50 pushups every day, the art of small work

Summary

you should be doing 50 pushups every day. not for the fitness. for the principle. small consistent action knocks down dominoes way bigger than the action itself.

1. the pushup grid. I keep a grid on a sheet of paper. 50 pushups, broken across the day however I want. five sets of ten, two sets of 25, one ugly set of 50. doesn’t matter. just complete the grid.

2. the domino effect from Gary Keller’s The One Thing. one domino can knock down another that’s 50% bigger than itself. line up a chain of slightly bigger dominoes and your first tiny push topples something massive at the end.

3. apply the art of small work to anything. write 200 words a day, you have a book in a year. read 10 pages a day, you’ve read 12 books. do one sales call a day, you have a business.

4. the trap is wanting the big version on day one. people try to do 500 pushups, fail, quit, never come back. start at the dumbest small number you can’t fail. add later.

the small thing isn’t impressive. that’s the point. impressive starts a streak. boring sustains one. try harder.

Transcript

intro

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. All right. Here’s the deal. You should be doing 50 pushups every single day. So let’s talk about why this is the better human business podcast. I’m Jerred Moon. And if you like any of the ideas I talk about on this podcast and you want to get a sick try harder sticker, go to Jerred.

why jerred recommends 50 daily pushups

So that’s J E R E D dot com. Go to Jerred dot com and sign up for the try harder newsletter. You’re going to get an amazing newsletter every single Thursday. And also I’ll send you instructions on how to get the amazing badass try harder sticker. OK, let’s talk about pushups and why you should be doing 50 every single day.

So something we implemented at one of my companies into three fitness back in the day, I’m talking 10 years ago, is something called the pushup grid. Pretty simple idea here. You draw a grid on a sticky note, whiteboard, piece of paper, scratch paper, whatever. And you it could be a two by two, four by four.

the art of small work

The grid is up to you. And every once in a while throughout the day, you do some pushups. And so it might end up being depending on depending on your grid size. It could be 20 pushups a day, 30 a day, 50 a day, 200 a day. It really all depends on the grid that you pick. But when I initially started talking about this back in the day, people would always push back.

They’d say 10 pushups at a time or even 50 pushups in a day is not enough to make any sort of meaningful progress. You are telling people to waste your time. You wouldn’t believe how many people actually told me this. There was some sort of disconnect in my brain as a strength and conditioning coach that I didn’t understand that 10 pushups is not enough to create micro trauma in the muscle and thus produce more muscle mass like I was missing the point.

the domino effect explained

But everyone else is missing the point. If you don’t understand the art of small work. So let’s talk about the domino effect. So I’m sure you’ve heard about the domino effect. This is popular from the book, The One Thing by Gary Keller, one of my favorite books of all time. So it’s about how one small action can lead to a series of actions or a chain reaction, which can produce a lot of momentum, power, and energy.

So in 1983, Lorne Whitehead wrote in the American Journal of Physics that dominoes can do much more than knock down a domino of equal size. Actually the force from the falling domino can topple a domino, which is 50% larger. So to put that in perspective, starting a chain reaction with a two inch domino, hitting one 50% larger each time, by the 18th domino, you’re looking at a domino close to the size of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

how to implement small work

Number 23, the 23rd domino would be taller than the Eiffel Tower. The 31st domino would be 3000 feet taller than Mount Everest. And by number 57, it would be at the distance from the earth to the moon. And that’s how momentum work. You can add a little, but the momentum you get mentally and physically from a small win will be greater than 1 plus 1 equals 2.

It’s not 1 plus 1 equals 2, it’s exponential. So 10 push-ups today doesn’t mean 11 push-ups tomorrow. Health and fitness, they go much deeper than that. And a great workout today can speed up your metabolism, change your epigenetics, motivate you to eat healthier. So these small little habits, there’s a psychological impact.

using pushups to build a strong mindset

So following that theory, let’s add something new to your routine. So how can we implement this into our lives, into our businesses? First, I actually recommend you do some push-ups every single day. Like moving outside the theory, the domino effect, anything, actually do some push-ups every single day, right when you wake up.

It sets the tone for the day. This is a habit I have tried to maintain over the years, whether I only get to do 20 push-ups in a day, 10 push-ups in a day, 50 or 500, every single day can be different, but I always try to do some push-ups. Typically, it’s when I’m in the kitchen in the morning, making coffee or cooking breakfast for my kids, I just try to knock out a quick set of push-ups.

breaking big goals into tiny steps

Like I said, sets the tone for the day. It’s building a habit. It’s getting that domino effect. It’s getting me in the right mindset that I’m going to accomplish things today. Again, I don’t care about the push-ups. I don’t care if the 20 push-ups made my pecs stronger. That’s irrelevant. What I know is, hey, this is my mindset.

I’m getting better today. I’m going to move forward. I’m going to make progress. That’s what I’m doing. I’m working on my mindset when I do those push-ups in the morning. The second thing is just start thinking what other small work can you add to your life? For instance, say some of you out there, you want to write a book.

closing thoughts and call to action

The project you want to tackle, but you have no idea how to get started. Start your morning off or end your day with writing 100 words every single day. That’s it. See where that goes. Don’t worry about the bigger picture of the book. Get in the habit. 100 words a day. I’m going to write 100 words.

That’s nothing. That’s easy. A couple of sentences and you’ve knocked out 100 words. If you can implement the habit of small work, you really can achieve anything. Think about any project you’ve been putting off, anything, whether it’s marketing emails that you need to write, or maybe it is a health and fitness habit.

There’s something. You know. It’s just in the back of your head. You’ve been putting it off. You know, it’s a giant project, and so it’s overwhelming, so that might be why you’re not doing it. But can you set aside 15 or 30 minutes today or tomorrow to get started? Now 15 or 30 minutes may not be anywhere close to the time you need to complete the project, and I understand that, but maybe all you do in the first 15 minutes is list out all that needs to get done in this big giant project that you’re so scared of.

Because then tomorrow when you do dedicate another 15 or 30 minutes, you’ve got the list, you’re making progress. Now you can just jump in and be like, okay, I’m just getting down. I’m just doing 30 minutes worth of task one. I might not even complete it, but I’m doing 30 minutes worth of task one.

That is the habit of small work, the art of small work. It’s doing small things, and it doesn’t always have to do with getting the thing done or seeing the result. It’s getting you in the achieving mindset. It’s changing your mindset. It’s rewiring your brain that you’re moving forward. You’re making progress.

You’re not procrastinating. You’re not putting things off. You are going to get things done. So remember, there will only not be a tomorrow one time in your entire life. Until then, try harder.