Leap over discomfort

Recently, this post from @DamianKalmar popped in front of me (he has given multipe talks at our biohacking meetups at Paralelná Polis Košice):

When you get a feeling, that you don't want to study, exercise, or do something productive, which you know you should do, but don't want to experience the discomfort if doing it, remember, that it's only the first few minutes/seconds, which are usually uncomfortable. The rest is usually pretty enjoyable. To me it often happens that I don't want to go to the gym, but when I'm there, I don't want to leave. Once you realize you just need to overcome the first few minutes, it becomes a lot easier and more attractive to do the said thing. 🤌💪

— Damián Kalmár (@DamianKalmar) December 10, 2023

I usually had the same feelings about studying when I was younger (I’ll write about this in other posts in future), and I also very much struggled with the exercise part for the past few years. Until 2 things happened.

So, I’d like to focus on the gym part. First, I started and stopped going there 6-times and the enthusiasm always lasted for about a week. But 2 years ago, I’ve decided to pay my friend, a fitness trainer, a monthly fee to see how I’ll fare when money is at stake. And it worked! Putting skin in the game helped trmendously with my willingness to keep going there and work through the pain of starting. After few weeks, it started to feel very enjoyable, plus the health benefits and my back getting stronger were enough for me to suddenly start looking forward every day to when I hit the gym the next day.

Second, after I stopped paying my friend to train me, I kept going to the gym for maybe 3 more weeks until I stopped training completely, for the 7th time. Again!

But maybe a year later, I found myself some free space in my home office and decided to buy some gym gear. I got an idea that I’ll try to hack it and remove the need to prepare and travel to some place, and bring the gym close to me, just 3 seconds from my bed. I’ve bought a humble setup, nothing fancy, just a foldable bench, barbell and dumbbells with adjustable weights, and 12kg kettlebell.

Tiny gym in my home office.

Foldable bench is a great thing for saving space.

Adjustable barbell and 12kg kettlebell. You can do a lot of things with these!

What I found is that by removing the “obstacles” in the form of traveling to gym, getting ready, packing and unpacking stuff, and by simplifying the process of training (now I just wake up, move 10 meters, and lift weights), I can keep doing this activity without problem.

Sometimes the best way to remove the obstackle is to decompose the process, simplify, and then conquer.