The Audacity of One Pushup

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I try to keep company that pushes me.  My friends and family have big ideas, big goals, big plans and so I try to aim at big ideas, big goals, and big plans to myself.  Sometimes it works out - other times it goes more like this…

At the beginning of 2020 I wrote out seven audacious goals ranging from professional (triple revenue at work) to physical (finish an Ironman) to personal (learn Spanish fluently).  I assigned monthly benchmarks and quarterly goals to each.  At work I knew what my team's pipeline needed to be by the end of Q1, I knew what my half marathon time needed to be in March, and I knew how many Spanish lessons I needed done by my birthday.  

I had a framework, had shared the goals with a couple of friends, and was certain it would be a banner year.  Flash forward to December 31st and me raising a glass in my living room and saying farewell to a hell of a year.  It was then that I paused and thought to myself that I’d accomplished none of the goals I meticulously set out for myself a year ago.

What the fuck, man?  Not one?

It actually gets worse.  I hadn’t failed to accomplish them, I’d abandoned them all cold.  I have a spreadsheet that still has the intended progress for each goal.  Of the 52 books I intended to read the last one I finished was a book I read to my daughter before she was born in March.  I was so certain this goal was a layup that one of the books I planned to read was The Power Broker - a 1,300 page biography on Robert Moses.  The word cavalier comes to mind.

So what the hell happened?  Covid? Sure.  We bought a house and moved unexpectedly? Yeah, that too.  We had a baby? Actually my wife had a much larger hand in that one than me… These things happened.  A bunch of other things that made it hard to hit my goals happened.  It’s absolute bullshit to say that they are the reason I don’t speak Spanish and didn’t publish my first book.  Things always happen.

The reason, the only reason, is that I lost focus.  And once I lost focus I fell behind.  And once I fell behind the audacity of my goals became too daunting.  And once I felt that I couldn’t achieve them, I quit.  I didn’t even really quit - I just...stopped.

We abandon our goals because we’re too focussed on the achievement and not the inputs.  I know that the pursuit is where the happiness is - but my 2020 goals fell apart because I indexed on the achievement.  

I moved into this terrible head place where what I really wanted was to have completed my goals rather than to take them on.  I wanted to complete an Ironman not do an Ironman.  Doing an Ironman would have been about every training session, about every stretch, and meal.  Having completed an Ironman is about the finish line.  I even had a finish line in mind at the Patagonman Ironman.  I’d thought more about what else we’d do on our trip to Patagonia than about my next training session.  In the meantime I overdid my run training and had to stop for a month, and then Covid hit which meant no travel, and being a first time parent led to no sleep and a garbage diet. And as my chosen finish line started to feel out of reach I subconsciously decided there was no point.

Boo this man.  Booooooooo.  Boooooooo.

As I dusted myself off at the start of this year I ran through a mental refresh of all of the podcasts, books, and newsletters that I’ve consumed about how to get shit done at extreme levels.  I was seeking inspiration or a kick in the ass, which is of course the same thing separated only by how I say it and how my dad does. 

As I sought my kick in the ass two things jumped out at me.

The first was from a talk I heard Jesse Itzler give where he said he doesn’t bother with resolutions.  He has big goals and he goes after them.  But his only annual resolution is to pick a word to govern his year.  I loved it and I immediately knew what mine would be:

Focus.

Focus on email when it’s time to get back to clients.  Focus on my next stride when I’m running.  Focus - really focus - on our family’s nightly Prince dance party when it’s Prince dance party time.  Focus on doing the thing I’m doing, not some other thing or whatever it might serve as an input to. Focus.

The second was from an old Tim Ferriss podcast where whoever he was interviewing said his only goal in the morning is to do one push up.  Just one.

It’s so brilliant.  Achievement begets achievement so give yourself a fucking break and start small went the reasoning.

Sometimes you do one push up and call it.  It’s a win and it’s not about any bigger goal.  One pushup will not prepare you for anything other than two pushups.  It’s self contained in this magical way where the pursuit is literally the achievement.  No metaphors necessary. How wonderful.

And so this one push up goal becomes a new lens for someone with audacious goals.  It turns the work into the goal - into the accomplishment - and so missing a day, or a week, or a month, doesn’t impact your progress.  

Yes; we should all meditate for 20 minutes - but taking one deep controlled breath works too.

Yes; you should read more books - but one paragraph is better than nothing.

Yes; I should carve out hours to edit my book - but today I’m going to focus on one sentence.

And if that’s exactly how much gets done - it’s a win.  It might turn into more and it might be a catalyst for something else. Either way it’s a goal accomplished, and even small goals have grandeur. 

So right now I’m just focussing on focussing and starting every day with just one pushup.  And I’m on track to do 10,001 pushups this month - one at a time.  But more on that later.

B