.5/day)
1,180 Miles Ran (3.2/day)
~147.7 Hours of reading. (.5/day)
If anything can transform your life, this is it. If you decide to make daily fitness a requirement, it does not need to be this extreme. But even if it is, it is only hard when you spend too much time thinking about the big picture. All of the fitness requirements only take about an hour and a half. That’s only 9% of your waking day!
All struggle is mental. Before 2023, I might have been able to do 10-12 pull-ups in a row. Now I can do 27. Before, I could only bench press 145 pounds; now I can do 245. Progress was not instant, but it was significant.
With that being said, transforming your life is not hard. You can choose to think of it as hard, but that thought itself is independent of reality. If you want it to be hard, you can think of it as hard. If you want it to be easy, you can think of it as easy. Reality does not know the difference. Pick something, and just do it. Goals are not actually “real.” They don’t exist outside of your thoughts. The only things that matter are your daily actions. These are what actually get you places. All of these things may seem hard, but that is just a thought. Don’t worry about it.
You can transform your life. (If you want)
You don’t ‘need’ to do anything. You don’t ‘need’ to go anywhere. Your life is exactly what you make of it, and nothing else. The more time you spend peeling back the veil of your thoughts, the closer you approach the reality of your situation. This is the beauty of life. It is the ultimate sandbox game, where it is up to you to make it beautiful. And on that note, I wish you the best in doing exactly what you choose to do.
This is so cool man. I love how you are so reflective and mindful about this. Really does push us to be more productive with our time!