How are you going to end up some place new or different if you keep traveling the exact same road to the exact same exit every time?

How are you going to end up some place new or different if you keep traveling the exact same road to the exact same exit every time?

This popped up from 2 years ago; and it couldn’t have been more timely. There is a caveat though: sometimes, for the moment, you have only the same exit available.

What I mean by that is I once took the idea that people should prioritize sleep as a sign of moral failing and character weakness. Through a series of health issues I was personally confronted with the damage, starkly, in 2011. For years I had been overworking myself at school, then work, in workouts, and at home. Apparently, this is a bad idea without performance enhancing drugs.

Consequently, I had some incredibly suboptimal labs.

That led me down a path in 2012 of attempting to prioritize sleep as best I could given the many health issues with our son at the time. Just that tiny fractional improvement in sleep corrected many lab values, including doubling my total testosterone and tripling my free testosterone. I felt good.

2013 the experiment continued. I prioritized sleep and stress management, working out less than 90 minutes PER WEEK from January until July. Despite many sleepless nights at the emergency room, just the intentionality made a big difference. I could tell.
I’ve continued the experiments on minimal programming which people can realistically integrate into their busy lives forever. Summer of 2018 I worked out only 27 minutes per week.

I now know viscerally, through personal experience, but also through observing thousands of individuals (and all apropos research on the topic) how critical recovery and sleep is. I no longer view someone’s effort toward it as a weakness or moral failing.

BUT...

I have kids. I have a wife. I have a house. I have a business. So I get it. Life will not always provide the new exit. Sometimes you have only the same exit, in my case, sleeplessness. Even though I understand palpably the benefit of rest and preach about it, there are genuine constraints. My daughter has been sick for three weeks. My wife and I have logged maybe 2 decent nights of sleep since October 30th. Last night specifically, I held my daughter upright for 6 hours to help her rest while her coughing flared again.

Is that optimal sleep? Heck, is that half way decent sleep? I’m not an automaton. I’m not a robot. I get it, folks. We have many genuine life challenges often preventing us from taking that new exit. The new exit is closed for construction. The new exit is blocked by a car crash. The new exit hasn’t been completed yet.
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However, you can have a terrible run, a bad day, a bad week, a bad season, a bad year, a bad decade. But eventually there will be a new exit. Take it. And if there isn’t, well, sometimes just go off-road.