By: Michael Beiter

We are thirty-five hours into 2023.

I've had some great conversations and workouts already. I did two total body workouts that took a full hour. Each session had nine exercises and three sets, and I did twenty to thirty reps each. Between sets, I took thirty seconds of rest. If you're on top of your math, that is 540 reps in 3600 seconds. On average, these workouts demand a repetition every six seconds.

We teach a couple of rules of thumb regarding exercises. The first is to get some every day; the second is to do it for an hour, no longer. If you don't get everything done, so be it. If you can't get your workout done within an hour, you're either doing too much or not being efficient.

To get a rep done every six seconds for an hour straight, you can't fuck around. A five-minute exchange of pleasantries can cause you to miss an entire exercise or multiple sets. If you converse, get distracted, or whatever causes you to lose focus, you only get a couple of opportunities to get it back, or you will time out of your workout and miss out on potential progress.

My workout used to take hours because I would take so much time between sets and talk to everyone in the gym. My training partner and I learned different timing rules about working out, and ever since, I've used the 'time out technique' to keep me flowing through workouts.

Timing out of workouts was the topic of my first gym conversation of the year. Shortly after, it shifted to advertising. A fellow gym-goer started his own business in 2022. He asked if I had anything specific I was working on for the year.

"More of the same," I replied, "It's working. What about you?" I asked

"Figure out advertising," he responded. "Got any advice."

"Yea. Advertising is like sex; only losers pay for it."

"Care to elaborate?"

"You are a new business owner with no money; you can't start a business by spending and digging yourself in a hole. That is the first mistake people make in this game. If you have to pay for business, you already lost. Finding business in non-traditional, cheap ways to survive would be best."

"How do you do that?"

"I get referrals and create walking billboards. You could do something similar; you have to figure out how. Call or text me if you want to sit down and talk more." I said as I jumped back into a set.

I got a message from him that. "I'm going to take you up on that sit-down. Can I buy you lunch or coffee?"

A decade ago, I would just be getting back on my feet after national hangover day.

I've got two workouts, great work, 20 hours of deep sleep, and half a dozen delicious meals so far, and none of it is newly resolved behavior; it's all continuity of habits I've been repping for years.

I was supposed to rest seventy-two hours between my workouts, but my schedule didn't permit it, so here I am, not even two days into the year and two brutal sessions deep. Now, I rest and destress.

How's your new year going? :)