Know Thyself | Extracting The Data

At the entrance to Apollo Temple in Delphi Greece, there are three famous maxims inscribed:

· Know Thyself

· Nothing In Excess

· Certainty Brings Ruin aka “A Pledge Brings Trouble”

“Know Thyself” is the best-known Delphic Maxim (we’ll get back to the remaining two later).

Anyone who had a true understanding of themselves, and who knew their place in the world, would live wisely.

Thus, the second part — extracting the data to set the equation, is what fails most of us from sustaining and enjoying both physical practice and meaningful life because we are either blind to, or subconsciously don’t want to admit the “car” we are.

I argue for the latter statement.

“Every truck can carry a load, thus Hyundai i10 is a truck!” or “All Hollywood Star actors live in LA, thus if I move to LA I’ll become a Hollywood Star!”, are an example of false premise, that torments good souls, and injures healthy bodies as you read this.

In the first case, you most definitely end up with a broken car and a hole in your budget.

Footnote: i10 is a decent cat that can run for miles. I owned one for a decade, and “Bimba”, as my kids lovingly named her, served us well and faithfully.

While in the second, you most probably will serve tables, maybe even to Hollywood stars themselves, park cars, or change sheets in the very places where celebs stay. (Maybe you’ll become one too, but it’s a life-long maybe.)

Who are YOU?

Do YOU have no trouble lifting a car just to fetch a ball to a crying kid, but feeling your knees shake in front of a staircase?

Can YOU hike in the woods, climb mountains, chew leaves, and drink river water, as long as you don’t need to sprint?

Were YOU born with a six-pack and wide shoulders, but can’t carry groceries to your mom’s third-floor apartment without spitting your lungs out?

These questions are hints to what car YOU are.

Pause and reflect on your past — you’ll see the pattern repeating itself to this very day.

• What were you born with?
• What comes to you almost effortlessly?
• Was it strength, speed, endurance, flexibility, or a little bit of everything?

Do you see it? Good!

Now you can start “pimping your ride”.

“So apparently all of that exhausting, red-faced, full-on push-push-push I had been doing had given me only a 4 percent boost. I could just take it easy and get 96 percent of the results.”

~ Derek Sivers, “Hell Yeah or No”

My friend, a multiple-time Ironman finisher, told me this story:

- What I’ve learned in my 12+ years of Ironman competitions, is that I suck at swimming!

At the beginning of my Ironman career, I hired top coaches, worked on my technical skills, and stayed hours in the pool doing laps but at the end, on the race day, my swimming pace was around 20min for 1K (it’s a 2’/100m tempo for the number crunches among us) moreover, it was almost the same time as I began with!

Obviously, the training improved my swimming speed by 2–3 minutes, but in the 12–16 hours event (depending on the course and weather) it’s insignificant and doesn’t worth your effort when you have a 180K ride and 42.2K run ahead.

So, I stopped spending time and money trying to improve my swimming skills. “You “suck” in this, so you’d better embrace it and let go.”, I told myself and shifted my focus to cycling and running where the investment paid off 10X! in relation to the race time.”

His story, fueled by a decade of experience, changed my attitude both to training and life.

The answer to Apollo’s maxim “Know Thyself” lies in two basic principles of Economics.

Point Of Diminishing Returns (PDR)

You surely remember our coffee with Milo, where this subject was mentioned.

However, since Principles are Universal in their nature, it’s worth our time to remind ourselves again that PDR is a point where a further investment produces very low, if any at all, returns aka progress. And doesn’t justify further investment of resources be it money, time, energy, effort, etc.

Resource Allocation

Begins immediately after the PDR benchmark was set, with a simple question:

“Where will the remaining resources produce significant growth?”

Armed with the answer we further invest or re-invest until the next PDR point is reached, and so on.

In my friend’s case, after reaching his swimming PDR, he allocated his resources to swimming and biking until he reached his overall Ironman event finishing time — next PDR — and seized “investing”, aka killing himself to cut 15 minutes from a 14–16 hour event, and simply enjoyed the ride.

It’s time we enjoy ours because now we can extract the date and understand “What car are we?”

So, Pause.

Take a step back.

Observe. Your –

Training.

Effort.

Intellectual and financial investments.

Relationships.

LIFE.

Many of us are stuck in the Al Bundy (the Iconic and genius “Married With Children” character): “I played High-School football and scored 4 touchdowns in one game!” loop.

We allow our past, parents, environment, lineage, and Social Media to dictate and direct our emotional, physical, mental, cognitive, and intellectual investments. And by doing so, controlling our life and where it’s heading, without us ever pausing to ask two questions that matter most!

to be continued…