Falling Victim to Entropy
Since 2009, I had made a series of choices to focus on my career and entrepreneurial ambitions instead of my health. I put on about 50 lbs of fat and atrophied significantly during that period. I had given up on taking care of myself in trade for trying to build my company and my city’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. I kept telling myself that I’d get myself together later after I had found success.
When my first child was born in 2016, I need to determine if I was going to be a good Founder or a good Father. I left my operational role as CTO of my startup and I derisked my career a bit. But I wanted to be more than just present with my son, I needed to be a role model for him. I searched for role models for myself and found this great series of essays by Jocko Willink on Spotify.
Finding Discipline
Through many iterations over the next 3 years, I began to rebuild my health. I started training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, stopped drinking alcohol regularly, started lifting weights (3x a week), and worked to refine my diet.
I made these changes one at a time, about three to six months a part. It takes about 90 days to lock in a new habit and it’s much harder to actively control more than one thing. So I focused on not making a new habit until I didn’t have to work to maintain the current habit I was developing. The most important part of this process was to figure out the failure modes in each new habit during that startup period and put controls in place to correct for them.
For example, I kept missing my weight lifting workouts because I would have meetings or family obligations. So to control for this, I found a time no one books me; 4:30 am. By taking ownership of my failures; I can’t blame anyone but myself for not getting to the gym before everyone is awake. Discipline is Freedom.
This process hasn’t been linear, it’s riddled with short term setbacks; mental, physical, business, etc. But all of these setbacks have proven to me that you never fail until you quit. I’ve missed lifting or training BJJ for months at a time (see graph above). The trick is to kill your ego and start training again. I am a human, I am fallible, but I refuse to quit.
Questions of the Day
What keeps you from making the changes in your life that will make you healthier? What controls do you use to help you maintain discipline? What did you think of Jocko’s essays?
