On my way back from Seattle a little while ago, i watched part of the movie Limitless. The thing that struck me most about it was how slowly your self-improvement can start. The first thing Bradley Cooper did after taking the pill was not some grandiose, sweeping act that set him on the path to changing the world, no...he cleaned his apartment. And it's kinda that simple right? You start slow, you take a step at a time, you do the little things but keep an eye on the big picture. That's probably the thing Limitless was missing, focus on that big picture. Too often i think we all do that, in our careers, we try and rush to the top of the heap as quickly as possible to get that bigger check, taking the easiest path we can, but what happens when we get to a roadblock and have to dive back into the mainstream, where we're competing against the rest of the world? Same with training, we can take the easy paths that give us immediate gratification (the pump syndrome), but what happens when we have to try and figure out a long term strategy? Now, i'm not saying anything you haven't already read, i mean, we all KNOW this is true. I bring it up mainly because I discovered Jim Wendler's blog yesterday and i notice he continually re-iterates (is that some sort of redundancy) that it doesn't take 30 days or 12 weeks, it takes YEARS.
The problem with alot of people i talk to now is that those years, coupled with the abundance of information available on the internets, leads to severe paralysis by analysis. Is that the true end result of all this information overload? We're afraid to trust that we can take all this information and filter it down to something that works just for us? Now granted, we're not all special, and sure, "individualization" is a tiny bit of bullshit, but at the end of the day, i think what's going to keep us all on the path is figuring out the intersection of things we like to do, thing we need to do, and things that produce results. You are allowed to trust your own judgement, and yes, Horseman, sometimes you MUST break the "Sacred Law".
For me, i think this means learning to focus on what's important, that being getting strong and getting my numbers in my big lifts up and understanding that fat will go away, i just need to keep on keepin on:
- Press: 100/115/130x6
- Hang Clean: 5x5 155
- A1. Pullup: 5x5 12.5
- A2. DB Neutral Press: 5x5 55
- B1. TBar Row: 4x8 130
- B2. DB Inc: 4x8 70
- C1. EZ Bar Curl: 3x12 90
- C2. EZ French Press: 3x12 55
Already i think i have learned all the skills in Glitch that i can learn without playing the game. That's a weird statement to make, but it's working, because now i'm going to pop back into Glitch, complete some quests, and learn more skills. I think the one thing i wish they'd fixed from beta now is the DELUGE of quests you end up getting. At some points, you're just sitting there clicking ok as the learning stone vomits quests at you. Had an interesting dream last night where I had just given one of my GDC talks for next yaer and was getting interviewed about the future of games and free to play. Yeah i have to admit, i'm a pretty bad supporter of the industry overall, as it takes a pretty epic outing to convince me to drop 60 bucks for a game, in fact nowadays i only buy games my buds worked on, but whatev. Maybe also it has something to do with working for an F2P developer and realizing that yeah...there is some truth to F2P.
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