In January 2020, I wrote a blog post entitled “How to Achieve Sustained Success,” where I made the case that consistency is the key to sustained success and the reason why we often fail is that once we start seeing some success, we stop doing the things that got us there.
Over the years, I’ve developed a point of view on how to make sure I keep doing the things that make me successful, and here it is: figure out the easiest thing I can do consistently every day no matter what and ignore conventional advice on what it takes to succeed in this area.
As an example, I’ve spent the past 7 months traveling the world and am still able to continuously get stronger and maintain my weight despite moving locations, having irregular and infrequent access to gyms, and eating out literally every meal every day since I’ve been living out of hotels.
How’d I do it? There were a few things, but my workout routine has been particularly helpful. Going into my travels I had a solid workout routine in place that I’d designed in the summer of 2020. At that time, at age 38, I realized that my fitness goals had changed. I no longer felt motivated to try to get a six pack. I really just wanted two things:(1) I wanted to be able to easily keep up with people on hikes and other physical pursuits and (2) for the love of God I wanted people to stop asking me whether I worked out.
I’d read the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. In it, James made a compelling case for designing our lives for 1% daily incremental improvements for sustained long-term success.
I decided to test the idea out with my fitness routine because I’d yo-yo-ed with it throughout my entire life. I’d work out really hard and consistently 5-6x a week for 9 months then go 6 months without so much as going on a walk. Reflecting upon why I regularly quit working out, I think I’d burn myself out in aspiring to “get in the best shape of my life” then become so sick of working out I couldn’t bring myself to do so much as a pushup.
My first challenge was figuring out how I’d design my workouts. I asked myself these questions:
What’s easy enough that you’re 99.9% sure you’ll actually do the workout every day?
What’s JUST hard enough — and no harder — you’ll get 1% more fit every day?
To answer the first question, I thought back to the times in my life when I was most consistent with my workouts. I’ve been working out since I was a teenager, back when workout videos were sold on VHS tapes (my favorite was “The Firm” series). The times when I was the most consistent with my workouts over long periods were when I (1) worked out at home, (2) did some form of strength or interval training (I loathe steady state cardio), (3) followed an instructor, and (4) did a workout no longer than 30 minutes tops.
I decided to start with a constraint of doing 15-minute, at-home, circuit workouts that could be done with or without weights. So that I could work out even if I had no access to weights.
Importantly, I decided I would do NO MORE THAN 15 minutes, even if I felt super energized that day. Because I wanted to avoid my previous pitfall of burning out on working out by setting a target that was too high for me to sustain daily over the long term. I also wanted to ensure that my workout was easy enough that I would fully recover before my workout the next day.
In other words, I set both a minimum AND a maximum range that I would count as a workout.
To ensure I’d get 1% more fit each day, I needed to find a workout program that would be hard enough that it could keep me challenged for a full year. I picked the Sweat app because I’d had success with it in the past, it offers 80+ weeks of workouts that get progressively harder, and it includes 30-minute workouts that I could cut in half and do from anywhere.
For the next 365 days, every morning, I did the first 15 minutes of a Sweat workout. Because the Sweat app includes only 3 workouts per week, I’d do just over “two weeks” of workouts per week. A typical week looked like this:
Monday: Sweat week 1 Legs
Tuesday: Sweat week 1 Arms
Wednesday: Sweat week 1 Abs
Thursday: Sweat week 2 Legs
Friday: Sweat week 2 Arms
Saturday: Sweat week 2 Abs
Sunday: Sweat week 3 Legs
etc.
One year down, what were the results?
First, the physical and fitness-related results. I lost about 10 pounds of body fat. I got a lot stronger. I started out barely being able to do 3 pushups and became able to easily do over 20, even using a bench and in a decline position. I have a lot more energy and no longer feel physically lazy. Meaning, before, I used to really resist doing even the most basic physical things like taking out the trash, doing the dishes, etc. And now I feel like I enjoy doing anything that involves moving my body more often throughout the day. Because my workouts involved HIIT, I also tested my cardio by going to 10 Barry’s classes in a row toward the end of my 365 days, just to see how I’d do sprinting. I found it totally doable to keep up in class with the recommended speeds and felt energized after workouts rather than feeling like I was going to die and be sore for days.
There are deeper takeaways that go beyond fitness, however.
First, I became aware that two things keep me from succeeding in important areas: impatience and ego. Impatience leads me to set goals that are unattainable in the time frame I give myself. My ego leads me to choose strategies that feel socially acceptable. For example, my ego told me that to get in shape, I had to do “hard” or “intense” workouts. Something where when I tell people what I do, they’d respect me.
Second, by being patient and putting my ego aside to set an attainable goal, I built immense self-esteem by making and keeping a commitment to myself. To the point where, for the first time in my life, I’m no longer self-conscious about how fit I look to anyone. How could I possibly care what someone would think about me when I just worked out 365 days in a row?! To achieve this, there were many, many days when I worked out even when it was the last thing I wanted to do and had a dozen balls in the air. Yet I always fit the workout in, even if I had to do it at 9 PM. Even if I was traveling.
Third, I learned the value of setting goals that I fully control. For example, setting a goal to “lose 10 pounds in 12 months” is not something I have 100% control over. I could do a laundry list of things, but it’s not guaranteed the weight would come off. Goals like this erode my self-esteem and motivation because I feel like no matter how hard I try I’m unable to achieve what I set out to do. With my goal to work out 365 days in a row, I set out to do that I had 100% control over.
Fourth, I learned the value of setting goals that are tied to building character rather than achieving success as it’s defined by our culture and media. For example, “buy a $2m home” is a great aspiration but has nothing to do with building character, whereas “only buy clothes that fit within my set budget every month” builds character. Doing something for myself every day no matter what made me take pride in my thoughtfulness, dedication, and work ethic.
It’s now been about a year and a half since I started doing daily 15-minute workouts. There have been times when I’d been tempted to increase my workouts to 30 minutes, but when I tried that I found myself spending 15 minutes trying to talk myself into doing the longer workout. I abandoned that idea and have stuck with what’s gotten me here because I’m continuing to build strength bit by bit every day.
Whatever your goals are in 2022, I hope you’ll consider taking the long view and putting your ego and impatience aside to craft a plan that you can easily — and ideally, enjoyably — stick with long term, no matter how simple or easy it seems. For your diet, for example, it could be a change as simple as skipping breakfast every day or eating a salad (or Methodology!) for lunch every day. Whatever you do, make sure you pick something that feels truly effortless for you. You’ll be amazed how doing something small but helpful consistently every day for 365 days will transform your life. It’s worked for me in several areas of my life, and I’m sure it can work for you as well.
Wishing you sustained and effortless success in 2022 and beyond.
Julie Nguyen
CEO & Co-founder, Methodology