MON: Punxsatawney Phil

Monday’s PSC workout is below. 

We’re raised on the notion that busy means constructive.

It is so easy to confuse action for discipline, but the notion of busy for busy sake is usually just an illusion of discipline, rarely the genuine article. Action in and of itself is the start of habit formation, but arbitrary action that’s void of purpose connected to the success of your goal is not productive habit. It’s just a real life version of Bill Murray in Groundhog’s Day, re-living the same hamster wheel over and over again, rarely progressing.

For those of you poor souls who’ve never seen Groundhog’s Day, the plot of the movie goes like this. Phil Connor, a weatherman on assignment in Punxsatawney, Pennsylvania finds himself waking up and reliving the same day over and over again. Literally. The same people, the same interactions, the same event. At first, his approach is to do the same thing over and over again and more or less play the game of hamster on the wheel. He gets really good at repeating his actions and excelling at them. He practices them, he learns where the rain puddles are, when the bank guards aren’t looking, what pick up line will net him the town babe, how to get out of a mundane conversation quickly. He is fanatically active to the point where he has completely mastered how to navigate his redundant world.

Thing is, he doesn’t every go anywhere. He stays put on the wheel, spinning and spinning, and getting really good at his habits, but no closer to his goal of exiting the hell of reliving the same day.

His habits are activity driven.

Only when Phil changes his drive from one of activity to productivity does his purgatory sentence end. He begins to look at his day under a different lens. Rather than spending his day repeating and excelling at every little detail of the day, he punts it all and focuses only on the big stuff that matters: winning over his producer, Rita, and becoming a better person. Through focusing on these two things, he begins to find actual joy in his day, and ultimately, he gets out of it.

When Phil was so focused on activity, he remained in the same place. When he focused on productivity, he moved forward.

Action is going to the gym hard every single day and calling it “discipline”. Productivity is aligning your gym attendance to net progress towards your goals and enough recovery to let you reach them.

Action is insisting you fill your days with work because that’s the narrative we’re sold on being successful. Productivity is sifting through clutter and focusing on work that advances you forward rather than keep you on the wheel.

Action is excess. Productive is efficient.

I hope that when you look back on your year this exact time next year you discover you were not just active, but productive.

-Dave

Monday, 1.8.17

First, for Strength.
4 Hang Power Snatch @60-80%
10 Hollow Body Rocks
(x4)
Perform 1 set every 3 minutes for 15 minutes.
—
Then, for Conditioning.
Perform (2) 8’ Density Circuits.
A.
5 DB RDL
5 Lateral Plate Burpees
10 Calorie Row
80m Run
–Rest 3’–
B.
1 KB Complex
100m Run