75HARD? 75CONSISTENT.
It’s like 75HARD, but with an aim at consistency, not necessarily hardship.
Like many, the New Year found me looking for ways to break out of a slump, up my game, and generally embody positive sports metaphors for more than just 1 inning. I’ve been inspired by the successes I see from people who keep at it (Minette spent the year relentlessly building her Youtube channel, spending mornings painting in her PJ’s live, going from nothing to a monetized channel in under a year). When I looked at the calendar I counted 75 days until my 56th birthday in March. In the universe’s infinite wisdom my Instagram showed me a post from Michael Easter (author of The Comfort Crisis, and Scarcity Brain) and goruck (maker of excellent weighted rucksacks) who were beginning a round of the 75HARD program today.
75HARD is a self-led, semi-arbitrary program to get you to harden the fuck up over a period of 75 days. 2 workouts of your choosing per day, stick to a diet of your choosing, no alcohol, read 10+ pages of non-fiction per day, and so on. Missed a day? Air horn, sad face, start over. It’s a strong personal commitment to self-betterment for a few months. There is something about that time period - 11 or 12 weeks - that seems to be attractive for programs like this. While we can suck it up and make drastic changes for a month or so a la “Sober October” and “Dry January”, past that we have to make deeper changes.
Minette and I tried 75HARD a few years back but our commitment waned after a month and a half. We called it 45HARD and moved on. Our personal schedules were a bit more complex then and we found it difficult (hard … ahem) to stick with the two-a-day workouts. I’m returning to a modified version of it now that I’m calling ‘75CONSISTENT’. Perhaps it’s a softening of my character that I want it for different reasons this time. Sure, I want the improved health and fitness and all of their downstream effects, but my main goal is to harden my daily routine of writing and self-care in a way that I can support long term.
Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying basic fundamentals.
― E. James Rohn
What’s the plan? It’s designed around improving sleep, fitness, weight control, and producing creative work consistently. Each day for 75 days,
90 minutes writing
measure and track food, 500kcal deficit outside of exercise, stop eating by 5pm
6000 steps walking
45+ minute gym workout or equivalent
no caffeine after 10:30am
20+ pages non-fiction reading
plan the next day
There will always be a little Ironman/David Goggins voice over one shoulder pushing me to take a harder route - it’s not like 6000 steps/day is difficult - but that isn’t what I need right now and I write the rules. I’ll still be challenged quite a bit by 75CONSISTENT and with any luck that will turn into 365CONSISTENT and Strong99. “Starting over when you miss a day” has a different meaning when you are practicing something for a lifetime.
Update two weeks later… No sooner had I gotten underway with my plan then Reality set in and Minette and I both got shutdown by two weeks of flu. Now I’m finding my impetus is gone and I’m having to claw my way back. It’s always like that, where life seems to get in the way of our best plans. We owe it to ourselves to ignore it and just keep going. It’s attractive to get precious about our goals when what we really need is to forget the interruptions and keep going. That’s what consistency is.
What are you doing to bring more consistency into your life?