Your daily routine—imagine Sisyphus happy
We think that happiness and meaningfulness aren’t rooted in achieving or owning things. Don’t get us wrong, it’s nice to own stuff and accomplish difficult tasks, but we think it’s the journey itself that brings the most joy and fulfilment. Setting a goal, making a plan, and executing it, is where we feel the most joy. Actually working towards something great, by your own definition, is what makes life feel a bit more meaningful.
Most of us know this. When you achieve what you have been striving for, you feel proud and happy, but often the joy is short lived, and is followed by a semi-depressed state of mind. You achieved your goal, and now you don’t have any direction—nothing to work towards. This ties back into what we have been advocating lately—do something you enjoy and move daily. But to live a meaningful life, you need to align your daily routine with a goal. This means that the stuff you do every day will help you achieve your long-term goals—so the things you do in the present will help “future you” achieve what you can’t do in the present moment.
We can better assess what we need to do daily, if we reverse engineer our daily habits and start with the end in mind. This is an easier and more productive way to organize your day. We have touched upon goal setting and structuring a training plan in previous articles, so we will keep it fairly broad stroked in this article.
Intensity vs volume vs density vs frequency
Let’s be a bit ambitious and say you want to achieve the following three goals:
Run a marathon (or something similar)
Get fitter/stronger
Be more mindful
These are topics that we often hear people wanting to improve. Let’s look at what a daily routine could look like. You can also focus on one of them, if running for four hours straight isn’t your thing.
If we analyze the tasks, we see that one (mindful) can be implemented right away, fitter is a progress without a clear end goal, and the marathon is a very specific goal with a specific date. So… where do you start and what’s the strategy?
Creating a productive daily structure that you enjoy
This is important! So many people treat them self like shit when making a program. It looks more like punishment then a productive and enjoyable life. Set your goals high, but remember that you live in the present, and each lived day is one you’ll never get back—make the most out of each one of them and try to enjoy the process.
Firstly, in the mindset of coaching and coffee talk we recommend that you move every day—so that’s the first principle.
Secondly, we think that meditating in the morning is a good way to start the day.
You can sit down for 10 minutes and assess what is important to you, or some kind of guided meditation is also very useful.
Thirdly, making a training program. Scott’s daily training is a good way to cover the last two points.
You do four microworkouts during the day and run three times per week. If you want to make this more fit into a marathon preparation you divide the three running days into
A short and easy run
An interval session
And a long run
The idea is, that you start with a pace and distance that is comfortable, and then you add 5-10% per week until you reach your preferred weekly volume.
These steps give you a daily structure you can stick to and will move you in the direction that you want, one decision at a time—and slowly over time you’ll change who you are, what you’re capable of, and how the world perceives you.
The moral of the story resembles Camus’ takeaway from the myth of Sisyphus. Like Sisyphus, you need to push the boulder up the hill every single day—and find meaning and enjoyment in moving the boulder—but unlike Sisyphus, you can progress while pushing.
So, imagine Sisyphus happy.
Good luck,
Scott and Lennart