Gardening Is Investing Is Fitness
Whether it’s gardening, investing, or fitness (or quite a few other domains in life), great results can be had by frequent—and often small—contributions. The frequency will vary some, depending on the domain, of course. Gardens tend to do well when they’re cared for multiple times a week (let’s say three to four). You can build a small fortune via dollar cost averaging in the stock market (or some other financial market, a la BTC, if that’s your thing) once or twice a month (think decades of investing here). And fitness does best with daily contributions.
Let’s dig a little deeper into this as it relates to fitness.
When I say daily contributions, these don’t need to be heroic, leave-nothing-in-the-tank efforts. You’ll crash and burn, eventually, by following that route ad infinitum. Instead, try this:
For three-ish days per week, play around a little bit with high-value, accessible movements (think spreading sets of low-volume squats, lunges, push-ups, kettlebell swings, and the like—with plenty left in the tank—throughout your day).
For other days of the week, throw in some more directed strength and conditioning sessions. These sessions don’t need to be lengthy affairs—you should be done in no more than an hour.
Mind your mobility (that mythical combo of range of motion and joint health) in some form or fashion. There are lots of way to do this. The best approach I’ve found is to micro-dose mobility work throughout the week.
Get some daily outdoor time, ideally paired with walking (and if you can do it with family or friends, you get bonus points).
Play and practice a sport or participate in a fun physical activity you are passionate about (hiking comes to mind) and subtract out the low-intensity movement day for a sport/activity day.
This is just one way to think about how to structure your movement practice, and it is one that can be implemented with great success. There are going to be countless variations on this general template depending on each individual’s preferences, time, commitments, etc. Think of the above outline as a starting point. If I can just get you to think about how you’d like to organize your movement practice, it’s a huge win.
Just remember, your training should support your life and not the other way around. Rather than adding more training, think long and hard about other things in your life you could be using your training for. And find ways to play, darn it. Make physicality fun!
You do the above for a few decades and you’ll be amazed by your results (just like your garden or your portfolio).
One final thought on this has to do with variability of results. In general, and especially as it applies to gardening, investing, and fitness, people tend to assign way too much weight to the variability of results, especially in the short- to medium-term (The stock market is down 500 points! I can’t do as many reps as I did last week! My peaches haven’t come in yet!). Don't fall into that trap. Look at long-term trendlines rather than day-to-day fluctuations (noise, really).
Embrace time, patience, and the process and I guarantee you’ll be pleased with the results.
