Fundamentals, outcomes, staying power

🌱 HEALTHY

Most Fitness Goals Come Down to Three Things

Everyone's looking for the secret. The supplement that changes everything. The workout program that finally works. The one weird trick.

Most fitness goals can be reduced to two or three non-negotiable actions done consistently. Everything else is just noise.

Want to build muscle? Calorie surplus, adequate protein, progressive overload. That's it. The rest is optimization around the edges.

Want to lose fat? Calorie deficit, maintain protein, keep training. Same principle.

Want to get stronger? Train the movement patterns, add weight over time, recover properly.

The specifics change based on your goal but the pattern doesn't. Figure out the two or three things that actually move the needle, then do them repeatedly until they work.

People hate this answer. They want complexity. They want to feel like they're doing something sophisticated. So they add supplements, change programs every month, obsess over meal timing.

None of that matters if you're not nailing the basics consistently.

I've seen people spinning their wheels for years trying different approaches when they're just not eating enough protein or training with actual intensity. The fundamentals aren't exciting but they're the only things that actually work.

Takeaway: Write down your fitness goal. List the two or three actions that directly cause that result. Remove everything else. Do those things consistently for three months and see what happens.

🪙 WEALTHY

Job Titles Are Starting to Mean Less

Companies are reorganizing around skills instead of job titles. So instead of hiring "marketing managers," they're figuring out what actual skills deliver results and building teams around those capabilities.

This probably sounds like boring corporate restructuring. And maybe it is. But it matters for anyone working remotely because you're probably already doing this without calling it that.

You're not really a Marketing Manager. You're someone who writes landing pages that convert, or builds email sequences that don't get ignored, or whatever specific thing you actually do well. The title is just shorthand.

Most people still introduce themselves with job titles though. Their whole online presence is organized around "I'm a Product Designer" when what they really do is design onboarding flows that reduce churn by 20%. That's more specific. That's more valuable. That's actually a skill.

I've been thinking about my own work in these terms and honestly it's harder to articulate than I thought. What do I actually do? Not the title, not the format - what problem am I solving?

I’m juggling various projects, and I don't have a great answer yet.

But I do think the gap is growing between people who position themselves around vague titles and people who position themselves around specific outcomes. One group competes with everyone who has the same title. The other group barely has competition because they solve something specific.

Takeaway: Try listing three specific outcomes you deliver. Not your job title. Not "marketing" or "design." What exact problem do you solve? That's probably what you should be leading with.

📚 AND WISE

Most People Leave Right Before It Works

I quit a lot of things I probably shouldn't have quit. Not because they were wrong for me or didn't make sense anymore. Just because they were taking longer than I thought they would and I got tired of waiting.

That's different from recognizing something isn't working and moving on. That's just impatience disguised as decision-making.

What's weird is how comfortable that option always is. Like it's right there, available whenever things get uncomfortable. Why am I still doing this? This is taking too long. Maybe I should try something else.

Year one of anything, everyone's around. Year two, half the people are gone. By year three, it's mostly empty. Not because the thing became impossible. Just because most people didn't want to wait anymore.

I've watched this happen with people building businesses, starting creative projects, learning difficult skills. The enthusiasm disappears fast once it becomes obvious how long it actually takes. Then people go looking for the shorter line. The quicker payoff.

The uncomfortable part is realizing you can't really start something new properly while you're dragging incomplete things around behind you. Nothing has an ending. Everything just stopped partway through.

Most people never find out what happens if they just stay when staying stops being exciting. They're always somewhere in the middle of something, looking for the next thing that might work faster.

I'm not saying stick with everything forever. But I am saying most of us quit right when it's about to click. We just don't stay long enough to see it.

Takeaway: Think about something you quit that you didn't actually want to quit. You just got tired of how long it was taking. Ask yourself if you left right before it would have worked.