Exercise Archives

How To Know When To Quit

February 12, 2021August 10, 2023 Nik

In 2006, Nike ran a series of ads called “Joga Bonito” leading up to the soccer world cup in Germany. It means “play beautifully.”

The clips showed world-class players like Ronaldo, Thierry Henry, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic performing soccer tricks, goofing off, and just enjoying the game. The ads were a smash hit, and my best friend and I spent hours watching them. We started downloading and collecting freestyle videos of all kinds, and, soon enough, we went outside and began to practice.

“How does Henry do this trick?” “What’s an ‘Around-the-World?’” Before long, we had a sizable repertoire of cool moves. Unlike my friend, I wasn’t on an actual soccer team, so instead of focusing mainly on that, I just kept practicing tricks. I trained outside for hours. I did sessions in our basement in the winter.

I also got more friends addicted to the fun, and, together, we discovered we weren’t the only ones. We hung out in forums. We started a local German freestyle group. We even had our own competitions. Everyone would film some footage, edit their best clips, add music, and, voilà, the trick-off was on!

By 2008, the movement had gained enough momentum to warrant its own world championship called Red Bull Street Style, which my then-practice buddy took part in. We also auditioned for Germany’s Got Talent, but neither of us made it to the show.

In 2009, I was gearing up for my A-levels and started having knee problems. That year, I shot my last clips. After graduation, I still dabbled with the ball on occasion, but when I went to college, I decided: That’s it. I quit. No more football freestyle. Today, all that’s left is grainy videos and a ball in my room.

In retrospect, this may sound like an obvious choice; the classic “giving up a hobby for something bigger.” Back then, it was a very painful decision.

Initially, there were less than 100 serious freestylers in Germany. I had peers from all over the world who respected my work. By being both early and dedicated, I had been, for a brief moment in time, one of the best football freestylers in the world. That’s hard to walk away from.

Ultimately, however, quitting was necessary. I wasn’t meant to be an athlete. I’m very happy with the job I have now — writing — and wouldn’t trade it for the world.

But how do you make these decisions? How do you know when to quit? Here are some of the factors I considered.

No One Is Coming to Save You

June 9, 2020September 25, 2023 Nik

Your parents aren’t coming to save you. They’ve done that often enough. Or maybe never at all. Either way, they’re not coming now. You’re all grown. Maybe not grown up, but grown. They’ve got their own stuff to take care of.

Your best friend isn’t coming to save you. He’ll always love you, but he’s knee deep in the same shit you’re in. Work. Love. Health. Staying sane. You know, the usual. You should check in with him some time. But don’t expect him to save you.

Your boss is not coming to save you. Your boss is trying to cover her ass right now. She’s afraid she might get fired. She’s fighting hard to keep everyone on the team. She’s worried about you, but she has no time to save you.

The 3 Keys to Being Mentally Strong

April 3, 2020June 27, 2024 Nik

On May 22nd, 2002, David Blaine stepped off a crane and onto a tiny, 22-inch wide platform. 100 feet above the cold, hard concrete of New York City, he now stood on a pillar with no protection in case he’d fall.

For 35 hours, he remained there. No food, no water, and — for the sake of his life — no sleep. By the time the stunt ended, 50,000 spectators had gathered to watch him jump into a big pile of cardboard boxes. Vertigo, as Blaine dubbed the spectacle, may be my favorite stunt of his, but it’s only one in a long list of death-defying feats on his track record.

In 1999, he spent seven days buried alive in a plastic box. The next year, he was encased in ice for two and half days. He also caught a bullet with his mouth, held his breath for 17 minutes, and hung over the Thames for 44 days, consuming nothing but water.

David Blaine has been on one simple mission all his life: Bring magic to the people. In his quest to do so, he has ventured to many an edge and beyond, defying, even cheating death more than once. Luckily, most of us will never have to take such risks to achieve our dreams. But his sheer will is inspiring.

David Blaine’s best magic trick can’t be seen on video. It’s not his swimming with sharks or withstanding lightning but his superhuman mental strength. That’s the kind of trick worth copying — because it’s not an illusion at all.

Life is a never-ending journey towards fulfilling your true potential. Mental strength will help you close the gap. I studied countless articles, videos, and interviews with David Blaine to understand how he developed this trait. When I pulled all the patterns together, I was left with three components.

Here are the three keys to becoming mentally strong.

Coronavirus Cheat Sheet

March 31, 2020June 27, 2024 Nik

Coronavirus is global. It’s a pandemic, meaning it’ll affect every person in every country on the planet, be it directly via contracting the disease or indirectly through changes in work policy, travel restrictions, containment measures, or loved ones being affected.

You, however, are not global. You’re a single human being. Yet, the sum of how billions of individuals will act during this time is going to determine how fast, how well, and how strong we will emerge from this crisis as a species.

Therefore, this cheat sheet is about you. How you can stay healthy, how you can contribute, how you can survive this dilemma and help us all do the same.

Looking at you as an individual, here is what matters:

Getting a handle on your emotions and not panicking
Staying healthy or recovering quickly if you catch the disease
Not infecting others, especially those weaker and more fragile than you
Taking precautions for isolation without getting paranoid
Finding a new, comfortable, productive daily rhythm
Managing your mental health to stay happy and motivated
Relying on verified information from the right sources

Also looking at you as an individual, here is what matters not:

How many cases appear in which country from one day to the next
Measures taken in other cities that don’t affect you or those you know
Opinions of public figures that dramatize or downplay the situation
Which way the stock market went and what’ll happen to the economy
Conspiracy theories from less than trustworthy sources

Right now, it is your duty to separate the former from the latter and do your best to live up to the one without getting lost in the other.

This is a time to put aside pettiness. Stop looking left and right so you can clean your own doorstep. If we all do it, the streets will soon be clean.

I’m not a healthcare professional, nor do I have a PhD. I’ve been writing for five years, and I do my homework when it comes to research. This cheat sheet should give you the most important information, backed by credible sources.

Take the Stairs, Not the Escalator

March 23, 2020August 10, 2024 Nik

When there’s an escalator with stairs next to it, which option do you take? I take the stairs. It seems like a small thing, but it’s a big deal. Embedded in this little, seemingly innocuous decision — do you walk or do you stand? — is a whole way of looking at the world.

People on the escalator lose time, momentum, and energy. They choose to wait then they could be choosing to do something. Of course, at times waiting is the right choice. Sometimes, you can use a bit of rest. Or enjoy the moment of quiet with your partner.

Most of the people on the escalator, however, don’t stand because it makes sense to stand right now. They stand because it’s their default to wait. They stand because they hope the world will magically carry them to where they want to go.

Reach High and Hope You Don’t Fall

February 25, 2020September 25, 2023 Nik

Yesterday, I went bouldering for the first time. Finally, the source of many scrawny-kid jokes in high school turned into an advantage. I’m 5’7″. I weigh 136 lbs. I’m neither tall nor strong — but my power-to-weight ratio is excellent.

I can easily do 50 push-ups or pull myself up some ledge. As it turns out, this kind of balance is exactly what you need when you’re trying to go from one set of tiny knobs to the next on a six-foot slanted wall.

After some basic, first-level trials and picking up the rules, I managed to climb some second- and even third-level problems. That’s nothing compared to expert climbers gliding up the impossibly-flat-surface elements of a level 12 wall, but, for a beginner, it’s not half bad. Still, my arms got tired after about 90 minutes, and it was almost time to go. Almost.

The 4 Meta-Habits of Highly Successful People

January 21, 2020June 26, 2024 Nik

In business school, I became obsessed with adopting habits. I trusted the idea that small things done consistently add up to big things in the long run.

Like millions of others interested in self-improvement, I read Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, one of the bestselling books of all time. It gave me some good tools to start with, but it makes a flawed assumption — that there exists an ideal set of habits for success, one that is finite, timeless, and exactly the same for everyone. What I learned through aggressive experimentation — waking up at 5 a.m. for three straight months, quitting caffeine for 100 days and alcohol for two years, taking cold showers, and walking 10,000 steps a day for a year — is that this is simply untrue.

Habits have served me well. I’ve published more than a thousand pieces of writing which have been read by millions of people. I’ve found a line of work I’m proud to be in, and I make a six-figure income with full control over my time and projects. But the big lesson I’ve learned is that success has little to do with any particular set of habits and everything to do with your ability to change your habits when you need to. Successful people aren’t just highly effective, they’re highly adaptable. Instead of one-and-done solutions, they adopt meta-habits — habits that help them manage their habits.

Here are four ways to use meta-habits to manage your growth.

The Four Burners Theory of Work-Life Balance

May 1, 2019September 25, 2023 Nik

Imagine there’s an old stove in your house. It’s square and has four burners.

You know, the kind where you still have to light the gas with a match and pull your hand away really fast so you don’t get burned. Each of those burners represents an important area of your life:

Family.
Friends.
Health.
Work.

So far, so good. There’s only one problem. According to the original New Yorker article first mentioning the concept:

“In order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two.”

Ouch. That hurts. But it makes perfect sense. It stings because it’s true.

Why Rest Is Essential To High Performance

April 9, 2019August 10, 2023 Nik

On The Tim Ferriss Show, LeBron James said he sleeps eight or nine hours each night. Sometimes ten. And if he can’t get those, he’ll catch up with a two-hour nap. James is a prominent fan of quality shut-eye, but not the only one.

According to ESPN, sprinter Usain Bolt and tennis stars Venus Williams and Maria Sharapova also shoot for an average sleeping time close to the double-digits. Point guard legend Steve Nash told The New York Times that naps on game day are a common occurrence among NBA players — and they help.

The message is that sleep isn’t just beneficial, but essential to top performance.

This is easy enough to understand for physically demanding activities, like sports, but when it comes to knowledge work and creative professions, we have a much harder time accepting the importance of sleep.

And yet, all of us know how tough it can be to host a long meeting or how hungry we are after hours of creativity. So what’s going on here?

How To Increase Your Willpower

April 2, 2019June 20, 2024 Nik

Willpower is easy when you’re having fun.

I never needed anyone to tell me to play video games, explore the internet, or practice soccer tricks. If anything, it was hard to get me to stop. Writing has been the same. Sure, some days I don’t feel like sitting down, like tackling the hard passage that’s next, but as soon as I get going, flow kicks in.

We all gravitate towards different things, but most of us have had our own version of this experience. There’s a big lesson in it we often ignore, mostly due to societal obligations or traditional education: optimize for easy.

If you can find an activity in which talent and interest carry you from being mediocre to above average, you have a new potential career. The timing and specifics of making it financially productive might neither be clear nor work out in the end, but if doing the work comes easy, that’s a huge head start.

To some degree, becoming more skilled supports this growing commitment, but if you start in an area you genuinely dislike, you’ll likely never get that far.

That’s why, generally, I support advice like the following, which comes from Naval Ravikant, the founder of AngelList and a prolific startup investor:

“Discipline is really overrated. Discipline is just you fighting with yourself to do something you don’t want to do. It’s more important to find something that you want to do and that can be productive, as opposed to trying to discipline yourself. Self-discipline is tough. You won’t sustain it. Tiger Woods didn’t become a great golfer through self-discipline.”

As helpful as it is on a macro-level, if you apply it to a small time frame, this advice falls apart. What’s great for your career is terrible for your day-to-day.

Imagine everyone in your office quit showering. Or dressing properly. Luckily, most of our needed if not fun behaviors have become habits by the time we rely on them. That said, barring multi-millionaire status, the road to which is long, most of us will always keep facing the occasional to-do we don’t like.

I don’t believe I can solve your quest for meaningful work in an article. It’s a slow process that depends on you trying things, being consistent, and adjusting as you go. What I can do is show you some of the small ways to reduce friction along the way. To summon discipline when you do need it.

Here are 14 scientific ways to increase your willpower in one minute or less.

Category: Exercise