Log It or Dodge It

Computers do this all the time, record everything that's going on. It becomes really useful when you are trying to find out about that recent TeamViewer hack (yes they got me too). You can see all the places they went and spent your hard earned money. It's impressive how hard and fast criminals work to spend your money, just makes you wonder what they could do if the effort was focused on good.

Logging, the activity of recording things, turns out to be really useful for us humans as well. Last year I signed up for a cycling event called Death Ride. It's 129 mile ride in the mountains of Tahoe and you climb 5 epic mountains in one day. I'd never done anything like this in one day, plus high elevation.

To attempt completing this successfully I started 2 things. I got more diligent with MyFitnessPal and a few months later I hired a coach, John Cheetham was awesome by the way. John also had me log all my efforts in Training Peaks, in the past I had always used Strava (which I think is awesome and still use). Training Peaks however was different because it gave me a training calendar each day from my coach and then allowed me to log my work of the assigned task. Of course that works!

Here's the really interesting thing. I had started using MyFitnessPal several years prior to all this. I lost about 35 pounds using this app. But the effects were much larger than the waste line. For some reason my personal finance improved drastically. I started reading more personal growth material and mindless time wasting started dropping.

I had no idea what was really going on, but it felt good to finally be growing. The pain from large credit card bills or that number on the scale staring back at you suddenly wasn't as large or painful as before. So what was really going on? I read (I really read few books, I use Audible) a book called The Power of Habit and was blown away by how true the book was for me. As I thought about all the changes beyond my waistline that had started once I logged each thing I ate or drank in MyFitnessPal, I was blown away by the fact that simply writing it down made the change happen.

I logged more last year than I ever have before. And guess what? I accomplished more last year than I ever thought normal old me could ever even do. I still dream every day of more things I want to do. Some don't or never will happen. Likely because I don't start by logging my effort towards that dream.

Currently I'm listening to The Compound Effect, and guess what? One of the basics to compounded growth Darren talks about is logging it. I'm still blown away that I didn't know what was going on in my own life till after I heard someone else talk about it. I was hooked to logging it after several fad diet failures. Slow and steady wins the race, right?

So if you want to get there, stop dodging it. Just write down what you did today. Trust me, you don't have to have a crazy diet plan, they don't work anyway (for me). All you need to do is log it, your brain will work on the problem, things steadily will start to improve. Anyone can lose 10 or more pounds in a few weeks. I'm down 50+ pounds today from my start 5+ years ago (I lost 35 pounds in the first year or so and then another 30 or so last year).

Log it, and you've started.