As I reach the end of my Final Sprint, I am thinking about the opportunities I lost this week.
One thing has become very clear: time was not the real constraint.
If I missed my workout in the morning, the evening was still available.
Knowledge was not the constraint either. I knew what I had to do.
So what went wrong?
Discipline vs Rigidity
We often associate discipline with time.
Wake up at 5:00 AM.
Workout at 6:00 AM.
Eat at a particular time.
Sleep at a particular time.
Ideally, this is useful. Behaviour change is partly about reducing thinking and resistance until the desired action becomes almost automatic.
But there is a danger here.
A routine can become so rigid that when the routine breaks, the behaviour breaks with it.
If I decide that my workout happens in the morning and then miss the morning, I can easily behave as if the opportunity to work out has disappeared.
But it hasn’t.
The evening still exists.
And this week proved it.
The Opportunities I Ignored
Until today, I had enough opportunities to complete at least four workouts.
I completed only two.
There was really only one day when working out became genuinely difficult. I woke up late in the morning and reached home at 10:15 PM. My gym closes at 10:00 PM.
That day, the opportunity genuinely wasn’t there.
On the other days, however, opportunities existed.
I simply failed to seize them.
I was too stubborn about working out in the morning and ignored the evenings when I could have gone.
This is an important distinction.
The problem wasn’t:
“I didn’t have time.”
The problem was:
“I didn’t use the alternative opportunity available to me.”
Behaviour Change Cannot Make Me Blind
The ultimate goal of behaviour change is still automation.
I want working out to become so natural that I don’t have to negotiate with myself every day. A fixed routine helps because it reduces thinking and mental resistance.
But automation cannot become blindness.
Missing the preferred opportunity should not mean abandoning the goal.
If the morning disappears, look for the evening.
If Plan A fails, find Plan B.
The goal remains fixed. The route can change.
And I am beginning to wonder where else I have made this mistake.
How many opportunities have I ignored because they did not arrive in the form I expected?
How many useful things could I have done instead of intellectually brainstorming about doing them?
How much money could I have invested or spent meaningfully instead of allowing opportunities to pass?
This is becoming another blind spot worth examining.
The Wolf
I am not a tamed and caged animal following a fixed routine without understanding why.
I am a predator.
A wolf.
The goal must remain in front of me. I need to keep looking for opportunities to move towards it and seize them when they appear.
There is nothing wrong with exploiting such opportunities. I am not taking anything away from anyone. I am simply making better use of the time, resources and opportunities already available to me.
This week was difficult.
Yesterday, I was wondering whether I would even manage my basic target of three workouts a week.
But perhaps the week wasn’t difficult simply because opportunities were scarce.
It was difficult because I failed to look for alternative ways to achieve the goal.
That is the lesson I am taking from my Final Sprint:
Be disciplined about the goal. Be flexible about the path.