Originally posted at: http://www.nerdfitness.com/

For disastrous humans like myself, routines are pretty damn important.

I’m easily distracted, impacted by my environment, and strongly influenced by ​the people around me​. A predictable routine gives me the best chance to still get stuff done while being human.

Unfortunately, while traveling, plenty of things slip by the wayside.

And this past week I found myself traveling and falling behind on my nerd duties.

I needed to catch up on House of the Dragon (Season 2 is a big step-up!), and I was also behind on a few of my favorite nerdy podcasts.

I thought about how I would manage to get caught up while also getting my workouts done. I know that I feel like a better human being after I exercise.

And then I remembered a habit-building technique I had learned about years ago.

Before I started writing about it, I googled the technique…only to realize I had already written about it! Good job, Past Steve!

(I guess when you publish 1000+ articles over 15 years, it’s bound to happen.)

The technique is called “Temptation Bundling.”

It’s when you combine two activities: one you need to do with one you want to do.

Example: listening to your favorite audiobook or podcast ONLY when you’re at the gym or getting your steps in.

As I point out in my updated ​article on Temptation Bundling​, Professor Katy Milkman ran an experiment to test whether or not “audiobooks at the gym only” would influence people’s behaviors:

The people in the study who were told they could listen to addictive audio books only while working out visited the gym 51% more frequently than those who were just told they should exercise more.

Knowing that exercise is ​my constant​ while traveling, I took my own advice:

I told myself I could only watch House of the Dragon while walking.

In addition, the more time I spent at the gym, the more of my podcasts I could get through.

Sure enough, I found myself jumping rope a few extra minutes to finish a podcast episode, I went to the gym an extra day for mobility work, and I walked an extra mile on the treadmill just to see the end of an episode.

More “nerd” plus more “fitness” = win!

• All caught up on ​The Watch​ and ​The Big Picture​ podcasts.
• Two extra workouts and mobility sessions complete.
• All caught up on House of the Dragon.

Feel free to read the full article on ​Temptation Bundling​ and give it a shot.

If you try it out, hit reply on this email and let me know how it goes!

-Steve

The post Revisiting a Classic: Temptation Bundling first appeared on Nerd Fitness.

Originally posted at: http://www.nerdfitness.com/

At the turn of the 20th century, cities around the world had a crappy problem that was getting worse by the day.

Literally.

Metropolises were rapidly growing in population, and thus so did the number of horse-drawn carriages to transport people from place to place.

The problem? Horses generate a lot of waste.

At this time, New York City had an estimated 130,000-200,000 horses transplanting people and goods around Manhattan, which meant there was upwards of 5+ million pounds of manure being generated every day.

Yeah, that’s a lot of poop.

At this point, with city populations exploding vertically into taller buildings, and more horses being employed daily to serve these people, the future looked pretty dire.

In 1894, The Times of London allegedly predicted that in 50 years, the city would be literally buried in horse poop! And can you blame them? If one looks at the trajectory of people, and horses, and poop, it would be simple to just continue to draw all of those lines up and to the right.

Two years later, in 1896, a battery and internal combustion engine was attached to a horseless carriage, and within two decades the automobile had taken over, and the horse manure problem solved itself.

Simultaneously, while humans were solving the transportation problems on the street, they were still struggling to solve another transportation problem…

Would human beings ever actually fly?

By the late 1800s, after millions of wasted dollars, terrible mishaps, and fatal accidents, humanity’s attempt to fly had largely been abandoned.

Despite widespread interest and plenty of experimental attempts, too many people had died and too much money had been set on fire. There just didn’t seem to be a safe path to success.

The Washington Post soundly declared, “It’s a fact that man can’t fly.”

A particularly pessimistic gentleman predicted that “men would not fly for fifty years.”

That prediction was made in 1901.

We all know what happened next: Less than two years later, Willbur Wright took to the skies in his glider and became the first person in history to fly a manned aircraft.

Who was the idiot that made the comically bad prediction about not flying for 50 years?

Wilbur Wright!

Luckily, he took the fact that his prediction was off by 48 years in stride, and was glad to have proven himself wrong. It’s also one hell of a lesson to have learned: hold those predictions loosely!

We suck at predicting!

Look back at any major development in history, good or bad, and you can find comically bad predictions from noted experts.

1968’s The Population Bomb predicted worldwide famines due to overpopulation within decades…which makes sense. One look at this chart would lead you to the same conclusion:

Of course, this is no longer the problem we’re facing as a planet.

Most experts these days are still raising alarm bells…but they’re ​terrified about underpopulation​, the exact opposite problem compared to a few decades prior.

Predictions are fickle, and we humans are quite bad at them.

Hell, the reason I can send you this essay is due to the fact that one of the most famous predictions ended up being comically wrong. In 1998, Nobel-prize winning Economist Paul Krugman said ​the following about the Internet​:

“The growth of the Internet will slow drastically…By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”

Yikes.

So, if humans, even experts, have been comically misguided and made terrible predictions about some of the most transformative moments in human history, do we think it’s also possible that we are wrong all the time about the predictions we make about our own lives?

It’s time we start holding our predictions a little less strongly.

My vote? We start to be a bit more like Willbur Wright.

As laid out in David McCullough’s ​The Wright Brothers​, Wright thought about the future differently after proving himself wrong:

“This demonstration of my inability as a prophet gave me such a shock that I have ever since distrusted myself and have refrained from all prediction—as my friends of the press, especially, well know.

But it is not really necessary to look too far into the future; we see enough already to be certain that it will be magnificent. Only let us hurry and open the roads.”

This is a pretty good strategy for looking at our own lives.

We can start with acceptance: we’re never going to get better at predicting the future.

We can also hold two conflicting ideas in our head at the same time. As President Dwight. D. Eisenhower once said, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”

I’ve simply accepted this is just how life works. I still make plans, and I still make predictions…but I hold those plans and predictions very loosely.

Looking back five years, I never would have predicted how the world and my life would turn out. I certainly wouldn’t have predicted a worldwide pandemic and life-altering medications like GLP-1.

Hell, if I look back at last week, I can point to a bunch of things that didn’t go according to plan. But, because I expect nothing to ever go according to plan, I’m rarely caught off guard when things turn out differently than expected.

This is our task for today:

If we want to become more resilient and make progress on our goals, we need to accept that our plans will rarely go according to plan!

Here’s what that might look like in practice:

• “I plan on working out at 5:30PM on Monday/Wednesday/Friday, but I fully expect one of those dates to get screwed up because of work. So, I have a backup “home workout” plan I can do in my living room on those days.
• “I have my “meal plan” for the week, but I expect 30% of my meal plan to get blown up by my kid’s unpredictable after-school schedule, so I know exactly what I’m going to eat if I end up driving through McDonalds and not fall off track.”
• “I am trying to reach this goal weight by this date, but I know that everything will always take longer than expected, so I won’t get impatient and instead just keep my focus on what needs to get done that day.”

This is my homework for you today:

1. Is there a plan or prediction you’re holding onto far too tightly?
2. Can you make an alternative plan for when things inevitably don’t go how you predicted?
3. Are you currently assuming some future scenario that will absolutely be true, instead of being open to the possibility that you’re going to be proven wrong?

The sooner we can accept we suck at predicting, the sooner we can get to work on what to do about it!

Strong predictions, held loosely.

-Steve

PS: In case you missed the past essay, ​we also suck at time​! Fun. I know.

The post We Suck at Predicting first appeared on Nerd Fitness.

Originally posted at: http://www.nerdfitness.com/

I spent the past week in The Land of Shadow.

It was miserable.

I loved almost every minute of it.

I recently finished playing Shadow of the Erd Tree, the expansion for 2022’s game of the year, Elden Ring.

In case you’re unfamiliar, Elden Ring is an action-adventure game where you play as an undead warrior tasked with slaying grotesque bosses across a hauntingly beautiful landscape.

Fair warning: I will be making QUITE the analogy between two toxic online discussions I’m seeing these days. Don’t worry, I promise to bring you along for the ride even if you’re not a gamer.

Let me first set the stage, and then we’ll get into the details.

Elden Ring is Incredible and Incredibly Difficult

Most modern big-budget games hold the gamer’s hand, providing a tutorial and guardrails, making sure gamers never feel overly frustrated or confused.

Hidetaka Miyazaki and the team at FromSoftware, the team behind Elden Ring, go hard in the other direction:

They essentially drop you in the middle of a terrifying world full of enemies that can kill you in two hits and essentially say, “Good luck, idiot.”

This has been true for all of FromSoft games: Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro.

In the book, ​Dark Souls: Beyond the Grave​, Miyazaki’s game design philosophy is explained in glorious detail, like in this discussion with Game Informer:

“Having the game be difficult was never the goal. What we set out to do was strictly to provide a sense of accomplishment. We understood that difficulty is just one way to offer an intense sense of accomplishment through forming strategies, overcoming obstacles, and discovering new things.”

Years later, he further refined his philosophy when speaking with Playstation Blog about his next game, Dark Souls:

“We are trying to create a game that is spicy. And we want to make it as spicy as possible. But it’s edible and tastes good and leaves you wanting more.”

So, yes, difficulty and dying repeatedly are part of the FromSoftware experience.

But!

These games also have certain built-in systems that help less-experienced or skilled players. Players can find certain weapons that are overpowered, enlist the help of computer-controlled allies, and even recruit other human players to help.

This allows all gamers of all levels to play the same game while experiencing completely different levels of challenges.

• Some gamers will use every system available to win.
• Other games will voluntarily choose to NOT summon any help.
• Other gamers will specifically choose to not level up at ALL to make it extra difficult.

The fact that all of this works in a game with one difficulty level is brilliant game design.

Still with me?

Good.

Now that we know Elden Ring is difficult, but also includes different systems for players of all skill levels to win, we can get to the current toxic discussion around Elden Ring and difficulty!

There’s No “Right Way” to Play Elden Ring

Find any article about the difficulty of Elden Ring (and Shadow of the Erd Tree) and you’ll find comments that say you’re not a “true gamer” unless you beat every Elden Ring boss without recruiting any help.

These gamers feel morally superior for beating a game without using its built-in systems, and they will not allow for any discussions like “Is it possible this boss is poorly designed?”

According to them, the only possible response is, “I beat the game without help. Just get better.”

Personally, I think Shadow of the Erd Tree has some of the best exploration I’ve ever experienced in any video game. And also, some of its bosses are difficult in a way that’s neither interesting nor well-designed.

I’m a fan (and proud Patreon supporter) of the podcast ​Bonfireside Chat​, which had a great discussion around why Elden Ring’s “Just get good” argument is tiring.

They point out that many people simply decide there’s no room or need to discuss Miyazaki’s decisions and the game’s difficulty. Those people explain that because they’ve beaten the boss without a challenge, everybody else should suck it up and get good.

Replying to this perspective, Gary and Kole share an opinion that is full of a wonderful thing called nuance:

They possess the ability to hold two different thoughts simultaneously. They rightfully point out that a game can be brilliant and some parts might be unnecessarily difficult or poorly designed.

The point: if we’re ever going to evolve past this noise and have good discussions around gaming, we also need to bring nuance and understanding to the table!

Bringing all of this together, here are my summarized thoughts on “Elden Ring is/isn’t too difficult” debate:

• Shadow of the Erd Tree is sometimes too difficult for the wrong reasons.
• Systems exist to help players of all levels still advance.
• There’s no right way or wrong way to play Elden Ring.

Great! Now that we’re all on the same page, it’s time to tackle the other toxic discussion taking place on the internet right now…

I promise these two things are related, so bear with me.

There’s No “Right Way” to Lose Weight Either

For a large majority of the population, losing weight is unbelievably difficult or impossible.

A combination of environment, physiology, and genetics creates a situation in which sustainable weight loss just isn’t going to happen.

This isn’t a question of willpower, discipline, or intelligence. It’s not because these people are lazy. It’s not a moral failing either.

The problem, as I laid out in “​Of course you don’t like to exercise​,” is that we’re creatures built to survive in scarcity, not thrive in abundance.

As a result, sustainable weight loss is something nearly everybody struggles with despite their best efforts.

And this is where we combine the Nerd discussion with the Fitness discussion:

Elden Ring has multiple in-game systems to help people of all skill levels win…

So does losing weight!

Over the past few years, dramatic breakthroughs in weight loss medications (like Ozempic and other GLP-1 medicines) have helped millions of people lose weight and keep it off.

This development has thrust the discussion of weight loss, difficulty, and willpower into the spotlight. And because the internet doesn’t do nuance well, the discussion has turned toxic.

Find any post or article about weight loss medications and you’ll find comments like:

• “That’s cheating and lazy.”
• “Just eat less and move more.”
• “It’s not that hard. I did it.”

People who make these comments enjoy the feeling of moral superiority for losing weight “the right way.” They look down upon anybody who doesn’t also lose weight without medication or assistance.

This is the same playbook that vocal gamers are using for Elden Ring and difficulty!

This viewpoint is toxic, lazy, misinformed, and unhelpful.

Just like there’s no shame in the way somebody chooses to play Elden Ring, there’s no shame in how somebody loses weight either.

That’s between them and their doctor. Full stop.

As I explained in my essay on “​5 fitness beliefs I no longer believe​”:

Instead of asking, “Why don’t people just get more disciplined and eat less instead of ‘cheating’ with weight loss drugs?”…

The better question is, “Which tools are available to help each individual person get healthier?”

For many, it’s education around calories and making slightly healthier choices. For some, it’s weight loss medicine and therapy. For others, it’s all of the above.

We’re most interested in the end result (a healthy, happy life), and we’re open to the infinite paths to get there.

If we accept that we’re not designed for modern life and abundance, we’re all wired differently, we all have different physiologies and opportunities and privileges, then we can also accept we’re all playing the Game of Life in our own way.

It requires us to apply both self-awareness and nuance.

Recently, I had a viral post that explained how I ​maintain my physique at 39 years old​:

I got to play “fitness” on easy mode, and I am well aware that other people don’t have that same luck or privilege.

So I have no problem with anybody else using any tool available to them on their journey. That might include therapy, surgery, hiring a trainer or dietitian, or weight loss medication.

My friend ​Dr. Spencer Nadolsky​, a board-certified physician and one of the kindest, most considerate, and well-read doctors I know, has worked extensively with patients who use or don’t use GLP-1 medications.

He shares some ​desperately needed experience​:

His caption provides even more clarity:

“The reason why many aren’t able to sustain [weight loss] over time is due to biological appetite drivers that push people to regain any weight lost.

So does everyone need the medicine? No, of course not. Not everyone has strong biological drivers. About 15% of people who do an intensive lifestyle program will have similar success to the average that these medicines get over the course of a year or so. Likely a lot less as time goes on.

So not everyone will need the medicine.

However, why would you be against a tool that helps people decrease their risk of disease progression and even decrease the risk of heart attacks etc?”

If you tell people they’re cheating by using weight loss medication, it says more about you than it says about the person you’re criticizing.

Here at Nerd Fitness, we have many ​coaching clients​ on GLP-1s, all of whom are also doing the work of exercising and learning about nutrition and adjusting their lifestyle. The medication allows them the mental space and clarity to stick with their lifestyle changes.

Yes, there could be medication side-effects for some. Yes, exercise and behavior change are also still necessary. All of that can be true AND weight loss medication can still be the best decision for that person.

Keep this in mind when seeing discussions on the internet about the right way to do anything. We’re all trying to live the best life we can before the “Game Over” screen. So, here’s your permission to use whatever tools you have available:

• If you want to play Elden Ring and recruit help, great!
• If you want to play ​Elden Ring using a Guitar Hero controller​, swell!
• If you need to use a tool like GLP-1 to manage your weight, neato!
• If you’ve lost weight without a tool like GLP-1, fantastic!

Everybody should have the ability to play the Game of Life how they want.

Cool? Cool.

-Steve

The post Weight Loss Medication and Video Games first appeared on Nerd Fitness.

Originally posted at: http://www.nerdfitness.com/

Last week, one of the world’s most popular shows finally made its way to Netflix:

LOST.

I’m excited for more people to discover this show. Because from 2004 to 2010, I tuned into ABC each week to find out what happened to the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815.

Although it didn’t quite land the plane (heyo!) with its final few seasons, few will take umbrage with my belief that one episode in particular was one of the best hours of TV I’ve ever seen:

Season 5’s: “The Constant.”

I won’t spoil it for anybody who hasn’t seen this episode, so I’ll just speak in generalities:

A character finds himself existing within two realities inside his mind, and he’s slipping further and further from real life. It’s only through his “constant,” his girlfriend, that he finds his way back from the brink.

I thought of “The Constant” a lot back in 2011 when ​I traveled around the world​.

For those 18 months, every part of my life was abject chaos: a different hostel every night, a different group of travelers every day, a different country every week or month, and a different place to eat for every meal.

While everything else around me was changing, my workouts became my constant. The thing that kept me sane, and grounded, was finding a place to do my ​playground workout​ every other day.

With LOST making its way to Netflix, I was reminded of The Constant again these past few weeks as my travel schedule picked back up.

These days, these are the “constant” things I prioritize through the ups and downs of life:

• 15-minutes of moving my body.
• 150 grams of protein + serving of fruits/vegetables.
• One hour focused on writing in the morning.

I know that no matter where I am, no matter what I have access to, if I prioritize these few things, I feel more grounded and strong and healthy, even if the rest of my schedule is a mess.

I’ve talked a lot about “self-care” lately, and how we often think the ​solution is external​ (buying bath bombs or a 90-minute massage), but the reality is often internal: establishing or accepting boundaries, exercise, etc.

What is “The Constant” in YOUR life?

I’d love to hear about your Constant.

When everything feels like a hurricane around you, what are the things you prioritize daily to keep you from floating off into outer space:

• A 10-minute conversation with your spouse?
• Going to the gym?
• Sitting for a quick meditation?
• Calling your mom?
• A 5-minute walk?

With the state of the world these days, or the state of your schedule, it’s easy to feel like we’re split between two realities.

Sometimes, when our ​identity is stolen from us​, our “constant” might need to change.

What are the things that keep you tethered to reality?

I’d really love to hear from you. Hit reply and share with me your constant!

-Steve

PS: Here’s a ​fun podcast about how LOST​ came together at the last minute.

The post What is “The Constant” in your life? first appeared on Nerd Fitness.

Originally posted at: http://www.nerdfitness.com/

Last week, Wells Fargo fired a bunch of their remote employees.

It turns out that these employees were “simulating keyboard activity” (with a program/device that automatically typed keys or jiggled their mouse when they weren’t at their computer).

Why?

Because that’s how these employees were evaluated:

Not by how many clients they brought in, nor how many relationships they fostered, but by how many hours they were active on their computers.

So that’s exactly what these employees gave them.

Remember, this is the same bank that told employees back in 2017: “Sign up as many clients to extra banking services as possible.”

The result?

Millions of unknowing customers had credit cards and savings accounts and brokerage accounts created illegally in their names, hundreds of millions of dollars in fines, and destroyed goodwill for Wells Fargo.

Why did both of these comically bad lapses in judgment happen?

Bloomberg’s ​Matt Levine​ said it well:

Two basic principles of management, and regulation, and life, are:

1. You get what you measure.
2. The thing that you measure will get gamed.

Really that’s just one principle: You get what you measure, but only exactly what you measure. There’s no guarantee that you’ll get the more general good thing that you thought you were approximately measuring.

If you want hard workers and measure hours worked, you’ll get a lot of workers surfing the internet until midnight.

I stumbled across this story last week, and immediately thought how this exact incentive-and-unexpected-results plays out everyday in our lives.

We download Duolingo to learn to converse with a native speaker in their language. Months later, we’re checking in daily so we don’t get yelled at by the Owl, we are desperate to keep our daily streak active…and we can only say “I found a blue ostrich at the library.”

We lie in bed, waiving our arm above our head like a madman, because our FitBit says we need 500 more steps to hit 10,000 for the day. (​Here’s the history of the 10k step rule​ by the way…)

I once “meditated” every single day for 6 months so that I could build my meditation streak in Headspace. Sometimes I would even open the app and just let the meditation play so I got credit for it, even though I wasn’t meditating…THE WHOLE REASON I HAD DOWNLOADED THE APP.

We tell ourselves that we want to “read more,” but then we track how many books we read. This incentivizes us to read books quickly (without retaining any of it), instead of tackling bigger challenges like War & Peace or rereading our favorite books to glean more lessons.

WHY do we want to read more? To learn stuff or to be entertained! The ​number of books, or WHICH books, doesn’t matter​:

Social media began as a way to connect with friends. These days, social media is big business and the only marketing tool for many creators. Because these companies track “time on app” and “attention”…social media is now a hellscape of outrage.

The most attention-grabbing content filters to the top: outrage inducing, factually incorrect, awful content designed to enrage and fear monger. Even most of my favorite wellness creators these days spend their time making reaction videos to the most vile wellness misinformation, because that’s the only type of content that gains any traction.

(No wonder so many people are avoiding the ​Dark Forest of the Internet​!).

All of these things weave a fascinating tapestry of how the human brain works, and just how good our brains are at taking a metric and learning the wrong lesson from that metric!

What are you measuring?

The majority of people visit NerdFitness.com to “lose weight.”

This is the one metric that everybody is used to tracking. Every ad talks about how to lose weight fast. They see the number on the scale and let that number determine how they feel about themselves that day.

This is the wrong metric to exclusively focus on:

We don’t really want to “lose weight.” What we want is to lose fat while keeping the muscle we have (or building muscle).

If our ONLY goal is weight loss, severe calorie restriction and endless cardio might result in a lower number on the scale. BUT! If we don’t change our relationship with food, and consume enough of the right macronutrients and micronutrients, we’ll end up feeling lethargic, starved, and miserable…and then gorge ourselves as soon as life gets in the way.

If we strength train while eating enough protein and in a caloric deficit, we’ll actually lose weight slower than if we just starved ourselves and did hours of cardio. BUT, we’ll be losing fat while maintaining muscle.

The scale should only be ONE part of how we ​evaluate our progress​:

After all, the number on the scale is going to ​fluctuate from day to day​:

• If we went out to dinner last night.
• if we ate too much salt yesterday.
• If we’re carrying extra water weight.
• If we’re on our period.
• any number of reasons.

So, once we know that what we choose to track is important, how do we use this to our advantage?

What to Track, What NOT to Track

Remember, that which gets measured gets improved, so let’s be smart about what we’re tracking.

We can ask, “What do I REALLY want to happen? Is this the right metric for that goal?”

• Trying to “eat better”: ​Track your protein intake ​and number of fruits/veggies eaten daily. If those are the first two things on your plate for each meal, your weight will start to shift without your focus on it.
• Trying to build a “​beach body​”? Great, let’s ​build some muscle​. Track your workouts, and write down exactly how many sets and reps. Then, do ONE more next time. The goal? Progressive overload for the win! Get stronger,
• Want to read more? Don’t track “books read,” which might result in you picking shorter books or speed reading, but instead track “time spent reading.” This can include audiobooks, rereading old books, whatever. Treat your reading list ​like a river, not a to-do list​!

Finally, there are many things we probably DON’T need to track, or we should be careful about when tracking.

There’s a whole community of biohackers who are prioritizing tracking the tiniest of details across a variety of metrics, many of which don’t matter, or might result in adverse outcomes.

Here’s something we get asked about a lot:

Unless you’re a diabetic and have been advised by a doctor, you do not need to wear a continuous glucose monitor. Temporary glucose spikes after eating a meal are perfectly normal.

(​This podcast​ from my friend Dr. Spencer Nadolsky does a good job explaining why you don’t need a glucose monitor unless you’re diabetic).

Here’s something I used to track but abandoned:

I used to track my sleep religiously with an Oura ring and AppleWatch, but then I would get anxious in the middle of the night and worry that I was ruining my “sleep score”…which negatively impacted the very activity I was trying to improve through tracking. These days, I worry far less about tracking “good sleep” and just do what I can to be in bed for 8ish hours, asleep or not.

And on a bigger, life philosophy question:

Be wary of how social media is warping the scorecard you’re using to track your progress in life! It’s really easy to get sucked into: “Work hard to make money to spend it on things we don’t need to impress people we don’t even like” Life success isn’t measured in the size of our house, or value of our car, or the number in our bank account.

Bringing it all together:

When it comes to personal development or health improvement, it helps to ask: “What am I optimizing for, and does that actually help me get the result I really want?”

We can then decide if we’re even playing with the right scorecard and keeping our focus on the right metric.

I’d love to hear from you: what’s a metric you USED to prioritize, but no longer track? And what’s the important metric that you’re choosing to prioritize these days?

Hit reply on this and let me know!

-Steve

The post Be Careful What You Measure first appeared on Nerd Fitness.