Hi folks,
Been a good long minute since we last chatted. How’ve you been? Product management recruiting going well? Building in public? (let me know in the comments! Feel free to reach out if you’d like any advice as well)
In the last few months, I’ve been working on a side project related to renewable energy but took a step back to do a bit of personal development this summer. I will be coming back soon, but if you’re excited to see it ahead of time, check it out here:
What I really wanted to write about today though was the newest challenge I’ve taken on.
A friend of mine completed a fitness challenge called 75 hard a while back and I figured it’d be as good a challenge as any to try as I’ve also been getting into fitness more too.
What is 75 hard?
For 75 days, you have to:
Drink 1 Gallon of H2O Everyday
Perform two 45 minute workouts per day
Read 10 pages of a nonfiction book per day
Stick to a diet of your choosing
Take 1 progress photo everyday
And the kicker: ABSOLUTELY NO CHEAT DAYS! You stop, you restart from Day 1.
Quite the list of tasks. Now, am I doing it for 75 days?
As best as I can.
I’ve made some modifications that I’m calling the 75 “medium.”
What is 75 medium?
For 75 days:
Do the 75 hard to the best of your abilities; Keep track of how well you actually did so as to score yourself and see room for improvement
If you need to take a break, take it; Excessive exercise can be harmful to the body and prioritizing health as a whole rather than success of the challenge is key
Never break on your diet (but do enjoy the occasional nibble to try different foods)
Although not the exact challenge, I think this is a way to capture the challenge’s ethos without doing potential harm to one’s body.
How am I tracking progress?
Outside of just seeking a general challenge, I also sought to complete 75 hard to improve my own heart health as it’s a very strong indicator for length of life (learned about this and mainly educated on this topic from this conversation). My lifestyle had gotten pretty sedentary while living in Seattle and this would be a good way to improve my health overall.
The tools I’ve used to track my progress are:
Physical Checklists - say what you will about our digital age but having a physical piece of paper on my kitchen wall is a great reminder to do my workouts in the morning. Nothing beats the physical checking off sensation either ; ) Huge thank you to Atomic Habits for introducing me to this (having a physical tracker for habit progress helps new habits stick).
My Apple Watch and Apple Health - my core monitoring solution for my health stats and tracking progress over time. Not sure if there are better alternatives out there but I’m all ears : )
Hevy - I use this app to track weightlifting and, considering I’ve deleted most other forms of social media, it’s a pretty fun way to see what other lifters are up to. Friend me on there, would love to have new lifting friends : )
What did I do in the last 3 weeks?
What is my success rate?
Below I’ve measured the success rate for each of the following based on my completion rate (i.e. completion of drinking gallon of water is either 0% or 100%, workout is 50% done if one workout completed and 100% if two are, etc.):
Unfortunately my sleep could definitely be better but overall, I’m doing pretty well : ). Ideally, I want these numbers to be around 90% by the end of the challenge but that might be impossible. Either way, I’m excited to continue making progress.
Workouts
The hardest logistical challenge of 75 medium has to be fitting in two 45 minute workouts a day. The best solution I was able to come up with was to do a morning walk. However, shifting to a morning-focused schedule is a battle I’ve yet to win. On the bright side, when I do wake up in time, the morning temperatures and views in New York City are hard to beat.
I’m happy to say, through the challenge, I’ve walked over 179 miles and also lifted just under 133k lbs so far with pretty insane growth in both capabilities. My VO2 max has also increased greatly so I’d highly highly recommend walks as an alternative to running if you’re just trying to get a little more in shape : )
Having a way to socially track my fitness challenge has also been fun too. Outside of Hevy, I know you can also see friends’ statuses in Apple Fitness and also Strava so check those out if Hevy isn’t for you : ) Feel free to check out my workouts, feedback is welcomed!
Where to eat and Water
Surprisingly, the hardest part of this challenge mentally has been going to dinners and ordering a $20 salad. Yes veggies and fruits are great but I deeply miss all of our modern unhealthy restaurant foods. I’ve basically limited myself to only the healthiest options in restaurants and am internally weeping every time I taste a small bit of my friend’s food. To cope I’ve compiled an ever-growing list of foods I plan to devour after the challenge and I have two celebratory beers in my fridge for when this wretched diet is over.
What has surprised me though is how many restaurants do have healthy options. I’ve been quite pleased that I haven’t had to search far and wide for accommodating meals. Still doesn’t make this part any more fun though…
Only other note is a word of warning: drinking a gallon of water a day will impact how your body “processes” things. Just be ready for changes. Otherwise, please also make sure that you are drinking the appropriate amount of water for you; a gallon can be too much in a day depending on who you are and your individual characteristics.
Reading Terminal Market
Finally I’ve been splitting my reading over a few different books:
Lion in the White House - Picked this up last summer on my road trip back home while in South Dakota at Wall Drug. This has been an absolutely spectacular biography of the first progressive president, Theodore Roosevelt. In particular, I’ve learned much about the populist and progressive ambitions that embodied Teddy’s life and presidential terms (in addition to, of course, the many blunders made as well). Many of his policies pushed for removal of business from politics, development of better working conditions for all Americans, equality for all where possible, the creation of a strong navy, provisions for public lands and conservation, and so much more. It’s especially well juxtapositioned in comparison to the populist techniques used today albeit in a very different flavor.
The Second Founding - Taking a step back to see the events leading up to the 20th century, I’m also reading more on the antebellum period of the USA and how the Civil War wasn’t just a conflict of emancipation but also one focused on the definition of what a citizen of America was during the time. I’m only just beginning the book but it’s incredible to see how many different ways folks interpreted citizenship and emancipation at the time as well as how having a constitution (which, I’ll add, never explicitly said who a citizen was in the original document) made America rather unique in having something of a “biblical” document to refer to in its founding. The book is really focused on how the Civil War was a period that rewrote and re-examined the Constitution in a different light than it had in the past regarding citizenship and human rights. (Funnily enough, the author was also previously married to Naomi Gyllenhaal [yes that Gyllenhaal family]).
I Will Teach You To Be Rich - Overall one of the best if not the best book on personal finance I’ve read. All I’ma say is: pay off your debt, start your 401k, (backdoor) Roth IRA if you can, use Ramit’s bucketized budgeting approach, and diversify your portfolio. (This is not financial advice)
So Good They Can’t Ignore You - TL;DR perhaps follow your passion is a myth and instead focusing on building your skills and craft is the better approach to think about. Love of a career path often is correlated with time spent on it.
Book recs are welcomed as well! Only prereq is that they have to be nonfiction : )
Side projects
Given the sheer amount of effort to fit everything in, I’ve honestly been trying to get this out for a month now. Recently, I’ve been trying to take some more time to explore NYC and it’s broader communities so juggling that with this and work has also been difficult. Fortunately, I think I’m getting the hang of things.
Generally I have 3 core side projects at the moment
Geothermal Energy Podcast - took a minor break but getting the gears going again; so excited to be picking this up again and huge thank you to my friend Emory Parker for giving me some much needed inspiration on new directions to take it.
Building a life I love - Have been exploring new venues to meet friends in and out of work in addition to trying out new hobbies and things I like.
What I recommend: Movie nights at different cultural societies, saying hi to strangers, playing badminton with friends
What I don’t recommend: staying out til 3AM
[Starting in August] Japanese lessons @ the Japan Society of NY - This has been a lifelong ambition so excited to start it soon.
I have a SQL side project I’m slowly making progress on but I think it might still be a little faster with Excel spreadsheets… We’ll see : )
I also made a graph of how all the people I know are connected in NYC as I have met wayyy too many people these days.
I use the app Obsidian for this. Highly recommend its tagging features.
In Closing
I hope you enjoyed and I’m hoping to write posts here a little more frequently as I go. In the interim though, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m not the best with email but I’m always excited to chat with cool people.
Thank you,
Frank
Good luck with the 75 medium!