September 27th - The Price of always being ON

Same Life, Higher Price.

Everything costs more now.

The coffee that used to cost $4 costs $6. The lunch you remember being $12 is somehow $20. A can of Coke that you swear used to cost about a dollar now costs twice that — or more.

We notice this kind of inflation because the price is right there in front of us. Same can of Coke. Same amount of Coke. Higher price.

I wonder if something similar has happened to our lives.

Not financially. Energetically.

I wonder if we're spending more and more energy doing exactly the same things we've always done.

Going for a run used to mean going for a run. You put your shoes on, headed out the door and ran. Maybe you knew roughly how far you'd gone and roughly how long it took. Maybe you didn't. Either way, you got home, had a shower and got on with your day.

Now?

There's pace. Heart rate. Zones. Cadence. GPS. Strava. Personal bests. Weekly mileage. Training load. Recovery recommendations. Comparisons with your last run. Comparisons with other people's runs. Other people congratulating you on your efforts...or not!

You can finish a perfectly enjoyable 5km run feeling pretty good about yourself, look at your watch and discover that apparently it wasn't very good at all. So suddenly you're in your head, thinking about your prep, did you stretch, maybe the music was wrong...

Same run. Higher price.

Training has gone the same way.

You can't just go to the gym anymore. Everything has to be tracked, measured and optimised. How much did you lift? How many calories did you burn? What was your heart rate? Did you beat last week? Are you progressing? What's your readiness score? How was your sleep? Should you really be training today?

Now, obviously, I'm a coach. I believe in programs. I believe in measuring things. I believe in having goals and tracking progress. We test things at Round 1 all the time because sometimes knowing where you are helps you work out where you're going. But not everything needs to become a performance.

Sometimes training can just be training.

Sometimes you can come in, work hard, have a laugh, get sweaty and go home.

That's enough.

The same thing has happened with sleep. Sleep! Something humans have managed reasonably successfully for quite a while without an instruction manual. Now you can wake up feeling fantastic, check your watch and discover you scored 62...and suddenly you're tired.

Apparently you didn't get enough deep sleep. Your resting heart rate was elevated. Your HRV wasn't where it should be. Your recovery is compromised. Five minutes ago you felt great.

Same night's sleep. Higher price.

And then there's work.

For most of human history, leaving work involved actually leaving work. Even when I started working, if somebody wanted something from you after you'd gone home, there weren't that many ways for them to get you. I was an IT person - I had a PAGER!!! When they needed me (and we were a 24-hour operation), they would PAGE me. The pager would beep...I would have to find a phone (no mobiles - don't make me laugh!!) and call in to find out what was happening. The response time: For "URGENT" calls...ONE HOUR!!

Today, work lives in your pocket. Email. Messages. Notifications. Group chats. Apps.

There's always something you could check. There's always something you could answer. There's always one little job you could knock over. And the dangerous thing is that none of those things individually seem like much.

Two minutes to answer an email. Thirty seconds to reply to a message. Five minutes to check something for tomorrow.

But you're still paying.

That's the part I think we underestimate.

Being “on” costs something.

Making decisions costs something. Monitoring things costs something. Comparing things costs something. Responding to things costs something. Even constantly thinking about whether you're doing something well enough costs something.

And because we've become so used to it, we often don't recognise the bill.

Instead, when we start feeling tired or overwhelmed, our instinct is to optimise even harder.

We need a better morning routine.

A better recovery protocol.

A better sleep routine.

A better productivity system.

Maybe a new app.

Maybe we need to track something else.

It's a little bit like Coke doubling in price and deciding the solution is to work twice as hard so you can keep buying the same amount of Coke.

Maybe you don't need to earn more. Maybe occasionally you just need to stop buying so much bloody Coke.

There are things worth being “on” for.

Absolutely.

There are training sessions where I want you focused on every rep. There are testing days where the number matters. There are competitions where performance matters. There are important days at work. There are conversations where the person sitting across from you deserves every bit of your attention.

Being able to switch on is incredibly valuable.

But I think that ability becomes less valuable if you never switch off.

And switching off doesn't have to mean lying on the couch doing nothing. It doesn't mean becoming lazy, lowering your standards or deciding that nothing matters.

It might just mean going for a run without caring how fast you went.

It might mean doing a workout without trying to win it.

It might mean eating dinner without wondering whether you've hit your protein target.

It might mean watching something stupid on TV and not simultaneously checking your phone.

It might mean leaving an email until tomorrow.

It might even mean waking up feeling good and deciding that you don't need a watch to confirm it.

Because if everything matters, everything costs.

And if every part of your life becomes something to measure, improve, optimise and perform, you can end up spending an incredible amount of energy without actually getting much more in return.

That's inflation.

Same job.

Same training.

Same run.

Same sleep.

Same life.

Higher price.

Maybe the answer isn't always finding more energy.

Maybe sometimes it's finding the places where we can stop spending it.