Applying Metrics
In December of 2008 I decided that I needed to start exercising every day. I had previously been exercising only when it was convenient for me without a set schedule. This lead to inconsistent results. Also, I had spent the summer working at a startup in NYC with amazing cookies nearby. I also realized that fitness is an area where you need to build a foundation in order to keep getting better results which requires discipline, planning and sustained effort.
Luckily, this process appealed to me so I decided to go the the gym every day from Monday to Friday at 7am no matter what. I chose this schedule because it was easy to remember and track. If it was a weekday I knew I had to go to the gym first thing in the morning. The fact that I would have to walk to the gym during the intensely cold, snowy Montreal winter (which is where I was) was oddly encouraging. I told myself that if I could make it to the gym in the winter then it would be even easier in the spring and summer. I imagined myself as Rocky.
The exercise routine I followed was to run on the treadmill and time myself to track my progress. I started at one mile with the intention of not pushing myself too hard. Pretty soon I was up to three miles. I stayed at three miles and focused on improving my time and running speed rather than distance. This was actually when it got the most interesting. My speed kept increasing roughly every week. I didn’t have any particular goal in mind except to consistently be at the gym and run. I have a theory that a natural motivation to beat my previous time started set in and work in my favor. The fact that I was at the gym so often made it easy to remember my times. This created the ideal context for growth and improvement.
In addition to running, I also did some type of muscle exercise (that’s the technical term) like pushups, sit-ups or weight lifting every day.
After about four months of doing this I had some interesting results. I had unintentionally lost some weight and become slightly leaner. I may have lost some muscle built-up in previous years of athletic activities and weight-lifting stints. Even though I could run three miles quickly, I decided that I was exercising too much.
Fast-forward to July 2009 and I was out of University and starting an iPhone app business. I moved back into my parent’s home and prepared to spend a lot of time writing software. I kept up my daily running but stopped during the winter since I had been running outside. In October of 2009 I lost my exercise focus. With a lot of work to do and no car to drive to the gym I decided I would start exercising again in the spring.
When Spring came around, I tried to grab convenient opportunities to work-out. In a way I was back where I started. Remembering some of the lessons I had learned about discipline and planning, I created a simple way to track my progress. I call such a system an accountability framework because it helps me set goals and track my progress.
With the accountability framework in place, I had started to gather metrics about my work-outs. Looking back to my previous daily schedule, I can say that I was doing about 40 units of exercise per month (running plus a muscle exercise every week day, or 10 exercises per week). Now, I am doing about 12 exercises per month. 40 was too much, and I’m finding that 12 is too little. 20 should be ideal.
The point is that the metrics give me a range of values to consider that can be mapped to a set of outcomes. Knowing this makes it easier to figure out what I should do to get what I want with minimum effort.
