Difficulty

Things I learned from weight lifting: Pt 1

July 14, 2026

Nothing teaches you the truth of ‘one step at a time’ like a really heavy weight.

You hear that all the time, don’t you? Just take one step at a time. The way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time, the journey of a thousand steps begins with the first one.

Yeah, we GET it. One step at a time.

But I had a great experience where I actually felt how important “one step at a time” is.

Have you ever done a front squat? It’s where the bar is laid across your upper chest- it’s really hard and easy to curve into a human question mark shape.

ANYWAY…

I was doing one of those and had increased the weight from what I had done last week. I knew that I had to get to 12 reps.

Not 11

CERTAINLY not 7.

12!

So I began- and I started thinking about the 12th rep right there at the beginning when I was only doing the first one.

Sure, they say picture your goal, shoot for the moon and all that…

But thinking about the last rep felt like an AGE away while I was just on the first, holding something very heavy and trying not to fold in half like an envelope.

So I forced myself to just think about the first one. Then the second… then the third and on and on and on.

This was the embodiment of one step at a time. And it worked. Hooray!

It’s easy for these adages to remain as sayings: one step at a time.

But when we find little ways of making them real for ourselves, we get to take away the learning and benefit from that wisdom in a very real way.

Change the time horizon

July 10, 2026

Sometimes it can feel like something isn’t working.

That might be a method problem, but it might also be because of time line you’ve attached to it.

We’d do well not to mistake a faulty method with a lack of patience.

What you’re doing might actually be working, but you just haven’t waited long enough to see.

Add a few more months on before you measure progress and then you could change the method.

Sometimes things don’t work

July 5, 2026

And sometimes you just don’t have enough data.

You can’t go to the gym for a couple of weeks and give up because you don’t have abs. It feels like a long time in the moment- but you don’t have enough data yet to know what’s working or not.

It’s so tempting to draw conclusions early.

It’s also tempting to do the same thing for too long expecting different results.

The solution is to remain awake.

Awake to the feedback you’re getting. Knowing the difference between ‘good’ difficult and ‘going nowhere’ difficult.

It’s knowing when to keep trying, when to adjust slightly and when to change tac completely.

When in doubt keep trying a bit longer.

Rest but still routine

July 3, 2026

After a giant week of big work days, a rest day is always welcome.

In the past I thought that meant completely letting go, but I’ve actually found if the only thing I change is the amount of work output, then the rest sinks in better.

I’m sleeping a good amount and waking up early on a work day.

I’m eating great food that fuels me and keeps my energy consistent.

I’m moving my body enough to give me energy.

On a rest day, I don’t want to stop these things.

Keeping the fundamentals in place lets my body and mind equalise and truly rest when I don’t need to work.

If the fundamentals are dropped- a rest day actually becomes something you need to recover from.

And being in recovery mode when it’s another work day is not a position any of us want to be in.

Simple plan beats no plan

June 30, 2026

Is ‘winging it’ a real thing?

I don’t think that winging it is having no plan- your plan is to wing it.

AKA- your plan is to be pristinely present, playful and to rely on and trust your inherent abilities.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of having no plan. What do you want to achieve? How do you want to approach this?

Even a simple plan will do: I will focus on X. I will do Y.

A plan doesn’t haven’t to be a multi step opus. It can be an outcome, an orientation or a focus.

It can be simple.

And in the competition between a simple plan and no plan- you know who wins.

Make a little plan. It won’t take long.

How do you want it to go?

June 28, 2026

When theres something coming up soon that you want to do a great job at, you have some options about how to think about it…

You can try and ignore it.

You can picture yourself doing a bad job at it.

You can picture yourself absolutely nailing it (and having fun in the process).

It seems a bit of a no brainer, right?

But how many times do you find yourself picturing the thing not working out?

For me, it’s a regular internal conversation; I picture the thing and it’s a version that I kind of dread.

I have to change it on purpose.

What would it look like if it wen’t really well? What would it look like if it were easy? What would it look like if it were actually a lot of fun?

It’s easy to forget, but we can change the pictures we make in our head to match what we want.

You get to choose

June 23, 2026

Is the planning you have to do for your lesson a joy or a drag?

Is the research phase the boring bit or the juicy bit?

Is delaying gratification a necessary pain or an adventurous pleasure?

It may look like our experiences decide what they’ll be on our behalf. But the truth is, we get to choose what anything means.

Is this the end or the beginning?

Is this a breakdown or a breakthough?

Choose wisely.

The easiest version is better than the perfect version

June 20, 2026

Have you ever tried tracking your food on a tracking app? If you can get past groans from your friends and family, there are a few other things that might get in the way…

One of those things is wanting to be perfect at it.

This happened to me. Having worked out the macros I needed to be consuming daily, I started my first day measuring every single thing I ate and it took AGES.

So long in fact that every time I tared my food scale I fantaised about giving up completely.

The problem wasn’t the food weighing, it was that I was trying to do the olympic version of it!

I went from NEVER weighing my food to weighing the oil I was about to cook my veges in.

Yeah, I know I’m groaning WITH you!

So instead of giving up, I thought :”Look, I’ll just try my best”

What did my best look like? Well, if I weighed ANY food whatsoever in a day, I won.

Strangely, by lowering my ‘standard’ I had actually raised it. I’ve heard it said that perfection is the lowest standard because perfection is impossible. So you’ve set a standard you know you can’t achieve so therefore you have NO standard!

So I figured my new standard was doable.

And it totally was. I felt zero pressure to weigh the oil (and the fumes it gave off)

I was just weighing the best I could in the time I had.

I was doing my best. You could say it was the easiest version. And if the 80/20 rule is to be believed you could say I was yielding most of the results from this level of efforts too.

The best part? I gradually became more exact in my measurements as time went on- but I did not START there. Where I am now with that particular habit stands on the shoulders of a simpler version of the habit.

Get momentum first, then worry about the details.

So if you’re trying something new, ignore the groaners and do the easiest version for now.

Once momentum gets going, you can weigh the fumes, the condensation and the breath you expel saying the name of the dish you’re cooking.

Simple vs. Easy

June 14, 2026

Things that are simple mightn’t be easy.

If it’s worth it, it probably isn’t easy.

But it may well be simple.

Difficult doesn’t have to mean something is unpleasant either.

Something tricky can be fun.

Something simple can be hard to execute.

And things that are worth doing can be difficult and enjoyable.

You have to see it all first

June 3, 2026

He was in debt up to his eyeballs- so much so he didn’t know the exact number.

It suffocated him, worried him and provided an underlying dread that coloured his whole life.

One day when he’d had enough he pulled out every owing receipt, email, debt collection letter, bank statement and credit card bill.

He avoided it for so long because he imagined this moment would have confirmed that his life was now over.

The oposite happened.

He saw all his demons in broad day light, and better than that he had a single total amount he was now working toward.

$62,367

Seeing the true extent of the ‘damage’ freed him.

Your freedom is waiting for you in the thing you’re avoiding.

Go and take a look.

JUSTIN ROGERS

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