5-Reps: Excellence is mundane

Something different this week

I’ll be honest, I don’t want to write this email.

Not that I don’t like writing these emails. I do.

I’m just so into book writing that I don’t want to stop.

So instead of writing this email, I’m going to share a passage from the book that I wrote today.

85% > 100%

If you go to the gym and do the best workout in the world, you’ll look in the mirror after and see … nothing.

If you go back the next day and do it again and look in the mirror again, you’ll see … nothing.

Do a good enough workout for long enough, however, and you’ll wake up one day in the future transformed.

Simon Sinek describes the difference between intensity and consistency like this:

“Intensity is like going to the dentist––it’s fixed in time, we know exactly what date we’re going, we know how long we’re going to be there, and we know that when we come out our teeth will feel smooth and look pearly. But if that’s all we do, all of our teeth will fall out.

In other words, intensity is not enough.

So we’re also supposed to brush our teeth twice a day for two minutes in the morning and two minutes in the evening.

What does brushing our teeth do for two minutes?

Nothing. It does absolutely nothing. Unless you do it Every. Single. Day. Can you leave out a day? Sure. How many days can you leave out? I don’t really know. How many times do you have to brush your teeth before it works? I don’t know that either.

And this is why companies don’t do it. We love intensity for the simple reason that it’s easy to measure. We can calculate the day and we can calculate the time. It’s highly predictable. But it’s consistency that is the human part.

What does it take to fall in love? Buy her flowers. Remember her birthday. Important. But if that’s all that you do, it won’t work.

It’s the little things, like when you wake up in the morning, you say “good morning” to her before you check your phone. When you get up to get a drink, you bring her one, even if she doesn’t ask. Either one of those things does nothing. But it’s the accumulation of those things done repeatedly over time that one day somebody will wake up and say, “oh my God, I love you.”

—

Good workout advice is to always leave 1-2 reps in reserve.

To not complete every set at full capacity.

To stay below your maximum threshold.

To leave some gas in the tank.

If you want to get into great shape, it’s best to avoid maximum effort and instead focus on stacking small and controllable exercise wins over time.

“Excellence is mundane.” Says the sociologist Daniel Chambliss. He continues on to say that:

“Excellence is accomplished through the doing of actions, ordinary in themselves, performed consistently and carefully, habitualized, compounded together, added up over time.”

Books and podcasts tend to mystify excellence.

Mysteries, however, are not secrets. A mystery is information not known. A secret is concealed knowledge.

But of course, with success, according to Chambliss, “there is no secret: there is only the doing of all those little things, each one done correctly, time and again, until excellence in every detail becomes a firmly ingrained habit, an ordinary part of one’s everyday life.”

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