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Reviewing my highlights from “The Slight Edge”

September 30, 2021

I do, in some ways, feel I’ve lost my way in the past couple months. In July, I was making good progress with weight loss and writing on the blog pretty much daily.

Then I went on the east coast trip, fell off the wagon, and never quite got it back.

There’s another east coast trip coming up and I’m in worse shape heading into it. I’ve been putting the time in to work out but my eating has gotten much worse.

I did have a micro epiphany moment last night listening to Joe Defranco’s podcast “The Industrial Strength Show” with Christian Thibaudeau. Some notes:

  • Get as lean as possible if you care about longevity
  • Do some loaded carries
  • Don’t try to fill a scooter with more gas

You can optimize things but you won’t be able to speed them up to 2X, 3X normal speed. Adding muscle takes time. Losing fat takes time.

They also talk about being careful with bulking when you haven’t proven that you can lose fat first. Because you’ll bulk, add muscle with some fat, not lose the fat, then bulk again and add muscle with a little more fat, etc. and then find yourself more overweight with worse body fat %.

This may be happening to me right now. I’m doing the workouts and strength is going up, but I’m not eating like an adult so I’m adding fat also.

and with writing, I’ve gotten way too into my head.

I can post into the void here just fine. But when I try to write something in Twitter, where people might see it, I fall into the trap of two things that both can’t be true.

  1. I worry people won’t read it
  2. I worry people will think it’s dumb

Of course, #2 can’t happen if #1 doesn’t happen. But still I worry.

In any case, I’ll keep writing here for now.

oh yeah, The Slight Edge. This might be the beginner self development book I’d recommend if_Atomic Habits_ didn’t take that throne forever.

Still, special place on the bookshelf because it reminds me of the early days doing the podcast with Wally and Jason. So here are some quotes from it. That maybe will help me turn the ship around.

Relentless, double-edged

The slight edge is relentless and cuts both ways: simple daily disciplines or simple errors in judgment, repeated consistently over time, make you or break you.

This is a good reminder: the little bad things you do every day can compound as well.

The food one for me is that I used to not really seek out dessert and now it’s somehow become a requirement after dinner.

Applied to writing, I don’t really review my notes even though I’m taking them all the time. Not taking that action isn’t deliberate but it may as well be.

Someday

What’s more, it’s one that the majority follow their whole lives.
Someday, when my ship comes in …
Someday, when I have the money …
Someday, when I have the time …
Someday, when I have the skill …
Someday, when I have the confidence …
How many of those statements have you said to yourself? Have I got some sobering news for you: “some day” doesn’t exist, never has, and never will.

I fall into this a lot. Even now I’m thinking that I can wait until after the east coast trip to really get down to business with both the fitness and the writing goals.

But there’s two weeks before that trip and it’s important to build the habits going into that trip so that I don’t fall too far off the wagon.

Some day is today and tomorrow. Not a month from now. Not the new year.

Time is part of the function, and time is going to pass no matter what you do

The secret of time is simply this: time is the force that magnifies those little, almost imperceptible, seemingly insignificant things you do every day into something titanic and unstoppable.

I always say that Booster (my dog) is relentless. No matter how tired she is from a day out, she’ll get up and investigate if I’m opening a bag of something up in the kitchen.

Time is similarly unstoppable. Compounding by saving money and doing nothing with it at all is powerful because time won’t stop.

If you do small positive things repeatedly, over time, you’ll make big changes in your life.

If you don’t make that deliberate choice, the defaults can often times be small negative things. They’ll also make big changes.

Time to start being slightly more deliberate each day.

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