There are two extraordinarily simple things that I’ve done consistently over the past seven years that I could put 99% of my physical and intellectual growth down to (and with them, radical improvements in my life to a point that feels like I’m cheating at times).
Put simply, they are lifting and reading books.
Lift and Read Books
It might seem obvious that these things will help you—you’ll get fitter and smarter. Duh.
But living in a highly educated, wealthy society in Australia, it shocks me how few people have both these things happening consistently.
It’s almost no one.
I think the reasons are as follows:
1. Undervaluing The Impact
You don’t realise just how much these two habits will transform your entire life as you know it—energy, health, social life, sex, relationships, career, wealth, emotions, and pretty much any other aspect of your life you have any interest in improving whatsoever.
2. Underestimating The Timeline
This is likely because you don’t realise how long these things take to actually have effect. Real results do happen and are absolutely insane… but they also take many many years to realise. And rather than consciously feeling them unfold, they creep up on you. You don’t go to the gym once and suddenly get jacked overnight—you train consistently every single week, it becomes part of your life, and you don’t even notice the day-to-day changes until ten years later you look at an old photo and hardly recognise yourself.
3. Overestimating What You’ll Actually Do
Because of this, you never commit to a practice that you can undoubtedly sustain for the next ten years, and so never stick with it long enough to get those results.
You might go all-intensive hitting the gym six days a week and reading two hours a day… for a few weeks. But three months in, you’ve gone back to your normal routine and those initial ambitions have been forgotten.
If that’s you, I don’t think it’s a failure on your part. It’s human nature.
The solution is counterintuitive. That’s is why it’s a solution (there wouldn’t be a problem in the first place if the answer was obvious).
But it works.
And that is why I care so much about sharing it.
Because the results, if you get these life basics right, are truly remarkable.
It’s not about willpower. It’s not about having crazy discipline or drive.
It’s about understanding that results come only from playing a long game, and that the way to win that game is by making your chosen habits so few, and so small, that there is no reason on earth not to sustain them for literally decades to come.
The Solution – How To Make It Happen
I want to give you an actionable framework for actually implementing these things into your life. Regardless of how much you hate reading or going to the gym, I guarantee that you can make this happen, while genuinely enjoying every second of the process.
In fact, the more you hate doing these things, the more you’re going to like this approach. Because you’re actually closer to doing these things better than the folk out there hitting the treadmill every day and boring themselves to tears slogging through books for hours front-to-back.
Why? Because you hate wasting time.
And that’s a trait you want to nurture, not suppress.
Here’s how we get maximum results from lifting and reading books without wasting a single second, and therefore create a practice that’s fun to do and sustains itself on autopilot for the next 50 years of your life.
Lifting
I talk about this constantly, but getting as strong as possible and looking completely ripped only needs to take you 25 dedicated minutes a week or less.
If you have your gymnastics rings set up somewhere convenient, are clear on your strength goals, and work towards them each for one continuous max-out set per week, it should take you less than five minutes per movement to get this done and maximise your weekly strength gains (setup time included).
If you follow my approach of working towards five heavy all-encompassing strength goals, then that’s less than 25 minutes of dedicated time per week.
Total Time Commitment: 5 minutes per movement x 5 movements = 25 minutes per week
Reading
It took me many years and a lot of apparent audacity to realise the diminishing returns I was getting from reading non-fiction.
Here’s the thing: It’s not about words read, chapters completed, or time spent flipping pages.
It’s about the key ideas you can absorb into your working models of the world.
Just like with strength training, it’s a physical adaptation that your brain has to make to do that, and that takes time.
You can essentially “max out” the neural stimulus that your brain can respond to with just a few minutes a day of exposure to high-quality ideas.
And there is an absolute plethora of experience and wisdom out there right now sitting in thousands of books that you could be tapping into daily to transform your brain, in just the same way as you do your body by working out each week.
My practice? Read whatever interests me, for five minutes a day.
Do this every single weekday of your life, and again you’re looking at under half an hour a week to learn whatever you want and develop yourself intellectually as much as possible.
Total Time Commitment: 5 minutes a weekday = 25 minutes per week
Your new personal development practice
Putting those two practices together, you’re looking at under an hour a week of total time invested to
a) get jacked and
b) completely rewire your brain to be able to achieve whatever you desire in life.
So is that worth it?
The answer to that is completely up to you. But there’s a reason I’ve sustained these things so effortlessly for the better part of a decade and am so fanatic about promoting them still.
If you want big results, don’t think big actions, but big timeframe.
Lock these things in today, and tell me what’s happened five years from now.
It won’t be insignificant.
Get to it
If you want a foolproof start-to-finish method for the lifting thing, I’ve made it for you—go check out RINGSTRONG.
The rest should be pretty self explanatory. (I’ll write more about my approach to reading in future blogs.)
Now go buy your gymnastics rings and a stack of interesting books, and get to it!