Standardize Before You Optimize
stories from the 21 Day Project
The 21 Day Project is about making small tweaks and taking daily action, 21 days at a time. It is less about the thing you are doing than it is about honoring the commitment you make to yourself to DO the thing. Consider joining us at the21dayproject.com.
For as long as I can remember I have lived by the ethos that
movement is non-negotiable.
Whether I track and measure my movement has never been nearly as important as the fact that I am actually moving my body. And what I have discovered over the years is that there are so many varieties and flavors for movement that you never have to pick (or stick) with just one! Isn’t life grand: biking, rollerblading, walking, running, hiking, kayaking, surfing, paddleboarding, dancing, yoga, pilates, kettlebells, swimming, the possibilities are nearly endless.
But it turns out that just because the possibilities are endless, doesn’t make it any easier to get up and actually move your body.
Because LIFE happens, because there’s only so much TIME in a day, because sometimes, it turns out, movement is actually very negotiable.
And when you aren’t tracking and measuring it from time to time, it has a sneaky way of negotiating without you (or at least without your intention or conscious thought).
This is where I found myself earlier in the summer after a fun-in-the-sun family beach week. I returned home and had a moment of reflection: I never once thought of working out on vacation, BUT ALSO I bet I walked enough that I didn’t have to think about it, I bet I just was the girl who gets a lot of movement in her day.
So I checked the health app on my phone, confident it had tracked for me and would validate these lofty thoughts of: it’s just who I am so I probably did it anyways. And sure enough, the app had been tracking and reported that: over the last 7 days I had taken an average of 12,400 steps a day. It was like a little high-five from the data that I wasn’t trying to collect and didn’t know I needed, but whooohoo GO ME.
Except, the celebration was short lived. Because when I scrolled a little further the data ALSO let me know that my average daily steps year-to-date was trending at 7,000 steps. WHAT?! How?!
There is so much of how we move on a daily basis that doesn’t really get captured by steps, so that wasn’t really the issue for me. The issue was that I was living my best life for one whole week and that happened to look something like moving for 12,000 steps a day. And now that I was back home, wanting to keep some of those good-time vacay-vibes going in the form of moving my body more, it needed a little work.
Sometimes you just have to get back to the basics, and so I did. And I used the 21 Day Project framework to do it!
I wanted to get back to being the person that moves more during the day because it makes me feel good! But to get there, I needed 21 days…and, spoiler alert: I got there! I share about the experience in this podcast episode if you want the deets or are thinking of doing the same and looking for some inspo. I became the person that more often than not walks 10,000 steps a day. Now that I’m on the other side of it it is less about checking my step count and more of a general awareness about how I move throughout the day and doing what I need to do to FEEL GOOD, which is something like those 10,000 steps.
Also, on the other side of the 21 days, I was called to NEXT. You aren’t always, sometimes you’re called to integrate, to play in the space of your new routine and this new version of yourself that does this thing. That’s the great thing of adding habits and routines slowly over time, there’s no rush, it’s all available, you get to go at your own pace.
And my pace, for this summer, was to add on. Here is what the thought process looked like:
Oooooh I love who I am when I’m walking that much, let’s keep it!
I know that I need to add some strength training to my routine, but I just keep avoiding it, ahhhh I’m not ready.
But I have a weight vest!
OHHHH, what if I walked with the weight vest. It feels like the best of both worlds: I keep reinforcing those 10,000 steps AND it feels like small steps in the direction of more strength training.
And so I did!
Weighted walks (also popularly known as ‘rucking’), is said to increase cardiovascular fitness, build core and leg strength and help with balance and I was about to experiment and find out if it did all that for me!
James Clear emphasizes this principle in his book Atomic Habits:
Standardize before you Optimize
This blog post, is an example of just that:
Standardize: become the person that more often than not is taking 10k steps a day
Optimize: optimize those steps with a weight vest, more bang for my buck…errrr step!
Habits and routines are a long game, built and established over time. That being said, there is no time like the present to just begin! I hope you will.
And if you want to join us, download my 21 Day Tracker or consider joining our next 21 Day Project challenge.