We live very convenient lives today. We’re efficient creatures. We have food (cooked even!) at the end of our streets, running water and electricity at the touch of a button, and now we only need to squat half as much to do our business.
But where there is convenience, there is inconvenience. One cannot exist without the other.
“Man, Jim is calling. I really don’t want to talk to him right now.”
“Damn, dinner will take 40 minutes to prep."
When we remedy one inconvenience, another appears - this is just the human brain's attempt to be efficient with everything. Our current inconveniences pale in contrast to what prior generations endured. That's not to suggest we shouldn't be thankful (though we should be), but it does mean we should be mindful of how it's affecting our lives and perspectives.
There’s an industry we’ve enclosed around being inconvenient – Fitness.
Lifting heavy weights, pushing through your limits, your heart beating out of your chest - none of this is convenient. Still, I think we’d all agree that these things are unavoidable to lead a healthy life.
I'd like to preface this section by adding that if you go to the gym as a hobby because you enjoy lifting weights and working out, that's great! On the other hand, I prefer to spend my time elsewhere.
Gyms are inconvenient places; we've taken the movement we used to perform throughout the day and laid it out in sites called ‘gyms’. We go to the gym to be inconvenient for our bodies, and then we revert to our comfortable lifestyles.
If you enjoy this cycle, nice. But I have something to propose:
We need to reintroduce that inconvenience back into our daily lives.
Not through a gym, but between the places we go and the tasks we complete; the great thing is that we don't even need to do that much.
Consider your morning coffee: many people choose the closest location. What if we chose something that was a little further away? Irritating… since you just want a cup of coffee, but in today's culture of instant gratification a little self-control can be incredibly rewarding. Walking or jogging a bit further raises the value of the coffee you'll soon be sipping. We all know that giving anything a little more effort makes anything more gratifying.
It's also worth emphasising that if you're trying to be inconvenient, you need to have a clear objective in mind.
Inconvenience keeps us on our toes and occupied. We need to be more present. Because really, the time you’re saving is just going back into Netflix anyway.
Hint: you can’t actually save time and spend it later. That’s not how it works.
We let our labour take its course before we made time standardised and visible. When we only had a measure of the sun:
Anybody who tried to impose an external schedule… by doing a month's milking in a single day… or by trying to make the harvest come sooner - would rightly have been considered a lunatic.
- Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman
A simple perspective, but it's obvious when put like that. Not everything needs to be efficient, and we don't control how quickly everything gets done. Previously, these barriers couldn’t be overcome; however, now we 'efficiasise' anything. Our brains need to solve problems. And when we answer a large number of the "big ones," we get smaller and smaller.
What are “big ones”?
Shelter, food, health care, and education are just a few examples. Don't read those as ‘problem solved’ areas. We’ve progressed far enough in these “big ones” that we can virtually cross them off the list of things we don't need to be concerned about to survive.
Our “big ticks” are solved, so we get into these tiny and insignificant problems like how far we need to travel for our coffee or who's buzzing our phone at 8:53 AM.
I still have 7 minutes until I have to start working!
Put your inconveniences into perspective by adding some slightly larger inconveniences back in. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but having the option to select our inconveniences is a game-changer. Adding in some distance to grab your coffee? Definitely inconvenient for the coffee, but very convenient for the step count. Like I wrote about habits in the last letter, stack stuff you want to be done together.
So Josh, are you saying that I should stop going to the gym?
No, instead, be conscious of what you rely on to get your activity in. The pandemic presented a chance to view how people interact with their surroundings. Gyms are closed? I’ll take a break. Sorry guys, but movement doesn’t take a break.
Start small, and make it happen.
Stay safe, and pass-it-on.