When it comes to sticking to gym I really like Terry Crew's advice.
If in your head you try to think of the "120Kg" deadlift you need to do, it might be hard to motivate yourself given that it might remind you of the pain involved.
A easier technique is to think "I am going to go to gym and browse HN on the sofa", 50% of the battle is to get yourself to the gym and once you are there its much easier to do the 120Kg deadlift.
After thinking about why I constantly fail to make going to the gym a routine - a big part of the problem is physiological.
Or, tell yourself you're only lifting 50+50+20kg. That way I run around 15km a day by splitting up the track into easily accomplishable lengths. I call it the Forrest Gump principle.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic. You're really good at lying to yourself if the 50+50+20 trick works for lifting. With running, you can do 5km and then another 5km and then another. That can be a good psychological trick to keep yourself going. With weightlifting, you have to lift it at all once. You can use this trick for reps or sets, but not absolute weight.
I'm actually in the process of "discovering" bodyweight exercising, and am pretty excited to try it (waiting for a minor muscle strain to heal first. It should be good in a few days)
I always got bored with weights and hated going to the gym. Just too big of an activation barrier and it always felt a bit too competitive, especially when first starting.
Agree 100%. You just have to get yourself to the gym. Motivation does not happen at the house; it happens at the gym. Get to the gym, start warming-up and before long you are lifting.
This rings very true. It's very easy to do workaholic coding and neglect everything else and the trouble is that in the process of neglecting things long enough, you forget how valuable they were.
I wonder how people with monumental achievements feel about that. Did Einstein feel that his life would have been better if he'd accomplished less but spent more time with family and friends? How about Erdos? Jobs? Gates (does he feel that way now)?
I suspect that people with truly significant achievements probably didn't/don't regret how they spent their time. People whose achievements mostly involve climbing the corporate ladder instead of seeing their kids' soccer games? Yeah, I bet a lot of them regret it.
Well said. I guess I could rephrase it as helping people. The great influencers you mentioned all managed to helped a lot of people through their achievements. For most of us, it is easier to help directly through human connection.
“lots of the traps within ‘Plenty of Time’ are not due to us choosing other priorities. The traps are choosing comfort.”
I think this hits the nail on the head. It's a mistake to think it's too late and what remains of life is going to rush you by, and it's also a mistake to think that time is unlimited. The way I resolve these two contrary directions is to figure out: when you're in the moment, what do you want to spend your life doing?
It's all quite true. It's also, at times, a grindingly soul-crushing attitude that'll suck the joy out of your life and the excitement out of your soul. Every training cycle, every sleep/wake learning cycle, every moment where you could be amassing power for future endeavors, they are all viciously, cruelly, incessantly marching on, demanding you take advantage of them or suffer the consequences of weakness: not getting the promotion, being the one who is laid off, not landing the deal- it's all encapsulated in this attitude.
And it is awful.
But I don't believe it has to be.
You can balance your life around gaining whatever kinds of strength you need, while also accepting the need not only for the rest and recovery required to cement your gains of physical strength or mental skill, but because you need to replenish your - well, whatever it is that makes you decide that staying alive is worth the trouble. And if there's only fear of lost achievement there, well, I feel like I've experienced that for part of my life, and it's fairly miserable and relatively ineffective at causing a person to, as the author admonishes, actually put things into effect.
I'm going to go get some balance right now, I've been itching to play Overwatch all week, I am going to go and do it! :D
These little delays or justifications to give in to comfort are actions that amount to a high opportunity cost. And I find that I am generally pretty bad at estimating opportunity costs at the moment where I have the choice to make the highest impact on them.
You know, once in a while, you should take a break from objectives and just enjoy life.
> But days gone by are days gone by. What can you do from here – from today – to commit fewer errors? Because the truth is you don’t have plenty of time.
These motivational posts tend to sound kind of sad and hollow to me. I love to lift weights myself, but if someone told me that a day spent with friends or family and not in the gym was an error -- I'd laugh.
Does anyone really think that when they're an old man looking back, they're going to wish they had spent more time in the gym to deadlift 800 instead of "just" 700? Or will they wish they had spent more time enjoying life and taking it a bit easier?
What's the point in spending your entire life just so you can look back in your final months and be pleased? I can't think of a reason why your happiness at the end of your life is any more important than your happiness in the middle of your life. Rather, a life well-spent is one in which the sum total of your happiness over time was at a max. That means factoring in what's important to you now, even if it won't matter to you later on.
> I can't think of a reason why your happiness at the end of your life [...] is any more important than your happiness in the middle of your life.
Especially since it's not guaranteed. There's a lot of people who never made it to the "end of their life", and a lot more people who had a retirement planned that they had to give up because life ended up having other plans for them.
I totally agree with you. In fact, the thrust of my comment is that enjoying life today is undervalued.
I bring up the "looking back" angle only because fear of regret is a central theme to these types of "your life is ending one minute at a time" motivational posts. And it's largely false -- you will not regret having enjoyed the simple things in life.
Huh. I've thought about this issue and related issues many times, and I've already arrived at a similar philosophy to what I'm guessing undergirds your post.
However, for some reason, the way you described it combined with my current mental state caused something to click for me. Thank you for posting.
> Does anyone really think that when they're an old man looking back, they're going to wish they had spent more time in the gym to deadlift 800 instead of "just" 700? Or will they wish they had spent more time enjoying life and taking it a bit easier?
Why do we have to be an old man to look back? Or why would regrets there be any more valid than regrets now?
I can say with reasonably certainty that plenty of us have looked back and regret things we didn't do when we were younger. So yes, at least I do wish I've spent more time doing certain things.
"You know, once in a while, you should take a break from objectives and just enjoy life." this is exactly the opposite conclusion to be derived from this if you are trying to achieve a goal.
Yes it's ok to live and enjoy the little things, but if you want to achieve a goal.... you don't have time. Deal with it and work within those parameters. Every second you spend enjoying your time with a beer and family is time someone else is stepping up.
I'm not saying this is right or wrong, but it just is. Maybe you want to spend time with family. But just as easily you could be forever unfulfilled because you are hyper ambitious and never applied yourself fully.
It's just different. People value very different things from life. You may value time spent with family, the free time that gives you space to be more creative and better at the things you love, while someone else is completely focused on executing on a long-term vision.
Man this has to be the greatest overestimation of human memory ever.
People don't remember shit from like 20 yrs ago, heck I don't even remember 99% of stuff from like even 2 yrs ago.
Even if they do at that their age , they prbly don't care about what happened like 50 yrs ago.
My memory of events from my life has changed so much over the years that I don't trust that they actually happened in the way I remember them now.
>they're going to wish they had spent more time in the gym to deadlift 800 instead
this is more likely than looking back because you have your body constantly reminding you how fucked up it is due to neglect.
> Does anyone really think that when they're an old man
> looking back, they're going to wish they had spent
> more time in the gym to deadlift 800 instead of
> "just" 700? Or will they wish they had spent more
> time enjoying life and taking it a bit easier?
It's a trade-off. I look back at some of the things I did when "taking it a bit easier" and reget it today. College was pretty easy for me so I often took time off to spend a few days at the beach (I was in LA after all). Later I found that I had missed out on some opportunities to work with some of the faculty at school on interesting projects because I didn't hang around.
Do I ever look back at time spent with my kids and wish I did less of that? No. Do I ever look back at time spent on the beach doing nothing but hanging out and wish I did less of that? Yes.
It isn't so much spending all my time on my job or on getting more money or some superficial goal, its about spending my time in ways that later I'll be happy I spent it that way. I wasted a lot of it before I figured that out.
>You know, once in a while, you should take a break from objectives and just enjoy life.
Man, I don't even know how to respond to this. "Just enjoy life"?
Working is how I enjoy life. My freetime is spent building art projects, or teaching workshops, or working on sidecode stuff, or just...working. Building stuff, putting stuff together, improving stuff.
If I look back on the vacations I've taken where I do "nothing", I come back extremely unhappy and antsy. When I look back at vacations where I did something useful, for instance: organizing all the tools in my late-grandfathers old workshop, it makes me feel happy and fullfilled.
So maybe to each their own. People who want to "just enjoy life" should do so. People who want to work should do so too.
To each their own. I always try to step away from software engineering because I feel I'm supposed to take a break. But am hour into a video game and I don't feel challenged or creative. So I go right back to what I love.
I suspect I'm the kind of person who will never truly retire.
>I'm saying don't do them out of a fear of your impending death. Do them because you love to do them.
What does this even mean? The scarcity of life, and therefore the imperative to do things now instead of later is because of death.
I absolutely do things because of the fear of impending death. I am going to die someday, and when I die, I won't have any more opportunities to build things with my niece, or work on an art project with my girlfriend.
A day I spent sitting around instead of spending time with somebody I love is a day that is, in my opinion, wasted, and I think that it is ridiculous of you to imply that there is something wrong with this.
I think nostromo is advocating a healthy, live and let live, different people are motivated by different things mindset. I think that you are somehow imagining this to be an attack on you, when he is actually supporting your right to live the way you want to.
> Does anyone really think that when they're an old man looking back, they're going to wish they had spent more time in the gym to deadlift 800 instead of "just" 700?
Actually, yes.
There's a video of Ronnie "Officer Steroids" Coleman in a hospital bed saying, "I wish had done 800x4 instead of just 800x2."
I dont think he means to deprecate enjoying life and spending time with friends and family. It's more about good healthy life habits - nutrition, exercise, sleep. When you think about it all these good habits make you happier. He certainly does not advocate workaholism. At least I dont read it this way.
I understand the mentality and applaud it. That being said, you have got to have balance between drive of craft and living life. Great read though for sure.
"This was well before Facebook, and unless you were paying attention I was easy to not notice. It was 2007"
Not to be overly pedantic, but facebook was around in 2004, so this was well after Facebook was around, I'm afraid. I was personally on FB at the end of 2005.
This guy has good points, but he thinks 2007 was "way before facebook?" I thought I was a late joiner at late 2005 / early 2006, and I was 28 at the time; it seems pretty clueless to think 2007 was anything like 'before' facebook, let alone 'way before' Facebook.
It seems likely our attitudes change as we age. Perhaps not, perhaps the imminence of death warps perspective. However, dying with minimal regrets is surely something to cherish.
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[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 248 ms ] threadIf in your head you try to think of the "120Kg" deadlift you need to do, it might be hard to motivate yourself given that it might remind you of the pain involved.
A easier technique is to think "I am going to go to gym and browse HN on the sofa", 50% of the battle is to get yourself to the gym and once you are there its much easier to do the 120Kg deadlift.
After thinking about why I constantly fail to make going to the gym a routine - a big part of the problem is physiological.
It's amazing how much of a mental hurdle going to the gym was.
Now, I literally walk in my door, tear off my shirt, drop trow and get to work.
I'm actually in the process of "discovering" bodyweight exercising, and am pretty excited to try it (waiting for a minor muscle strain to heal first. It should be good in a few days)
I always got bored with weights and hated going to the gym. Just too big of an activation barrier and it always felt a bit too competitive, especially when first starting.
This (obviously) limits what you can do compared to a more open setup.
I suspect that people with truly significant achievements probably didn't/don't regret how they spent their time. People whose achievements mostly involve climbing the corporate ladder instead of seeing their kids' soccer games? Yeah, I bet a lot of them regret it.
I think this hits the nail on the head. It's a mistake to think it's too late and what remains of life is going to rush you by, and it's also a mistake to think that time is unlimited. The way I resolve these two contrary directions is to figure out: when you're in the moment, what do you want to spend your life doing?
Enjoying the life I have built for myself. After all, there's not really "Plenty of Time" left...
And it is awful.
But I don't believe it has to be.
You can balance your life around gaining whatever kinds of strength you need, while also accepting the need not only for the rest and recovery required to cement your gains of physical strength or mental skill, but because you need to replenish your - well, whatever it is that makes you decide that staying alive is worth the trouble. And if there's only fear of lost achievement there, well, I feel like I've experienced that for part of my life, and it's fairly miserable and relatively ineffective at causing a person to, as the author admonishes, actually put things into effect.
I'm going to go get some balance right now, I've been itching to play Overwatch all week, I am going to go and do it! :D
> But days gone by are days gone by. What can you do from here – from today – to commit fewer errors? Because the truth is you don’t have plenty of time.
These motivational posts tend to sound kind of sad and hollow to me. I love to lift weights myself, but if someone told me that a day spent with friends or family and not in the gym was an error -- I'd laugh.
Does anyone really think that when they're an old man looking back, they're going to wish they had spent more time in the gym to deadlift 800 instead of "just" 700? Or will they wish they had spent more time enjoying life and taking it a bit easier?
Especially since it's not guaranteed. There's a lot of people who never made it to the "end of their life", and a lot more people who had a retirement planned that they had to give up because life ended up having other plans for them.
I bring up the "looking back" angle only because fear of regret is a central theme to these types of "your life is ending one minute at a time" motivational posts. And it's largely false -- you will not regret having enjoyed the simple things in life.
However, for some reason, the way you described it combined with my current mental state caused something to click for me. Thank you for posting.
That's a bit too selfish for me. I'd rather spend my life making more than one person happy.
Why do we have to be an old man to look back? Or why would regrets there be any more valid than regrets now?
I can say with reasonably certainty that plenty of us have looked back and regret things we didn't do when we were younger. So yes, at least I do wish I've spent more time doing certain things.
Yes it's ok to live and enjoy the little things, but if you want to achieve a goal.... you don't have time. Deal with it and work within those parameters. Every second you spend enjoying your time with a beer and family is time someone else is stepping up.
I'm not saying this is right or wrong, but it just is. Maybe you want to spend time with family. But just as easily you could be forever unfulfilled because you are hyper ambitious and never applied yourself fully.
Man this has to be the greatest overestimation of human memory ever.
People don't remember shit from like 20 yrs ago, heck I don't even remember 99% of stuff from like even 2 yrs ago. Even if they do at that their age , they prbly don't care about what happened like 50 yrs ago.
My memory of events from my life has changed so much over the years that I don't trust that they actually happened in the way I remember them now.
>they're going to wish they had spent more time in the gym to deadlift 800 instead
this is more likely than looking back because you have your body constantly reminding you how fucked up it is due to neglect.
Do I ever look back at time spent with my kids and wish I did less of that? No. Do I ever look back at time spent on the beach doing nothing but hanging out and wish I did less of that? Yes.
It isn't so much spending all my time on my job or on getting more money or some superficial goal, its about spending my time in ways that later I'll be happy I spent it that way. I wasted a lot of it before I figured that out.
Man, I don't even know how to respond to this. "Just enjoy life"?
Working is how I enjoy life. My freetime is spent building art projects, or teaching workshops, or working on sidecode stuff, or just...working. Building stuff, putting stuff together, improving stuff.
If I look back on the vacations I've taken where I do "nothing", I come back extremely unhappy and antsy. When I look back at vacations where I did something useful, for instance: organizing all the tools in my late-grandfathers old workshop, it makes me feel happy and fullfilled.
So maybe to each their own. People who want to "just enjoy life" should do so. People who want to work should do so too.
I suspect I'm the kind of person who will never truly retire.
I'm saying don't do them out of a fear of your impending death. Do them because you love to do them.
What does this even mean? The scarcity of life, and therefore the imperative to do things now instead of later is because of death.
I absolutely do things because of the fear of impending death. I am going to die someday, and when I die, I won't have any more opportunities to build things with my niece, or work on an art project with my girlfriend.
A day I spent sitting around instead of spending time with somebody I love is a day that is, in my opinion, wasted, and I think that it is ridiculous of you to imply that there is something wrong with this.
Actually, yes.
There's a video of Ronnie "Officer Steroids" Coleman in a hospital bed saying, "I wish had done 800x4 instead of just 800x2."
Not to be overly pedantic, but facebook was around in 2004, so this was well after Facebook was around, I'm afraid. I was personally on FB at the end of 2005.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-fiv...
It seems likely our attitudes change as we age. Perhaps not, perhaps the imminence of death warps perspective. However, dying with minimal regrets is surely something to cherish.
Anyway, whatever works for you.