An Engineer’s View!
Most people treat fitness like a religious conversion. They wait for a moment of revelation, usually around January 1st, and then attempt to completely overhaul their lives in a single day. They buy new gear, sign up for expensive memberships, and commit to a routine that a professional athlete would find exhausting.
Three weeks later, they quit.
The problem isn’t that they are weak. The problem is that they are trying to execute a complex system without having built the infrastructure for it. They are trying to launch a startup by hiring 500 employees on day one.
If you want to restart fitness, treat it like an engineering problem, not a moral one. You don’t need more willpower. You need a better algorithm.
1) Do things that don’t scale
In the beginning, your only goal is to establish the habit of showing up. Efficiency does not matter. Results do not matter.
If you go to the gym and walk on the treadmill for 10 minutes, that is a success. If you do five pushups in your living room, that is a success.
Most people try to optimize their workout before they have even established the habit of working out. This is premature optimization.
Do something so small it feels ridiculous to skip it. You can scale up intensity later. You cannot scale a habit that doesn’t exist.
2) Ignore the “best” way
There is a vast industry dedicated to telling you the optimal way to exercise. Lift heavy. Run. Pilates. HIIT.
For a beginner, the best workout is simply the one you will actually do.
If you hate running, running is the wrong workout for you, no matter how many calories it burns. If you like playing tennis, play tennis.
The delta between “optimal” and “sub-optimal” is negligible compared to the delta between doing something and doing nothing.
3) Avoid “fake” work
When people decide to get fit, they often do work that looks productive but is actually procrastination.
They research the perfect shoes. Read articles about macros. Curate playlists.
This feels like progress, but it is not. It is administrative debris.
You do not need new shoes to run a mile. You do not need a protein shaker to lift weights. The only work that counts is elevating your heart rate or moving a weight.
Everything else is overhead.
4) Compress your feedback loop
Video games are addictive because feedback is immediate. You kill the monster, you get the gold.
Fitness is terrible at this. You work out for an hour and look exactly the same.
Create artificial feedback loops by measuring inputs instead of outcomes.
Did you work out today? Yes or no. Keep a streak. The satisfaction of checking a box is a real motivator.
