Fitness Paychecks

“Money is not the goal, but a byproduct of excellence” is one of my favorite quotes from the works of Ray Dalio, and one that has always spoken to me. As a professional, I have never been primarily motivated by money. When Pritz and I sat down in 2010 to draw out our business plan, we never thought to ask, “What do we have to do to make $100,000 a year? How many members do we need to get in order to sell it and turn a quick profit?”

That’s not to sound faux-altruistic. We probably would have benefited by actually having a clue about business when we started. To us our genuine, natural viewpoint was that money would be a byproduct of our decision making and culture, not the other way around. Candidly, that mindset has turned out to serve our business incredibly well over a near decade.

Can’t we take that same Dalio workplace principle and apply it to any number of traditional end game objectives? Our lane is obviously fitness, so how about there?

One critical mindset error I see people make frequently is they focus immediately on the money. The 20 pound weight loss. The 500# deadlift. The first pull-up. It’s like sitting down and writing a fitness business plan and beginning with the end goal. To be honest, that is common practice and recommended by many people with MBAs who are much smarter than I am, just as backtracking your goals is recommended by many people in fitness.

I just don’t believe in either.

I’m not campaigning against goal setting. All I am suggesting is an alternative thought: Have a general idea of where you’d like to end up and instead, get lost in the daily quality of the work. De-emphasize the pressures of having to rate each day as closer or further away from your goal, and you’ll find that you reach a low stakes flow state. Days become easier, efforts move like water, and dominos fall while you’re mostly clueless about them. Then boom, that “paycheck” hits. And it hits different.

This method will not work for a lot of people, particularly Type As and those who need to quantify the subjective, and that’s okay. It doesn’t need to work for everyone because few things in the world are universal.

Consider the benefits of removing the stress of constant graphing and fitness P&L statements. Go about your work, achieve flow state, and see where you end up. I’m yet to see that approach consistently adhered to not produce remarkable success.

-Dave