“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” – Lao Tzu
I’m like most people. I work out, lose 50 pounds, love my new lifestyle, then digress.
Over the past few years I’ve fluctuated from 175 –> 240lbs and back again, thrice. Currently I’m 190 and content.
There are more important things to do with my time than hit the gym, so I compensate by eating lots of salad, generally not snacking, and drinking far, far less than I used to. Maybe one day I’ll start running again, but it’s not a priority right now.
One habit I have picked up, however, is pushups.
You don’t need any special equipment, athletic clothes, or even time.
Every day at 3:30p I hit the roof (or basement, pending SF weather) with several office mates and we do as many pushups as we can in 3 minutes. That’s it.
We started at the end of November, and in my first day I did 48. Nowadays I routinely log 100+, and my personal best is 120 in 3 minutes.
Sometimes I do multiple sets in a day. Just last Friday I logged 100 at 3p, and another hundred at 3:30p. Because when all you’re doing is pushups, you recover quickly.
Inspired by this new habit, over Christmas break I built Pushup Metrics. While it was intended exclusively for my workout team, now it’s striking a chord with people all over the country. In the past 2 weeks alone, several dozen folks have signed up to log their pushups.
Here’s what my personal dashboard looks like:
There’s an addicting quality to micro-tasks with singular metrics like “quantity.” Combined with my adornment of quantified-self, I’ll do just about anything harder, faster, and more competitively when it can be measured with charts and graphs. Maybe you will too.
If you want to geek out and get stronger at the same time, I encourage you to join us.
Protip: create a private team for your friends by logging in or signup up at YOURTEAMNAME.pushupmetrics.com and the app will do the rest. For inspiration, here’s my office team.