We are 11 weeks into a 16-week training block for a Sub-3 Hour marathon attempt on May 18th in Boise, Idaho. As I look at the last 4 years, I don’t really remember many of the windows where I was not training for anything.

I have found through trial and error that my mind works best when I have a goal that I feel I am working towards. Something that is out of my reach when I start, but something I know I can accomplish if I work hard enough. Knowing that there is ground to be covered, I find myself easily motivated to wake up and hit the gym, to not miss workouts, and to make sure the diet is on point.

On the flip side, when I have been in short windows where I am not training for anything, I tend to find that I often fall back into going through the motions. I am always still in the gym. I always pay attention to diet. But for me, the performance is always multiple notches higher and more focused when I have a goal to achieve.

I think this is mostly a strength, but it’s also something I am actively working on. There will be times in life coming up when I won’t have the freedom to constantly be training for something, and it will be imperative in those times that I find ways to motivate myself in other ways.

We are all inherently different. There is no real cookie-cutter approach to our own personal development. There are foundational principles to follow, but at the end of the day, we have to put in the work to learn what makes us tick and what sets us back, and put together a plan to lean into those strengths and avoid those pitfalls.

When you perform at your best, what do your days look like?

Brain - Don’t Wait For The Wake Up Call

In a post that has reached over 10,000,000 people on LinkedIn over the last 3 years, Jonathan Frostick provides a reminder of why now is the time to live life on our terms, not later.

The post has circulated through a number of the reading circles I find myself in, and every time I see it, I am reminded how far I still have to go in putting his lessons into action.

Jonathan suffered a heart attack on a Sunday in 2021. As he experienced the early symptoms, his first mental reactions were “this is not convenient - How am I going to secure funding for “x” - I have a meeting with my boss tomorrow”. These were the in-the-moment things that registered as important to him.

I will let you read the rest of the article here, but I have copied Jonathan’s resolutions post-heart attack below. I think it’s a good reality check for us to constantly evaluate how we are living our lives, how our time pie chart is being divided, and what we are prioritizing.

The human experience is full of “aha” moments, often following the darkest of times. The realization we need to reach out to our friends and family more after we attend a funeral. The push to get in the gym when a friend has a health issue. The reminder that we are just a mark on a spreadsheet to a big corporation when we experience a setback in our careers.

This week’s challenge is to consider your version of Jonathan’s focus items and to constantly evaluate how you are living to achieve what you have identified as important to you.

From Jonathan Frostick:

• 1. I’m not spending all day on zoom anymore

• 2. I’m restructuring my approach to work

• 3. I’m really not going to be putting up with any s#%t at work ever again - life literally is too short

• 4. I’m losing 15kg

• 5. I want every day to count for something at work else I’m changing my role

• 6. I want to spend more time with my family

Body - If I Had to Lose 30 Pounds Again, Here Is How I Would Do It

According to the CDC, 41.9% of adults in the United States were at a weight that qualifies them as obese, as recently as 2022.

It’s no secret that the temptations around us are stronger than ever, and that we live in a system that pushes us to prioritize temporary pleasure over long-term satisfaction. The fast food on every corner. The candy bars in the aisle when we check out at the store. The gas stations full of snack food and calorie-packed drinks. It’s not a stretch to say that attempting to live a healthy life is choosing to very much go against the grain that is laid down by our environment.

If I had to sit down and devise a plan to lose 30 pounds again and take back control of these problems, here is how I would start:

• Focus my diet on 3 pillars:

  • Priority 1 - Calculate my caloric intake to be in a “deficit” - to be eating less calories than I am burning. Always stay under this number

  • Priority 2 - Hit at least .8g of protein per pound of body weight, preferably over 1g per pound

  • Priority 3 - Focus 80% of my diet on whole, single-ingredient foods, leaving 20% for fun foods to not burnout

• Focus my core meals on repeatable foods:

  • Breakfast - Eggs, Egg Whites, Simple Carbs

  • Lunch & Dinner Plate:

    • 50% of the plate protein, 25% carb, 25% vegetable

• Lift weights at least 3x per week

  • 3 Day Split - Upper Body, Lower Body, Upper Body

  • 4 Day Split - Chest & Triceps, Back & Biceps, Legs, Shoulders & Arms

  • 5 Day Split - Chest & Triceps, Back & Biceps, Legs, Shoulders & Arms, Chest & Back

• Take at least 10,000 steps a day

  • Warm up with 10-15 minutes of walking at 3.5 speed, 10-degree incline on a treadmill on lift days

  • Block off 30 minutes to an hour in my schedule for a daily walk

• Give myself 2x as long as I think I need:

  • For 30 pounds, let’s say 20 weeks

    • That is giving yourself a goal of losing 1.5 pounds per week

    • Every 2 weeks, I would trim 100 calories off of my diet

    • Every 4th week I would have a massive cheat day, to reset the metabolism and keep the diet enjoyable

Losing weight is not about a short blitz and extreme measures. It’s about committing to a few key priorities, over a long period of time, and being very, very consistent with those. As we age, it will only become harder and harder to put on and keep muscle. Following a sustainable weight-loss approach ensures we hold onto as much muscle as possible, which will keep our metabolism up, our strength up, and our longevity.

Write out your plan and your pillars to follow this week -

Book - Stillness Is The Key | Ryan Holliday

On the surface, the recent resurgence of stoicism and its practice can come across as reaching for another marketable, taboo approach to fulfillment. At it’s core, stoicism is the practice of self-control by overcoming emotions and our responses to them.

Ryan Holliday has become the central figure for modern-day education on stoicism. He reaches back centuries for texts from philosophers like Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca, and others to translate text into applicable modern ideology. What is fascinating about Ryan’s work is how he is able to show validity and modern day applications from writings and ideas from hundreds of years ago.

Stoics believe at their core that they don’t control the world around them, only how they react to it. They valued wisdom (knowledge applied in the real world), temperance (knowledge that abundance comes from what is essential), courage (to face misfortune, death, to hold your principles, to speak your mind), and justice (that no one do harm to another).

I have become a firm believer in stoicism and its place in 21st century personal development. To me, it is an easy set of guidelines and ideas that help ground us in our pursuit to navigate our new normal and rapidly evolving world. To keep what is truly important at focus. The ability to control our emotions in all situations. The understanding that life is short and we should live now, instead of later.

The hook for “Stillness is Key” - Think about your day yesterday, and how your day has started today. How many prolonged moments could you truly consider yourself “still”, or in the moment?”

We wake up to an alarm going off on our phone. We hustle through our morning routine with the TV on, music in our headphones, and the radio on in the work commute. The phone rings all day. Zoom meetings take over our calendar. TV fills our evening. We are always on the run, with some sort of audible stimulus playing in the background.

Ryan Holiday ties stoic ideas into the story to attempt to persuade the reader that the key to all successful thinkers and performers across human history was their ability to think and do focused work by intentionally finding moments to be “still”.

We don’t have to be hippies to realize that it is hard nowadays to sit alone with our thoughts without struggling to keep our attention focused. Our best ideas tend to come in moments where we subliminally are focused on as little as possible - a walk outside, our 5 minutes in the shower, making the morning coffee, etc.

Anxiety. Stress. Lagging creative energy. “Writer’s Block” - all things that can be directly addressed through seeking out more moments of solitude. In “Stillness Is the Key”, Ryan Holliday makes a strong case with applicable principles on how we should seek out more still moments and the routines that promote doing so. It’s worth the read, and a great introduction into his work.

“Be present. And if you’ve had trouble with this in the past? That’s okay. That’s the nice thing about the present. It keeps showing up to give you a second chance.”

(As a side note - I always link the Amazon link for books and resources, as it’s the easiest centralized location. One thing I am going to be better about is making routine visits to a local bookshop. I recommend you do the same. Support those in your community providing access to reading).