Going From 0 to 100
All or Nothing
I have what a lot of people would call an addictive personality. There are a handful of games in this world which I cannot casually play: I either totally ignore it and don’t play for months, or I am forfeiting sleep in order to spend more waking hours playing. There’s no in between, it’s either 0% or 100%.
And I’m like that with a bunch of other things, too. Including one that I’d like to talk about today: exercise.
So last year I did what might be the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. I ran 5km eery single day for 100 days in a row. It wasn’t necessarily always fast, but every single day I got out of bed and put my running shoes on. It wasn’t fun and I hated myself for doing it at times (especially seeing as I did it in the late Spring, so it crept into Summer…) but i freaking did it.
But, and this is where my first paragraph becomes relevant again, I then kind of stopped for a while. Granted, I took a few weeks off and then started doing 3 runs a week for a while, and then took another few weeks off. So it wasn’t full on zero, in fact it was the healthiest mix of exercise I think I’ve ever had in my life for a few weeks there. But then after Christmas 2020, I then took 7 straight weeks off of running. Work got hella busy which gave me an excuse, and having an excuse that you can justify to yourself is absolutely toxic to motivation to exercise.
However now it’s Easter and I have a week off of work and the weather is better again: the excuses have evaporated so I’m back at it: running 5km every single day again.
Why can’t I ease myself back into it again with a couple of easy runs a week for a while? See again: addictive personality.
0% or 100%. There is no in between.
In fact it’s more than that because I’ve also set myself the challenge of walking/running 100 miles in my straight 10 days off. So that’s a 3.11 mile run (5km)+ 7 miles of walking every day. We’re currently at the end of day 4 and my legs are still in complete and utter disarray. But I’m on track.
And then also because I did 100 consecutive runs last year, I’ve proven that it is possible so I need to at least hit 100 this year, too. So I’m doing 0 to 100 in two quite literal ways.
Want more evidence of this being the only ay I can motivate myself? You just have to scroll back through this very blog! It was a very sporadically updated place for a while before 2015 when I started writing 500 words every single day for a year (also up there with the most impressive things I’ve ever done). Then I stopped doing it daily, and now I barely blog these days (though I’m aiming for 52 blog posts in 2021, so broadly weekly)
It kind of ties back into my blog about accountability from a couple of weeks ago. If I don’t have a set schedule which I’ve committed to in front of other people, then I just can’t motivate myself to do these things that make my life better. I’m very aware this is just because I have low amounts of motivation and self will generally, but at least I’m aware of it and hacking myself to be better?
Anyways, look forward to the super basic “I ran 5km for 100 days in a row, here’s what I learned” post in 96 days time as I continue in my attempt to go viral on Medium.
x
30th March 2021
