023 The Magic Of Metrics! The Philosophy Of Fitness

This episode description includes bonus material not covered in the episode. Check out the links and resources provided here!

Do you track your progress in all areas of your life? How can you apply metrics to your relationships? Should you? Join Tali and Cody as they explore the magic of metrics!

01:19 Today's topic: Metrics

02:08 Track everything, or track nothing? Find balance, or accept the pendulum swings? Minimal daily practice might be the key

06:46 https://gregmckeown.com/podcast/episode/10x-your-results-with-less-effort/

09:38 What metrics should you track? Perhaps a coach can help you determine that. (See last weeks episode here)

11:40 There is no perfect metric, one mark doesn't make a whole picture. One can stall while progress is made elsewhere, and multiple metrics can help you see your values change too!

19:35 Our journey out of debt and how multiple metrics shows progress, even though we've slowed the debt-free train

43:28 James Altucher's Daily practices categories: Physical, Emotional, Mental, Spiritual

46:15 You don't have to develop an attachment to specific outcomes in order to benefit from tracking metrics. Hindsight can inform your future. (Read more about this here)

"You can't improve what you don't measure." Peter Drucker

49:03 David Epstein TED Talk on tech and human performance over the decades

53:35 Instead of setting an arbitrary goal, develop a practice and see how far you can go with a sense of curiosity

54:54 Don't just track performance or results, track your efforts and consistency

01:02:51 CHALLENGE: The next thing you're trying to achieve, try to find 5 or more different metrics to track instead of a single result

01:10:34 Mindset of gratitude might not equate to hard numbers, but it can be more important than any metric

01:11:45 You can gain strength from assessing a variety of metrics when one is affected by circumstances outside of your control

01:12:32 Sam Harris, Waking Up, Reframing Meditation

It can be extremely valuable to reframe how you assess certain events or progress

01:14:37 Want to find the right partner? Instead of looking for certain attributes, consider other "metrics"; how do you feel when you're with them? How do they respond to you? What aspects of their vision for the future might you share? Etc... Specific traits can close you off to the possibilities you never imagined! 

01:17:58 If you don't like the idea of tracking metrics, check out this short blog post.

01:20:59 Develop greater self-awareness through metrics

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Transcript

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Ep 13 Philosophy Of Fitness, Ep 23 Live All Your Life: The Magic Of Metrics
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Cody: [00:00:00] Hi, this is Cody Limbaugh and 

Tali: I'm Tali Zabari, and you're listening to the Philosophy of Fitness podcast on 

Cody: the Lim Network.

Cody: Right on. Awesome. So we just gonna jump into it? 

Tali: Yeah. Happy fall. Do you have an ice breaker for today? 

Cody: Happy fall on the ice breaker. Yeah. No happy autumn to you. [00:01:00] I don't have an icebreaker. I was just thinking about our topic of 

Tali: the day. Okay. I've had a bunch of icebreakers in mind and I forgot to wrote, I forgot to write , any of them down.

Tali: Please edit that out if you 

Cody: can. Yeah, right. so you can't think of 

Tali: any no. Sorry, I got nothing. 

Cody: Well, our topic of the day is metrics. So with the philosophy of fitness, carrying things over from the world of health and fitness into the rest of our lives in the gym world, keeping a fitness journal, tracking what you're doing is part of the culture and the sort of science behind it, if you will.

Cody: And so like to just explore how that carries over to other areas of our lives and maybe some of what is. Assumed it about it and some things that are a little counterintuitive about it and, and that type of [00:02:00] thing. 

Tali: So I don't know about you, but I feel like this is the case with most anything. I tend to fall into extremes when it comes to metrics.

Tali: I either don't wanna measure or track anything and just be able to be in the moment and not worry about numbers or benchmarks or anything like that. Or I lean really hard into the other direction and want to track everything and be really meticulous about progress and pushing towards progress and mapping it all out.

Tali: Mm-hmm. , do you ever experience 

Cody: that? Yeah, I think in my case it's a little less intentional than that. Sounded like you said you want to sometimes be free or sometimes you want to map it. Do I think I tend to have this pendulum swing in my life where I find myself. Floating a little bit and directionless and not sure what I'm doing or mm-hmm.

Cody: feel like I'm off track, basically. And so then I overdo it on the metric side of things. Okay. So it sounds [00:03:00] like Yes. Yeah. But it's not so much an intentional desire, it's more like this weird reactionary thing where I'll feel better about myself if I start to structure a whole bunch of metrics and then and then eventually that sort of fades off or I get distracted or something.

Cody: Life event happens to not to derail me again, and then all of a sudden I'm free floating and the cycle just starts all over again. 

Tali: Yeah. I don't know if that's something that you and I just naturally gravitate to each other mm-hmm. and having similar experiences, but we both tend to kind of fall into extremes like that.

Tali: Finding the middle ground has always been really hard. Yeah. For 

Cody: me, , I know that we're not alone, you know? One of my, our good friends is kind of had an early retirement in his life. Mm-hmm. and I remember going on a long walk with him one day and we were kind of getting deep into the, into the weeds of a conversation.

Cody: And he had expressed a lot of frustration because he was an early retirement [00:04:00] type of person who had a lot of freedom in his life. And it went from being a really happy place to be to some deep depression because he had a hard time feeling like he had direction and purpose and what he was doing. And we had this big conversation about how frustrating, frustrating it is to sometimes feel so focused and energized and productive and everything's going great.

Cody: And then somehow you can look back weeks or months later, like as if it never happened. Like you're in a funk and you don't even know how you got there. It's like such a gradual dropping off. And we were both lamenting on how much more effective we would feel in our lives if we were just more consistent instead of the highs and lows, but just like steady as she goes.

Cody: And, and maybe ways of working on 

Tali: that. So, well, I think it was you who had introduced the idea of pendulum swinging as that modality. Mm-hmm. or as at least [00:05:00] the illustration of how those times of like extreme productivity and then the opposite and how we pass through those. Mm-hmm. . And I really just want another model.

Tali: That one's not really working for me because I feel that swing and I almost like anticipate the upcoming swing. Like, I'm gonna be on an upswing soon, or I'm gonna downswing, like I actually use those words. Mm-hmm. when I feel myself transitioning from one place to the next. And I. Want to have structure in life, but I, like we had said with metrics, like, I know how to do that really well, but then everything becomes all-encompassing and it just becomes like I have how I have to live my life and then I have to abandon it entirely.

Cody: Mm-hmm. , well, that's what I'm trying to do with the whole approach of practices, daily practices of various kinds that are meant to try to, you know, take you closer to a vision and [00:06:00] in part of the process of setting up those practices to make them sort of a minimum viable effort so that, you know, if you're going to dive into something instead of spending several hours at it or this big concerted effort that's likely to burn out and have more of that pendulum swing to try to do.

Cody: A 20 minute thing every day. That's Or more 

Tali: like giving it room 

Cody: to be organic. Yeah. Giving it room to be organic, but also being careful with that because I think you can also kind of burn yourself out by even when you're feeling good about it by doing too much. Cause I've certainly experienced that and I'm reminded of a, I don't know if I brought this up on our podcast before or if it was on a guest podcast that was somebody else's, but I'm just gonna go ahead and say it again.

Cody: Go for it. There's a story, and I should look this up maybe for the show notes, if I, if I can have the time to do that, I'll look it up. But there's these two expeditions that were both headed to Antarctica at the same time, and [00:07:00] this back in like the 18 hundreds or something, or maybe maybe more recent.

Cody: But the idea was it was a race to get there between these two teams. and one team had the approach of doing as much as they could each day that they could. So if the weather was fair and everyone's energy was good and the supplies were intact and all that, they would go as far as they could so that on the stormy days they could just rest up and you know, hunker down and that kind of thing.

Cody: And the other team used an approach of 20 miles a day and 20 miles a day was sort of what they figured they could do even on their worst day, which meant on their good days. I'm assuming this is with like sled dogs or something, cuz 20 miles is pretty far. But the point is, is that on their good days they could do much more, but they resisted the temptation to do more and stuck with the 20.

Cody: And the way the story turns out is that [00:08:00] the team that was committed to the consistency toward the end, they ran into some really good weather and everybody's spirits were high, and they realized if they just pushed really hard on the last day, they could get there in one day, or they could stick to their original plan and just do the 20 miles and it would take three more days.

Cody: And they chose to stick with their plan of just 20 miles a day and not knowing where the other team was. They ended up beating the other team by something like three weeks to getting to the goal line. So it's just an illustration of how important consistency is and how to apply that, but it also points out that you have to restrict yourself from, like, overdoing it on the days even when you feel like you can, in order to keep more consistency on the harder days.

Cody: It's like conserving energy, so to speak. , 

Tali: Talking about like the [00:09:00] consistency and the pendulum swings and all that, but we're just wanting to talk a little bit more about metrics today and like why those are important.

Tali: And I guess this is like a potential. Downfall, but I always feel like we start with the negative stuff first. . 

Cody: Well, no, I think I was just getting into the weeds. Yeah. But think that I think that's important in on the topic of metrics because I think that that can lead to consistency as long as it's approached maybe with the, the right attitude, like determining what metrics are important to you and then just sticking with the essentials.

Cody: Yeah, 

Tali: and it's interesting because I, I'm finding, which isn't surprising that a lot of our topics that we've been talking about are all kind of piggybacking off of each other because my experience with metrics, at least in the athletic world, had a lot to do with hiring a coach or going to a class and like having it be a structured Experience where, you know, I grew up watching my mom exercise from home my [00:10:00] whole life.

Tali: She was incredibly self-motivated. She got, had like every firm aerobics video that was ever made and she also would run on the weekends before she had her unfortunate hood to coast experience where that was kind of the end of running for her. But I kind of followed in those footsteps too in early adulthood trying to, you know, do strength videos at home and just kind of do my own thing.

Tali: And I wasn't tracking any of it. You know, when you're watching those videos, they don't say do five more pounds than last week. That's kind of the tricky thing about workout videos in general is you have to be. General. Mm-hmm. , you can't speak to specific experiences because who knows who's watching it and doing it.

Tali: And so CrossFit, going to a CrossFit class, it was just down the hill from my house at the time, was the first time that anyone had ever timed my workout or, you know, we had this really cool program, kind of like [00:11:00] what, and trained, heroic, and all the ones that are available now, but someone who was actually a member of the gym had created the program and it was more like a calendar and then you put the workout in for the day and then you write your score and there was a leaderboard and all that.

Tali: So it was my first experience of tracking anything or measuring anything. And you know, you've seen in so many CrossFit gyms, they have a leaderboard on the wall somewhere. And I just remember being like, damn, that would be really cool if I had my name on. One of the events up there, because you get that spot for a long time, you know, is pretty glorifying for the folks who are up there.

Tali: I bet. 

Cody: Yeah. Our, and that really is probably a good segue into one of the topics. What we wanted to bring up, subtopic on metrics, which is to have a variety of metrics. Mm-hmm. and not just being obsessing over one. I think the most common one that we bring up in the fitness world the most is probably.

Cody: Because weight [00:12:00] is weight lifted or body weight? Body weight, okay. Because body weight is such a piss poor metric of almost anything. The only time body weight really matters is if you're in a competition where body weight matters. You know, if you're in a boxing ring or a wrestling match or a weightlifting competition, the heavier people have an advantage over the lighter people in many of these domains.

Cody: Mm-hmm. . But in life and in health, your weight is a very weak correlate because you can be very lean and muscular and heavy and be much fitter than someone who is lighter, but. Has a higher percentage of body fat and is not strong and has, you know, you can have all kinds of health issues. It just doesn't tell the whole story.

Cody: Yeah. And that's why BMI is bullshit. , I'll just put, I'll just put it out there. It's like some government metric where they try to put everybody into the same box. And I know people who according to BMI, are morbidly obese. 

Tali: That was me. I've had that 

Cody: experience. But when you look at [00:13:00] them, they're like bodybuilders or weightlifters.

Cody: They're super strong muscular people and obviously their health is at a much different place than someone that's the same weight who's a couch potato. So BMI is bullshit. Don't follow it. But What was I gonna say? Oh, so as a single metric, weight is almost meaningless. However, as a whole picture, it can be beneficial.

Cody: You know, if you're trying to get leaner and you're taking into consideration your, your weight along with your lean mass and your fat mass, your composition, your bone density composition and performance mechanisms or, or performance metrics where you're getting stronger, you're getting faster, more flexible, whatever, you have other metrics involved, then it can be part of a whole picture that's more valuable.

Cody: Totally. So having multiple metrics can be really valuable as far as. Not only an opportunity to make progress, cuz sometimes one [00:14:00] metric will stall out. And if that's your only metric, you can feel like you're not making progress. And it's really discouraging. Mm-hmm. . But sometimes the scale might stall out, but you're pring, you're getting new records on your lifts or you're getting faster or you're, you're not winded as much.

Cody: You know, there's all kinds of other metrics that can be showing you improvement. So there's an opportunity to see progress when it might be hidden from a single metric. There's also an opportunity to see a big picture, like I said before. And there's also an opportunity, like you were saying with the leaderboard.

Cody: My leader board in my gym had a grid. I'm trying to remember how it was a lot. It was a lot. We had two leader boards. We had one that was all the CrossFit benchmark workouts. Mm-hmm. . And then we had another one that was like every major lift and. Common running distances and max unbroken double unders with a jump rope.

Cody: And you know, there's a whole muscle ups, like how many muscle ups [00:15:00] can you do without coming down off the rings. Like there's a whole bunch of different things. So almost anyone could get up on that leaderboard if they really wanted it bad enough by just picking something that was in their wheelhouse.

Cody: Yeah, yeah. And then of course you could see the people who were up there on many, many different events, how well rounded they were. You know, you could see somebody who was in the top five lifting, but also in the top five running and in the top five of the benchmark workouts. And it's like, oh, that, that person's a badass.

Cody: Yeah. I 

Tali: can't relate. . . There was a while where I was really hell bent on getting to the top of all the women's leader boards. Mm-hmm. . I believe it was for Island CrossFit that I was able to do that and then I was like, okay, now I wanna get on the men's board. , I just at least wanna be like up there with them.

Tali: But when it came to the running and handstand hold times, I was never there. Yeah. But I just wanna touch on something that you were talking about the benefits of having multiple markers of progress, if you will. Another cool [00:16:00] byproduct of paying attention to the whole picture, like in the way that you put it, is that your values can change too.

Tali: Mm-hmm. , I've been very way obsessed for a really long time and through my coaching with working against Gravity, they are assessing your photographs so you can see changes in your body. They're assessing how well you're sleeping, they're assessing your mood, they're assessing your feelings of control over food.

Tali: Like, there are just many different things. I wanna say there's like 15. Specific items that they try to appeal to. And I feel like what it's done for me even being in a sport that is obsessive about weight it just allowed me to shift my focus of like, there are other really cool things going on here that not only I should acknowledge, but it also, it reminds me that like, I'm a whole person and I need to pay attention to all of these things.

Tali: Mm-hmm. , like you said, if my weight is somewhere, it doesn't give me the whole picture of health at all. Mm-hmm. 

Cody: [00:17:00] at all. Yeah. And even within your sport when you, when I first met you, you had recently prd pretty recently, like on clean and you didn't PR for, for the whole time you were competing after.

Cody: Sad . But, but what's not sad though is that you did hit new personal records. If you consider them other metrics, which is like you for a stint, I forget how long it was, seven months or more. You did a competition per month, every fucking month. Right. And you placed in, I believe all of them, like you were on the podium, at least on all of 'em.

Cody: So there's like different ways of looking at these benchmarks and metrics, that consistency was something you were going for. So it's like, I'm not gonna, it's true, I'm not gonna pr on the platform, but my goal is six for six. You know, you wanted to get all of the lifts and you didn't always hit that.

Cody: But I'm just saying like, that's just another example of how you were, you were making progress even though it may not be by the [00:18:00] standard metrics that you had previously imposed. Sure. 

Tali: Yeah. And a thought comes to mind, which I'm sure will be more applicable to another podcast episode, like maybe something about.

Tali: Mindset and like the stimulus of competition and how to, how to do that well. But I've never prd in a competition ever. And I always thought that was really strange because a lot of people do. Mm-hmm. , there's a lot of like risk taking that happens on the platform. Like to win, we're gonna try to do a weight you've never done before.

Tali: Mm-hmm. , I've never been in that position. I've always hit personal records in training and I like to think that has a lot to do with the environment and like the coziness of like being at your gym on your turf with your team. And I also find it odd because I really came to feel like I mastered.

Tali: Maybe not master, that's kind of a big word. But I feel like I played competitions well in terms of like keeping maku, [00:19:00] you know, so I always thought that was kind of weird. Well, 

Cody: you could also look at it as sort of a flex because you had trained to a level where you didn't have to try to PR to win the competition.

Cody: Like you could go in and wipe the floor 

Tali: because that is a cool way of thinking about it. Well, yeah, but it definitely does not occur to me naturally as, no, 

Cody: I thought about it a lot because I was aware of that at the time that you weren't going for PRS on the platform and other people were, and I'm like, well, she doesn't need to.

Cody: She's, she's got gas in the tank and she's still gonna win . 

Tali: That's really sweet. Thanks. 

Cody: Yeah. So anyway, multiple metrics. So let's try to apply this to other areas outside of fitness. You know, we had a specific metric of getting out of debt as one of 

Tali: our financial debts. Yes. Finances came up for me too.

Tali: Yeah. 

Cody: And. We've shifted that, but I would say it's not so much in temptation ways. You know, in my past I've tried to get outta debt multiple [00:20:00] times in various phases of my life and have succeeded and then got right back into debt and that kind of thing. But a lot of times it was because of unintentional things like, or, or I don't know if unintentional is the right word.

Cody: I was unaware of my situation I was putting myself in. So we might move to a more expensive house and then all of a sudden I'll find myself back into debt again. It was like an accidental cycle of in and out of debt, in and out of debt. And you and I have accumulated new debts. Along the way in our journey to get out of debt.

Cody: Mm-hmm. , but it's been very intentional in the way it's been done. You know, we we got a newer lower mileage car because the other one was breaking down a lot and it was affecting our work and, you know, we had to rent a car at one point. Yeah. So it made a lot of sense to go ahead and finance a new car that was gonna be very dependable.

Cody: You know, we got a boring gray, no featureless, it's a gray blob, Volkswagen. It's like the most generic possible car you can even imagine. But that generic means, it's [00:21:00] like, it's really dependable, you know? And, and it has 

Tali: been, it's even working up here on the mountain. And we had thought that we were gonna buy a new car this year.

Tali: Because we felt like we had enough of a gap to, to kind of up our payments if we needed to. And we're gonna be paying off that car really soon. And in the end we decided, you know, we can still ma like keep this car and take really good care of it and still get a lot out of it. Yeah. Cause you and I don't need two cars.

Tali: It would be nice, but with the future, our short term future plans don't really call for that anymore. 

Cody: Yeah. And that brings me to the point I was gonna make as far as our short term plans that we have, we're about to launch. Well, I mean, we have launched our business, but I'm about to go full time and quit my job.

Cody: And because of that, we've decided to put a pause on getting out of debt in order to build up our savings account a little bit more so that we have a little bit more cushion for a less [00:22:00] predictable income. So if our only metric was getting out of debt, then it would look like we've slowed down our progress a lot and 

Tali: Oh yeah.

Tali: And I feed into that sometimes, like I just said the other day at our budget meeting, like, wow, we could have paid off the car already if it wasn't for, you know, if we didn't reallocate these funds. Yeah. That were supposed to be the snowball. Yeah. 

Cody: But the thing is, is that we've allowed ourselves to have multiple metrics, if you think about it, because we have more savings now than we did a few months ago.

Cody: Mm-hmm. and we've got the, some seed money for the business. Mm-hmm. . So it's, it's not that we have accidentally, you know, impulse purchased a bunch of crap to get further into debt. It's speak for yourselves. It's been intentional. Yeah. But you don't create debt for us, you know, even. 

Tali: I haven't, no. So there's this thing that I'm sure everybody's aware of now, this stupid [00:23:00] thing called after pay, which allows you to purchase expensive items with multiple payments, like over several weeks.

Tali: And I have definitely, you know, fallen prey to this method of paying for things. And so I've started to like accumulate small debts like almost like we used to. I know it's a little bit different because it comes out of our gap money, which is meant for spending. Right. And it's not necessarily like a new bill, but yeah, I feel like there's a lot of like convenient things like.

Tali: That make me feel like it's easy for us to kind of get back to where we started, so I can very much understand Yeah. But like what you were saying, like you feel like you've gotten ahead and then slide back. Yeah. Cause it's really about habits, it's about practice, which is like everything that you talk about.

Tali: Mm-hmm. here on the podcast. And you know, we've mentioned many times that our good friend JD Rob helped us kind of get started with this financial journey. But someone who has [00:24:00] also influenced this journey a lot also is Dave Ramsey and I follow him online and something that he posted, even just today, I send them to you sometimes.

Tali: I don't know if you've noticed, but it was something like, it doesn't matter how much money you make, it's how you spend your money. Mm-hmm. . And That's so true. You know, you and I always were kind of chasing more money as the answer to our problems and it's really not. A lot of the times that I've felt most secure in our finances is when we've made.

Tali: The least amount of money, but we just spent it really wisely. Yeah, 

Cody: it's, it's both, of course, it's both. I look at making money and managing money, sort of like working out and nutrition, you know, you just to say that one is more important than the other, or doesn't need the other one. Not true. Mm-hmm. You can manipulate the equation a little bit back and forth.

Cody: I think it's easier to make more money than it is to spend less . 

Tali: So he had said something [00:25:00] like, I think this was either the same post or maybe a different one, but it's in the same vein. He said that, you know, people who will even make more money, like can still live paycheck to paycheck. 

Cody: Oh yeah. I've known, I've known many people like that who are making six figures, but they have $600 car payments, which is just bizarre to me.

Cody: I'm not criticizing anyone who's out here listening to this, but you know, I'm not sure what the motive is to have a car payment that's six or $700 when you could, if you just bought a cheaper car and then saved that money and then you could go buy your Lexus or your Beamer or whatever it is for cash and you'd pay a lot less for it by doing that.

Cody: Mm-hmm. . And you'd only be buying, you know, if, if you're making six figures, you'd only be driving that cheap car for maybe six months. So I don't understand why people can't swallow that pill if to, you know, to drive a Honda for six months and then save up for their expensive car [00:26:00] rather than have a $700 car.

Cody: But that's what 

Tali: happens to so many people when you level up in your tax bracket, like you just bite off more, you give yourself more bills because you now have the bandwidth to do so. It doesn't actually change the experience. And when it came to our finances something that was really important to me was.

Tali: To have less stress around money. Yeah. You know, when we first got together, like that shit kept me up at night and that's not just like something people say, like, it was so stressful to me and I would try to be doing math in my head, like at any time we would go out to a restaurant, you know, it was just so uncomfortable.

Tali: And for me it was mostly important to just feel like we had a handle on our finances. Mm-hmm. and checking in as thoroughly as we do every week that goes really far in that department. So, yeah, it just goes to show that, you know, when it comes to getting your finances sorted, it's a matter of like, Staying in touch with [00:27:00] it.

Tali: Right. Like not having any surprises, having it all out on the table, especially when big changes are being made, especially as a 

Cody: couple in a relationship. 

Tali: Yeah. And making those decisions together. Right. Flexing that muscle. And then, you know, making more money is always helpful and then deciding how you spend it.

Tali: Like that just is another arena where like there are multiple touchpoints that when you're looking at the all together. Would that be like a grade than the sum of its parts? 

Cody: I think so, yeah. Yeah. I think it was Mark Twain that said that a budget is deciding where your money goes instead of wondering where it went.

Cody: If he didn't say it sounds like Mark 

Tali: Heins. I would say that's the story of our financial life. Don't you think? Oh, yeah. 

Cody: Yeah. Back to the metrics idea though, I think we can assess our financial health in many ways besides just our debt. Mm-hmm. , if you look at big picture, we've paid off over $20,000 worth of debt.

Cody: I forget what the number is now. 

Tali: It was a lot. We [00:28:00] had mentioned it in a previous podcast though. 

Cody: Yeah. So I think it's closer to like 28, almost $30,000 that we've paid. Off completely. We own a motorcycle outright that was woo, $12,000 in debt at the time, and the retail value of it was only 12,000. So I couldn't trade it in.

Cody: It was either stuck with it or find a private seller and it was fall and nobody buys motorcycles 

Tali: in the fall. Right. I remember really feeling stuck about what to do. Yeah. And I, I remember being really pushy about it, being like, this is really important for me that you keep it, cuz I know you love it and I love it.

Tali: Yeah. I love being on the back of the bike with you. 

Cody: Yeah. Hopefully we get to do that later today. Yeah. So Yeah, it was over, well it was about a $300 payment and I was two months behind. So, and 

Tali: it was a fat bill for us at the time. You know, a lot of our payments were like a hundred dollars here, a hundred dollars there.

Tali: Yeah. Even our car payment was less than that. Mm-hmm. . And that $300 payment at first felt like a kick in the ass all the time. 

Cody: Yeah. And just to [00:29:00] clarify my hypocrisy here, , that motorcycle's definitely not a need that was just sort of a knee jerk purchase of like one of those moments in life where you feel like life is too short.

Cody: Like, I deserve this kind of thing. I mean, it was a really dumb financial purchase to be honest, but it also 

Tali: became your only mode of transportation 

Cody: for a while. Yeah. But still, no matter how you slice it, it's a $14,000 bike and I could get a really good bike for a third of that if it wasn't a Harley, you know, and it, you know, it could have had to have a Harley.

Cody: Yeah. It had to be that one. And so, Yeah, I see. I see the hypocrisy. But I guess my point is, is that we paid that off completely. We went from being in a really sticky, bad situation with it to then getting ahead on the payments and yeah, 

Tali: we did. Damn, that was such a good feeling. Yeah. And 

Cody: we got ahead on the payments so far that when Covid hit, we were able to stop making payments for six months.

Cody: And they weren't, we weren't charged. They were never [00:30:00] delinquent. Yeah. Because we were that far ahead on them. Forgot about that. And then once our financial situation turned around a little bit, we ended up paying it off early. So even by the metric of debt forgiveness or debt free, we are making progress in the big picture, but temporarily we've decided to.

Cody: Intentionally put a pause on that so that we can build up resources for launching our business. And to me, that's not a step backwards, that's still a step forward. It's just a different metric that you have to consider, which is our time freedom and our financial security to be able to make sure that we can pay the bills while there might be a little lull in our income from quitting my job and, and launching in full time.

Cody: Well, and that's what 

Tali: I meant like by incorporating more metrics, it allows you to shift your values. You know, right now our soul purpose in life is not getting out of debt. We've made a lot of traction there and a lot of progress and gained a lot from that [00:31:00] experience that we're still moving forward with.

Tali: You know, just because we're putting a pause on the snowball doesn't mean that we're not doing minimum payments every month. Like those are still happening. But we are prioritizing our future right now. Mm-hmm. . And we put ourselves in a position to really hit it hard and sprint for the next couple of months.

Tali: And so you know, all of those things are still in play. We're just kind of putting more eggs in one basket. Mm-hmm. Than the other. 

Cody: So there's two criticisms that I hear against Dave Ramsey's approach by other financial advisors and gurus, et cetera, Uhhuh. One of 'em is that by making debt free, you're sort of primary metric above all else, like this urgency to get debt free.

Cody: You may be missing out on two different opportunities. One, well, I guess they're kind of the same thing which is investment with investment opportunities. You may be missing out if you're so obsessed about getting out of debt. That could actually [00:32:00] hold you back in the long run. So in our case right now, we're assuming that our business is probably going to make more money, or at least as much, but give us a lot of time freedom.

Cody: So our journey to getting outta debt can happen just as faster or faster, even putting a pause on paying off that debt in order to put the money in and invest it into the business. And that's a lot of criticism that Dave Ramsey gets is that he's so obsessed over people getting completely debt free that they can miss out on investment opportunities.

Cody: Sure. And one of which would be real estate. A lot of people make a lot of money in various types of real estate. Real estate, what am I trying to say? Like,

Cody: God, I'm totally blanking on the word. Like structures. So short term rentals, long term rentals. , you know, Airbnbs or whatever, there's lots of different opportunities, but most people can't just go out and buy investment properties for cash. Right. And there may be even a, [00:33:00] some cases against that because there could be tax incentives, for instance, to pay less taxes on investment properties that you have mortgages on.

Cody: So, and it frees up, you know, even if you did have $2 million in the bank, if you got a mortgage on an investment home and the, and the rent is bringing in more than your mortgage, then you're still making money in cash flowing, and you still have the 2 million in the bank. Right. Whereas with Dave Ramsey's method, it's like, well you have to spend all of that money in order to buy the house.

Cody: And so anyway, there's two criticisms I just wanted to throw out there that were not total zealots on any one person. Methods, like we're doing it our way, you know? 

Tali: Well, we used his steps. Yeah. And the thing is, is when people are looking specifically to get out of debt, I think Dave Ramsey is a great person to go to.

Tali: Mm-hmm. , maybe not for like all personal financial methods, but in terms of like how to get out of debt strategically and like, [00:34:00] especially in your fear, in a really dire situation. His methodology really does work. Yeah. 

Tali: And but I think it really applies to what we're talking about here, which is having multiple metrics of success.

Tali: Yeah. To open up to other ways of looking at it. Yes. Different points of view. 

Tali: So many ways of making financial progress besides just getting outta debt. Yeah. There's many ways of looking at your fitness besides stepping on a scale. 

Tali: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you get to really decide what matters to you.

Tali: You know, I think if you were to look at a list of 15 different items and kind of decide like what's most important to you, you might be surprised. Like quality of sleep is not really something that I think about when it comes to fitness or new nutrition, but

Cody: I do . 

Tali: I'm sure you do. But you know, that is just kind of a different pathway that you can prioritize.

Tali: And you know, a lot of those, like all of the, the efforts that you're doing, whether it's in the gym or with your food or with your finances, like it [00:35:00] raises all ships. If you use zero in on one thing but it could be like surprising what you tend to like, lean into and kind of allow things that you might have been obsessive about to just like be on the back burner.

Tali: Mm-hmm. like thinking about how I fit in my clothes, I would say is. Like more important to me than weight. I don't necessarily care how much I weigh especially in a life now that it doesn't really matter. Mm-hmm. . But you know, not having to weigh in for competition, but the way I fit in my clothes is always the most important thing to me when it comes to my nutrition, because I don't like having to keep buying new clothes.

Tali: I don't want my clothes to feel well. I like buying new clothes, but I don't like having to buy the same shit over and over again. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like I'm like, jeans poor right now, and I just really hate that feeling because I would like to just have them last a long time, you know, and not grow out of them.

Tali: So you know, if I, you know, lean more into. Like how in control I'm feeling of my [00:36:00] thoughts or how much water I'm taking in a day or whatever. Like those other pieces that I had previously been obsessed with tend to just fall into place. Mm-hmm. , they become byproducts as opposed to like obsessive thoughts.

Tali: Yeah. Because it's really easy to zero in on something so hard. There are people who are super obsessed with pring their lifts all the time. Yeah. And I think that you can. Like pleasantly delighted. Mm-hmm. to come across those experiences, even without having to chase them so hard because you've given yourself more options to lean into and more opportunities for appreciation and progress.

Tali: Yeah, absolutely. 

Tali: There's two things that brings to mind. First is that with CrossFit, I think one of the things that I loved the most about CrossFit when I first discovered it for myself is that I was already a trainer, but a lot of personal training back then was still following almost exclusively a body building model.[00:37:00] 

Tali: That somehow body building was a measure of fitness, and I have nothing against body building as a sport and. A lot of respect for the people who train in that way for physique or for, you know, whatever that, but that's a sport. It's no joke, , it's a sport. It's no joke. It's a lot of commitment and I think a lot of, it's a lot of rice.

Tali: Yeah. Well, and a lot of, a lot of those people look amazing. However, I think holding that up as a standard of fitness is really unfortunate because there's a term that is floated around in the athletic community long before CrossFit, which was all show and no go. And it's kind of insulting maybe, but I've seen it, I've seen it play out.

Tali: I've seen people who were bodybuilders who like came into my gym and they looked bad ass, like super lean, muscular. Like people would look at 'em, be like, oh man, like she's so fit. But she couldn't do a single pull up unassisted. When we went to modify the [00:38:00] workouts, she tried to do Fran and got halfway through and said, this is stupid.

Tali: And went and threw up . Oh no. It was like, it's like yeah. So there was just like exposing a big lack in her capacity to actually just do functional movement and work even though she looked amazing. And again, this is not knocking body building as a sport or power lifting or weightlifting or swimming or anything that is a sport.

Tali: But you have to understand that that's not necessarily the pinnacle of fitness in general as far as your capacity to live a life that's injury resistant or injury free to be able to do the things you want to do as far as activities or being able to accept new adventures. You know, a lot of people in the power lifting world might be really strong and maybe even have things like flexibility cuz there's a lot of.

Tali: I think there's more emphasis on cross training, even in sports specific training now than there used to be. [00:39:00] That's good. But I bet that a lot of those, you know, especially heavy power lifters, would not enjoy going on a hike or elk hunting with me or anything like that. Like they're severely restricted, right.

Tali: And things that they can do. So having multiple metrics I think is also a good insurance to be more well rounded in your progress. 

Tali: Well, this is why CrossFit was king for such a long time is that it really hit a lot of those needs in terms of like flexibility and agility and balance and coordination. I forget, aren't there like 12.

Cody: 10. 10, 10 fitness domains. That 10 fitness domains. But the, that was the first thing that came up to me when you were just talking about a byproduct that, you know, if you focus on different metrics, because I also know CrossFitters, who are super bad ass CrossFitters, who look fucking amazing, but their focus is not on their abs.

Cody: You know, they're not training to get abs. They're training to be super functional for performance. And [00:40:00] then as a byproduct of being a really high performer, they're also lean and sexy. You know, and that just comes as a, as a byproduct. And I love that. I love that, that that can be a, a. A different, it's almost like a, a metric in hindsight instead of something that you're going toward.

Tali: Yeah. Well, you know, I was able to kind of experience that for myself too. And once I really put my performance as a weightlifter, as the most important thing my nutrition cleaned up. Mm-hmm. , my body looked great. Mm-hmm. Again, those were byproducts. Like I kind of got into training with the hopes to look a certain way, and then when I decided to let that go mm-hmm.

Tali: that's when everything started to happen. Really focusing on performance really allowed all of those other pieces to take shape in the direction that I wanted. Yeah. And it's tricky because I, I feel like you have to kind of like rotate your [00:41:00] focus because being too performance focused, you know, has its own downfalls eventually.

Tali: In terms of like, you know, you just said like, I had not PRD in years. That can be really hard to sit with mm-hmm. and become really

Tali: it can just feel really bad. Like after years and years and years and that not happening. And you're chasing after it. Yeah. But 

Cody: begin again that that brings us back to a very specific domain, though. Your whole competition is three lifts. Two really? And so if you're not, if you're not pring in those two specific lifts, it can feel like you're not making progress.

Cody: But that may not be true. You know, you may be making progress in other areas, not even in your sport, but even like in life. 

Tali: Yeah. It's like your identity, right? Yeah. It was exciting for me to quote unquote quit weightlifting competitively because it made me think, okay, now some other element of my life is gonna be in the spotlight.

Tali: Maybe this is the time where I really dive deep into playing [00:42:00] music or art or something. So, you know, like when I would get injured or something, I would call my mom and cry and be. You know, at a loss. Just like, what am I gonna do with my life now? Like I no longer can do what I want? And of course, it's like incredibly dramatic and I would just do a few weeks of PT and be fine and like go back to training.

Tali: But there was too much emphasis on me, Tali as a weightlifter that, you know, I think a lot of people who have been in sports competitively experience this, where that part of their life ends or you know, becomes much less a part of their life. And then you are kind of left being like, well, what else is there?

Tali: Mm-hmm. , what else is left? Mm-hmm. . And that happens in relationships like, you know, when my first love and I had broken things off it just was like a feeling of groundlessness. I had put so much of my time and identity into being this person's partner that I [00:43:00] wasn't sure what of me was left. And I think that that's the important thing about bringing in multiple markers, whether it's in your athletic life or in your personal life.

Tali: You have to have other things to fall back on. You have to, 

Cody: or not just fall back on, but for that tide to be rising Yeah. In multiple areas. Yeah. There's, I think, a more emphasis on this these days that I've noticed in, you know, the personal development world. People like James Altucher's comes to mind and he talks about having a daily practice that's involved.

Cody: Different categories, and I don't remember all of his categories. And he's not a very religious person. So his category for spiritual is relationships. Like has he done something for his relationships that day that's positive. One is like learning or coming up with ideas and you know, he's got these different things that are mind, body, spirit kind of thing.

Cody: And making sure that they're all being touched on. Because if one starts [00:44:00] to get neglected, you can start to feel sick, depressed, et cetera, and not really even know why. And that's why it's important to have metrics and, you know, his metrics for things like spirituality or learning or whatever might just be a matter of counting as practices.

Cody: Like, did I do this today? Did I, did I do some mindfulness? Did I learn something? Did. come up with a new idea and did I put, did I invest time, quality, time in my relationships? Mm-hmm. . And you know, if, if you're touching on all those categories, then you can ensure some mode of progress in, in all the areas enough to stay healthy at least.

Cody: Yeah. 

Tali: Yeah. And even in the gym, I was just thinking about a session that I had with a client the other day. We were doing pistol squats and do you remember when we were doing pistol squats the other day? And I was telling you how I'm kind of particular about scaling them because you can prioritize different elements of the pistol squat depending on the [00:45:00] variation that you choose.

Tali: Mm-hmm. . And so I'll say like, this is the modification that you can use. If you wanna focus on unilateral strength, this is the modification that you can use if you want to prioritize. Balance. And so I'll kind of show all of those options and then let my client choose which one of those mm-hmm.

Tali: resonates with them. Like most, most of the time I'll just kind of choose it for them because I know where their weaknesses are. But if it's, you know, unilateral work is something that I'm gonna put in a client's daily work anyway, just because that's just very important to, to manage. And, you know, her upper body is really like our main focus together.

Tali: And so when it came to this lower body exercise, I was like, you can choose which one do you wanna prioritize, but it shows that this one exercise has a lot of different ways of incorporating like different elements and you can choose which one is what you wanna focus on today. Mm-hmm. . [00:46:00] 

Cody: Yeah, so another thing that came up to mind, I had given a one earlier, so I don't wanna leave off without giving a number two cuz that doesn't make sense to say first of all.

Cody: Oh, sorry, not say second of all. 

Tali: Good on you for remembering that. It's okay. It's easy to forget. 

Cody: I just wanted to touch on the idea that relates a bit to my book, which is Stop Setting Goals. And that is that in the method of trying to establish practices around a vision rather than setting concrete goals, is that I think there may be a criticism that there's no metrics involved and you can't improve what you don't measure.

Cody: That is a saying and so, I just wanted to point out that metrics can also just be, in hindsight, you don't have to try to measure things before they happen. So for instance, if I know that I wanna deadlift 500 pounds, if I try to put a time limit on that, there could be a lot of psychological issues with trying to put a time limit on hitting a specific personal [00:47:00] record on a specific lift by a specific day.

Cody: But that doesn't mean that I can't track my improvement on the deadlift. So by keeping a journal and recording my prs from 4 0 5 to four 15 to et cetera, I can see if I'm on the right trajectory if I'm making progress and I can see milestones in hindsight as I hit them. Yeah. And then whenever 500 shows up, great, cool.

Cody: Huge victory. But it's just another milestone in that trajectory of getting stronger in the deadlift. So it's just something that I wanted to point out is that I think some people get obsessed over future metrics. Or targets of hitting very specific things and you can still feel, you can still gain a confidence and a sense of victory by just paying attention to current and past metrics and comparing your trajectory and your progress rather than being obsessed over some future number.

Cody: So I just wanted to put that out there. Mm. [00:48:00] Because there's a difference between future metrics and past metrics.

Tali: What, what's coming to mind? I'm not exactly sure what has sparked this is, but when it comes to like the deadlift, the back squat, the front squat, the clean, you know, there are like optimal ranges between those lifts in terms of like, if you are well balanced mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. , like your front squat most optimally will be about 80.

Tali: Of your back squat and then the clean kind of follows suit. Mm-hmm. in relation to your front squat. Mm-hmm. . I'm not sure why that came to mind, but I think it's also because setting out numbers for yourself, like can seem kind of arbitrary. You know? It can seem just like a, that would be nice. Mm-hmm.

Tali: it's, I don't know. I feel like they're taken really seriously when it's, I think they're always arbitrary. You think? 

Cody: Yeah. I mean all of this whole, 

Tali: [00:49:00] cause they're not really individualized, are they? 

Cody: They're not individualized. And there's also barriers being broken all the time. I mean, human performance today makes human performance 50 years ago looked like a joke.

Cody: Yeah, that's true. Mean it's amazing. When you look at in any sport, it's now that, now that TV has been around, you know, recorded video has been around long enough. You can see in any sport, you look at the best of the best from the black and white videos. And it looks like a junior high game now. It's amazing.

Cody: What's making you think of that? Just a particular footage. Well, I've seen examples of this recently. Yeah. Like basketball, baseball, football, like everything, you look, you hear these greats, these names that have been tossed around for generations of these great ball players or whatever. And you look at their performance compared to modern ball players and it's like they might make the team, you know, like it's, so I guess my point is, is that all these numbers are sort of arbitrary anyway.

Cody: [00:50:00] E even in the realm of human performance or financial goals or whatever, you know, there was a time when I was a kid when being a millionaire was like, you've made it. And for most of the world that's true. Like people in western culture, I think we are such spoiled fucks that we don't realize when people are out there protesting the 1%, that they are in the 1% on a global scale.

Cody: If you, if you live in an apartment in the city, even if it's some kind of like, Even if you think of it as a crap hole apartment, if you have a TV and a cell phone and you live without like 20 people in your house at the same time and you know where your next meal is coming from, like you are the 1% compared to most of the world.

Cody: You know, it's arbitrary. On the other hand, millionaire used to mean you're rich. And now it's like, well, you might be able to afford to own your own home one day if you're a millionaire, . You know, it's like, 

Tali: so the bar is always racing. 

Cody: It's always changing. [00:51:00] And so yeah, all the, I think, I think all metrics are somewhat arbitrary and that's another I, to me, it just bolsters my argument for looking at past metrics instead of future metrics, because the future's just arbitrary.

Cody: You don't know how important something's gonna be to you in the future, but by looking at the past, you can see a trend. You can see that my clean and jerk has gone from, you know, from. 80 to 85, to 87 to 92, you know, you can see a trajectory and being like, I'm making progress, but having some arbitrary number that you're just aiming for somewhere out in the future doesn't mean much really.

Cody: Well, 

Tali: and you've also talked about goals as being you know, you don't find out until you achieve them, whether or not it felt like an achievement. Like maybe you didn't raise the bar high enough for yourself. And I had a coach once who told me at best I'd be able to snatch 80 and clean and jerk a hundred, [00:52:00] and I haven't snatched 80 yet.

Tali: I have cleaned a hundred. But I don't, I feel like in that case, rather than chasing it, it almost like put a glass ceiling up for me being. Hmm. I'll never be able to achieve any more than that. Yeah. That's such 

Cody: a bullshit thing to say to 

Tali: anybody. I know. I think about that now and like, why the fuck would they ever say that?

Tali: That's a terrible thing to say as a coach. Cuz yeah. It, it it kind of like made me think about those as being like numbers that like I have arrived to my physical peak. Mm-hmm. , but I should also have the possibility to train beyond that too. Mm-hmm. or push beyond that. Absolutely. So it's not really like just pulling a number out of thin air of like, what I'd like to hit one day.

Tali: You should just keep going. . 

Cody: Yeah. Yeah. But you can keep going with metrics. It doesn't mean you just have to throw all numbers out the window. You know, you can, you can [00:53:00] measure progress. 

Tali: No, definitely not. And you know, in, I think there are also like controlled environments. Like if you're looking at state records for instance, like if you want.

Tali: That top spot or like the leaderboard. Mm-hmm. , you know, you can use those as like stepping stones or kind of mild markers to reach for. I guess 

Cody: there's a method in martial arts and boxing where they teach you to punch through your target. Mm-hmm. , you don't wanna just like teach your brain to punch two your target because you'll, you may start to get the habit of pulling back on your punch at the last second and you'll actually hit it with a lot more force if you just try to go through it.

Cody: So I tend to look at that with goals or whether it's financial or fitness or whatever, is to be like, well, I want to be on this trajectory and see how far I can go through it. Like it's [00:54:00] not enough to say, well, six figure income, or. That 500 pound deadlift, you know, I want to just continue to make progress and see how far I can get.

Cody: Mm-hmm. with it kind of a sense of curiosity, like how far through this target can I go? I 

Tali: love that analogy. I think that's so perfect. Yeah. 

Cody: Got anything else? 

Tali: Well, I feel like we've talked a lot about metrics in terms of like their variety and their ability to play off each other too. And I don't know, I guess I imagine this conversation going a little bit differently as to like maybe more in depth of like explaining like what different kinds of metrics could be used.

Tali: And you know, that might have taken a little bit of mapping beforehand. Doing so. Think 

Cody: No. I can think of a few things off the top of my head because you and I have been talking a lot about results metrics. Mm-hmm. . And one of my [00:55:00] favorite metrics to track is my consistency metrics. Yeah. So rather than track how much I've lifted, I mean I do, I track how much I've lifted on every session, but you know how many reps and the time it took me to do a metabolic conditioning or whatever.

Cody: But my favorite metric to try to improve on all the time is how many workouts have I done in a row? How many days can I go with consistency? Because I know how important consistency is to bring it full circle back to the beginning of our conversation. You know, being able to do that, that 20 miles every day was much better result than sprint, rest.

Cody: Sprint, rest, and Consistency is something that I've fought most of my life. You know, I've had struggles being consistent and you and I've talked about that, the ups and downs. So to me that's a metric that's really important for me to track is how many days in a row can I put this effort in? And that's a win in and of itself.

Cody: Even [00:56:00] if, even if the lifting numbers don't change or the conditioning numbers or the financial benchmarks, maybe that progress isn't as apparent. But if I can say, Hey, I have 23 days in a row that I've worked on this thing, that's a 

Tali: win. So, you know what this makes me think of though is like, you are now on this like path of streaks.

Tali: Mm-hmm. like unbroken streaks. Mm-hmm. , what does it feel like when you break it? Probably like garbage. 

Cody: No, because it's just an opportunity to reset and, and try again and see if I can break that pr, now I'm going for pr cuz now I do have something to shoot for. Right. If, if my last streak was 23 days. Then now I have an objective.

Cody: Well, let's blow past 23 days and see how far I can go past. 

Tali: Well, so this is, this definitely takes us to the beginning of the, the conversation we were talking about. Pendulum swings. I'm thinking about the app that you and I use for learning languages du lingo. I've been [00:57:00] on and off now learning Italian and I had this like hundred and 71 day streak and I was super excited about it.

Tali: And ever since that streak came to an end, I haven't been able to get above like three weeks. Yeah. What the f is that about? 

Cody: Yeah, maybe it feels too daunting now to try to get back to that. 

Tali: Well, there was a while where I was like, oh, I don't care about the streak. Like as long as I come back to it, right?

Tali: Like, just as long as it's like meditation or training or like any other thing. As long as I like keep circling back. then. Great. But I'm wondering if there aren't enough metrics being rewarded or acknowledged Yeah. In that particular realm. You know, there were certain lessons that were like very hard for me to get past and then I finally did when I had put in consistent effort.

Tali: But you know, maybe if I take up that friend who I have here in the county who speaks [00:58:00] Italian, maybe that would be another way of kinda like rounding out that experience of being able to see like, oh, well these conversations are coming more naturally, or I can think about these things in Italian, or whatever, you know?

Tali: Mm-hmm. I think it was too streak based. Maybe, I don't know. I, that's just a guess based on what we're talking about. Like there's too much emphasis on one thing. Mm-hmm. . And it's easy if there's only one measurement or one metric that you are potentially obsessive about or kind of holding all your cards in that you become more susceptible to that pendulum swinging as opposed to kind of like touching multiple points that can kind of prop each other up.

Tali: That can kind of round out the experience so that you're not leaning too hard to one side. Yeah. And potentially falling over. 

Cody: Yeah. And that's where multiple metrics comes in. I think that's absolutely the point when I. In an early podcast, it described my jump rope practice, two minutes a day, low [00:59:00] barrier, you know, no excuse, blah, blah, blah.

Cody: But the truth is, after about 30 days, I, well, so I think I had a 20 some day streak and then one day off, and then it was like 12 and then one day off, and then we got covid and we were on vacation. So I got my jump rope in on the first day of vacation, and then the next day I had a fever and I hardly left the bedroom.

Cody: And since then, I have not been on the practice, but I've made a conscious decision that my, I've been suffering from severe fatigue, like sleep issues, work stress, we've got this big transition and I feel like there's a bandwidth issue where. trying to perform on many, many different domains right now is too much.

Cody: And so I'm trying to just focus on making sure that the podcast is edited and goes out on time and you know, necessary things are getting done around the house and I'm still taking care of my [01:00:00] body so that I don't get sick. Basically, it's like kind of like a triage situation where I'm having to just decide that there are more important things.

Cody: But that particular practice, I know that my streak is somewhere in 28 days or something like that, that to, to hit a new personal record on the streak. But the thing I got out of that 28 days is that I was able to start doing alternating footwork, which I could never do before. So that's another metric that I know that's true.

Cody: Oh 

Tali: my gosh, I cannot wait for you to post side by sides of that footage because. It was super junky in the beginning. . 

Cody: Yeah. And so I don't expect to be able to pick up where I left off. However, I know that that's there, I know that the, the residual's there and there's motivation for me to return to it.

Cody: Cause I saw the progress in such a short time. It was literally like three weeks and I could do some alternating footwork, which has always tripped me up my whole life in the past. So that's just another example of both hindsight metrics. They're not future metrics, but they're also multiples. So [01:01:00] I can say, well, yeah, I totally fell off the wagon on the streak, but I gained a new skill in the process of doing that.

Cody: So I know that if I return to it, there's a motivation to return to it because I know that I can pick that back up and, and take it to the next level. 

Tali: Yeah. It seems like this conversation has kind of turned into maybe like a PSA or like a call to action to. You know, look at any particular, something that you're wanting to incorporate into your life, a skill, a practice, a discipline of some kind, but to kind of stretch yourself to see more than one area of progress.

Tali: Mm-hmm. , or more than one area of engagement. 

Cody: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for me, it's almost like I should have one of those little rolling numbers on my back that says like, incident free for six days. You know, because training without injury is like a big deal. Yeah. 

Tali: That's come up in my mind a few times actually [01:02:00] throughout 

Cody: this conversation.

Cody: And I'm, I'm, I'll be turning 50 before too long, and so it's important for me to be able to train and not wreck myself in the process of training, because every time there's a setback like that, there's a, there's a potential as you age that at some point a setback is gonna be your last setback. Like it might take you out of the game and.

Cody: I, that hopefully for me is decades away, but still, it's something I'm conscious of, that the more time I have off of training, the more detrimental it is for me to be able to maintain my health in the long run. So that's just one more metric. Like, can I train smart? Can I train consistently, but smart enough that I'm not wrecking some joint, or, you know, putting myself into a state of fatigue that makes me sick.

Cody: You know? Yeah. Cause that's definitely happened before too. Yeah, definitely. So, yeah, just something to think about when you guys are out there wanting to achieve something. Like you said, it could be financial even relationships. You know, I've, I've seen this before where people [01:03:00] will, you and I make sure that we have a date night, once a week of some kind, but usually it's more than once a week.

Cody: Like, we'll look at an excuse. We have to kind of go out and grab, grab a coffee or at the same car 

Tali: broke down. Let's go together. . Yeah. Yeah. 

Cody: Or yeah. Or Yeah, we're hungry. We need to go shopping. It's not good to go shopping hungry, so let's go on a date. Yeah, . So but I think that I've seen people sort of make this weird connection between like a date night and a healthy relationship.

Cody: And it's like, well, there's probably other things that you could focus on besides just a date night. Like, what's the qu, like, are you on your phone during the date night? Are you, you know, bringing up things that are important. And so I think it's a probably a great exercise to think about something that you wanna level up in your life in any area, and see if you can break down.

Cody: Again, it's gonna be an arbitrary number, but five or more, you know, five or more metrics that you can attach [01:04:00] to this new practice or this new habit or this new skill that you wanna develop and not get myopic about one particular result. 

Tali: Yeah, I think that that's an amazing takeaway. I think it's very easy to almost buy into having a narrow focus.

Tali: Mm-hmm. You know, we were just listening to our podcast the other day, you know, as they're coming out, they're, what we're recording is many, many episodes away from what was just published. And we were just talking about the benefits of being a generalist. Mm-hmm. . And I think that, you know, obviously your natural tendency to be one allows you more ease to kind of open yourself to this idea of.

Tali: Noting multiple metrics with any pursuit. Yeah. Where I think for a lot of folks it might make more sense to them to like zero in on something super hard and do it really well. But I think what it does, like I've said, it can change your values, but it can also just enrich [01:05:00] the experience more and like show you how it can like fit along with other important things in your life.

Tali: It doesn't have to feel like this isolated incident because when it is so isolated, like you've talked about with certain practices or it streaks, you know, like then the whole thing like goes to hell. Like if that one. Metric breaks down. Mm-hmm. , you have to have other metrics in place to kind of prop it up or for you to kind of lean into when circumstances change, which they will.

Cody: Yeah. You know, you just reminded me of a, a really interesting thing. Y'all can look at this up online and see examples of this where people get so obsessed over a first place finishing competition. And if you look at a podium in on the Olympics, you can look at, you know, look at a bunch of 'em, try to find a whole bunch of pictures of people on the podium at the Olympics.

Cody: And the first place person is always like this huge smile, like this, oh, victory first place. And the third place person [01:06:00] is often. Similar disposition, big smiles, sense of victory, holding their medal, et cetera. But the second place person is usually stoic and serious because they feel like they just missed first.

Cody: Aw. And it's this weird psychological thing. It's very common. I, I've heard discussions about this, but you can actually just go look yourself and I promise if you find 10 pictures of three people on a podium, eight of 'em will probably match what I'm talking about. , I'm 

Tali: gonna look a few up while you're 

Cody: talking about this.

Cody: But I think that that person who got second place is missing exactly what we're talking about. Like they had one metric in mind, one metric to be first, to be the winner and. Fathom the fact that being like on that day, the second best person in the world at that sport means that they're better than like 99.9 9, 9 9 9% of the people in the world at that sport.

Cody: And the victory that can be thought of in that way, but it's [01:07:00] because they had everything wound up in one metric. 

Tali: It kind of reminds me of what we were talking about just yesterday when we were at Amber. Race. So Cody's got a niece who is more of a track star and is currently doing cross country, I think as a way of staying in shape, which, you know, very different objectives there.

Tali: Yeah. 

Cody: She does a hundred meter, I think a hundred meter hurdles anyways, like short hurdle 

Tali: races. And we were talking about like, okay, this might be just like her means of staying in shape, but man, don't you think it would be hard to like stay in that focus running alongside all these other people where cross country is their primary sport?

Tali: Yeah. And they're just like trying to get past you. Don't you think that'd be so hard to like stay true to the pursuit or like kind of like what you were saying with these people on the podium like you are now. Your whole attitude is being framed by like your positioning between these two [01:08:00] people.

Tali: Yeah. It's no longer about like all the other important things that took place. It's just now you've kind of been funneled into this like really weird dynamic, which I'm sure just with how we have been kind of like drilled into our minds and in our society we like first, second, and third and what those mean.

Tali: And you know, the, the. Things that we attribute to the colors of the metals. Like there's so many things here that are like deeply, deeply ingrained. Mm-hmm. . 

Cody: One thing that I thought was cool though is at the end, their coach was trying to dig out of them any victory that they had. Yes. I 

Tali: loved that. And so, I'm 

Cody: so glad you mentioned it.

Cody: Yeah. So, you know, all the girls on that team were not in like the first finishers, but one was like, well, I didn't walk any of it. Or one person said, you know, well, I didn't walk until the uphill part, which you know, is better than I did last time. So looking for, again, those various metrics. Are you finding 

Tali: pictures there?

Tali: I'm finding so many, and it's kind of creepy, isn't it? I don't know if I'm seeing it just because I was like prefaced to see it, [01:09:00] but I see it. 

Cody: No, I mean, all you gotta do is look up random pictures of, of like all three people on a podium and you'll, you'll see that consistent thing. Yeah. 

Tali: Look at this one.

Tali: Right. You can tell who was second place, right? Yeah. . 

Cody: Yeah. From a distance even I can see like the two happy people and the second place person is like, eh, I did it. Except because the second place person feels like they just missed first and the third place person feels like I podium, you know? Fuck. Yeah.

Cody: Yeah. 

Tali: That's crazy. Yeah. I don't know. I'm trying to think about, so I remember when I had podiums at this Meet and Bend and I was up against a few catalyst lifters and I was really excited because like Greg Everett was there and so it was Amy Everett. And you know, I've been following their team for a long time and they've got really good lifters and one of the lifters ended up getting knocked out a competition due to an injury.

Tali: But Another lifter, Lily Salisbury, I believe is how you say her last [01:10:00] name. She ended up placing first. And I mean, I already knew in this competition I was not gonna be able to beat them. Like they're just really fucking good at what they do. But I came in second that day and I was freaking stoked.

Tali: Mm. To come in second to a catalyst lifter. So there are times where, you know, that won't be the case. And I went six for six that day. So that's another reason to be stoked, is like, yeah, I didn't win, but I made all of my lifts that day. I mean, 

Cody: that just backs up everything we've been 

Tali: talking about. I know.

Tali: Yeah. But I'm just saying there are probably some second place finishers who feel pretty good about it. Yeah. But that also comes with some other things that we've been talking about, you know, in terms of like mindset, the joy and having gratitude for being there, like mm-hmm. , you know, those are things that I think will really help when you tap into.

Tali: Metrics. Like they might not be hard numbers that you're always assessing, but like, you know, Cody and I [01:11:00] have a practice of gratitude for our marriage every week. It tends to fall on Sundays a lot of times right before we go to sleep, cuz that's when I remember to do it. But my mom gave us this exercise to thank each other for something to say what's going well in our marriage, to say what we're challenged by, to say what I love about you, and then a small ask.

Tali: Those are all the things I think. And you know, there are so many things about our marriage that I think I could point to that make it so strong. But I think it's important to like, look at many things. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. , you know, I think that's just another example of how. You know, it's not about how much you have in the bank, it's not necessarily how much time you spend together.

Tali: You know, you and I are spending the least amount of time together than we have in years. But there's so much strength to our relationship for other reasons. 

Cody: Yeah. We're working on so many things together and, 

Tali: and what it can do. It, it can really turn your attention towards things that you feel like you have control over [01:12:00] when there are other areas or metrics that are bound by circumstances, you know?

Tali: Yeah. I think that's really important to have that ability to kinda like shift your focus or just like look in another direction for that feeling of achievement or that feeling of like fulfillment. 

Cody: Yeah. You've reminded me of something that came up in a meditation practice of mine not long ago through the hmm.

Cody: Sam Harris's app. I forget what it's called. Waking up and. It was a meditation, and I know this was on somebody else's podcasts, , that I said this. So I remember specifically the idea of reframing. And so you can take a similar event and reframe it. And I think it's related to what you're talking about here, because sometimes if the metrics aren't exactly what you had hoped that they might be you might be able to reframe it and find progress in other areas that you hadn't considered before.

Cody: And so the idea in this example of reframing was if somebody tackled you and like took you to the ground, all of a [01:13:00] sudden you might be afraid because you just got attacked out of the blue. And then, but if you reframe the same exact action as. You're in a football game and somebody tackles you and you go to the ground, you might stand up in victory because you, you made six yards, you know, like progress.

Cody: And then, and I was even taking it somewhere else in my mind during the meditation that wasn't even brought up. I'm thinking, well also you could be attacked or like tackled by a stranger on the side of the street and tackled and get up with immense gratitude because you were looking at your damn phone and about to step in front of a bus and they saved your life.

Cody: You know, like , there's a lot . Well, that's a, well, I'm just saying like there's a lot of different ways to reframe the exact same picture, you know? 

Tali: It sounds like a choose your own adventure book or like that hodgepodge game that people play to build stories with each 

Cody: each other. . Well, it's just an extreme example, Uhhuh, but it's [01:14:00] pointing out an illustration that a lot of times in your life you can reframe.

Cody: something that you might have a knee jerk reaction to think of negatively, yes. But maybe zoom out and say, well, in the big picture, what does this look like? Or five years from now, what could this mean? Or what can I take from this? Or what, what did I learn from this? Or what you know, what does this mean that I did right or wrong?

Cody: Or, you know, like there's just, there's many, many, many ways of searching for metrics outside of your initial framing of an event. Totally. 

Tali: And I actually have another example that came up in a training session this week. I have a tendency to get really personal with my clients and we go for walks and talk about our lives.

Tali: And this week we were talking about how people, when they are interested in, like finding a partner, how they have a tendency to want somebody with a job like this or have them look like this or have this skill, blah, blah, blah. Like kind of have like a laundry list of qualities that they want this person to have.

Tali: And my response to that was like, first of all, you're [01:15:00] gonna be looking forever if you are really trying to check all of these boxes. Mm-hmm. and I had come to decide, you know, after I had broken up with my boyfriend before meeting you, is that I wanted to tap into like, well this is how I want somebody to make me feel.

Tali: Hmm. Because you know, if you think about it, when you and I first met, you know, you were my boss. Mm-hmm. , you were living in my gym or you're in the gym. Yeah. , you had three kids. Mm-hmm. , these are all things that would like maybe, you know, you were 16 years older than I was. You still are 16 years older, but you know what I mean?

Tali: These are all things that like I list of deal breakers. Yeah. They could have totally been deal breakers or red flags or just like things that if I was super fixed on certain things that I wanted my next partner to have or possess or be I would've totally dismissed you. Mm-hmm. , you know, but you made me feel secure and seen and silly and thought [01:16:00] of, and all of these really important things that I felt like I wanted from my partner.

Tali: And that's what allowed me to move forward with you. And I think that a lot of those metrics of things that we want in a partner can be really superficial. Mm-hmm. They might not be the right thing to be turning your attention towards if you actually wanna acquire like a loving relationship. And there was kind of an extra detail to this that we thought was kind of funny.

Tali: You know, we were talking about, you know, kind of friends on either side who had been single for quite a long time and kind of. Building this list up in their head. And the list ended up sounding just like that person. They were essentially looking for like a clona themselves. . And I thought that that was kind of funny that that would happen because it's easy.

Tali: Like I said, when you become a little too obsessive about particular metrics it can kind of distort your reality, I think, in terms of what's really out there. Mm-hmm. Or what like possibility is out there really become, [01:17:00] you become very fixed on something that can be considered really arbitrary. It has to be a part of the bigger picture to make sense.

Tali: Yeah. Like what you were talking about with the numbers on the scale. 

Cody: Yeah. And you know, I think that parallels a little bit of your fitness journey too, because you started with CrossFit and then ended up in weightlifting, but that was because. At the time open to sort of shifting that focus and going a different direction.

Cody: And it was kind of an accident, like you entered a competition, sort of like a friendly competition, like a little gym event thing. Mm-hmm. in the category that just happened to be the only one available, the right. Everything else was filled up. And so that kind of took you down a different path. And I think being open to that sense of wonder in life is really important and not getting so fixated on a particular metric that you shut yourself off from other opportunities.

Cody: Yeah. 

Tali: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. It really sounds that way. Mm-hmm. like that's very 

Cody: possible. So one thing I do wanna bring [01:18:00] bring up before we jump off of this is people who tend to not set, to not have any metrics at all or to not track anything. I wrote an article about this quite some time ago, and I think it's actually on a now defunct blog.

Cody: For my gym, for my previous gym. So if I still have that article, I will freshen it up a little bit and republish it on live all your life.com. Cool. So go check it out. But I think it's very applicable to what we're talking about, so if I can dig it out, I'll put it up. And the analogy I used in there for people I was having, I was a little frustrated because some of the people were not checking into our fitness app and tracking their workouts.

Cody: They would show up and they'd do the work and then they'd leave. And not just once, but as a habit, they were not tracking anything. It's very frustrating for me as a coach for clients to not be tracking anything because you cannot. You cannot improve what you don't measure. Like you have to [01:19:00] have some metric somewhere of something.

Cody: And the analogy, we probably do improve, 

Tali: but you just don't know it. 

Cody: That's my point. That's the point I wrote about in the article is that you can get very discouraged while you're making progress because you don't see the progress. It's like, sure, you don't see yourself aging day to day, that you see yourself in the mirror.

Cody: But I can promise you, if you didn't see a reflection of yourself for 10 years and then you saw all of a sudden a reflection of yourself, it'd be like, holy shit. You know? Like, who's that old person looking at me? You know, like it would be a stark difference. And it's the same with most of the things that we do in our lives for progress.

Cody: If you're working out consistently and you're training and you're, you got, you're going to class, you're going to coach, you know, you're, you're doing all this stuff, but you're not tracking anything, it can be really easy six months down the line to fall off the wagon, get demotivated, cuz you don't think about all the progress you've made.

Cody: Mm. And as a coach, I can see it. Sometimes I see people come in who. Can't do a particular thing at all. And then six months later they're doing 30 reps of that thing. They couldn't do one of, and don't think [01:20:00] anything of it, but they don't think anything of it cuz it's such a gradual day to day progress.

Cody: That's just little bit by bit by bit. And so it's critical that you track your progress in anything that you're trying to improve on, whether that's fitness, finances, relationships, or whatever. There's gotta be some sort of metric that you can look at. And for relationships, maybe that's a little more nebulous.

Cody: But how about a journal? How about a gratitude journal? How about something that you can, you know, look back on and see where you were six months from now and use it as a, a health indicator. Are things better than they were six months ago or worse? You know? And, and, and those metrics can be really important to be able to look at.

Cody: But if you're not tracking anything, if you're not journaling or if you're not tracking your habits, you know, practices in an app or making notes or. Doing a podcast or whatever, , there's, you have to have some sort of record of where you've been cuz our brain just tries to adapt to the here and now all the time.

Cody: And you, you will [01:21:00] change in dramatic ways without realizing it if you don't have some way of reminding yourself of where you've been. So I just wanted to make sure that we got that in here, that we've been talking a lot about certain metrics or having multiple metrics, or not getting too fixated on future metrics,

Cody: But some people just don't do any kind of metric tracking at all. And I feel like those people are most prone to getting lost and discouraged because they might not be able to see the progress that they're making or the things that they need to improve. Well, 

Tali: it's just a, it's also just developing a self-awareness.

Tali: Yeah. Right. You gotta look at it. You gotta look. where you 

Cody: are. Yeah. And sometimes it's hard to read the label when you're inside the bottle. So having, having somebody else, having an outside perspective, a coach or whatever, is really valuable. But another way to accomplish that is also to measure things sort of objectively, or at least keep a journal or, or some kind of record of where you've been.

Tali: Yeah. I just started training a new client this [01:22:00] week who had performed a deadlift for her first time, and I took a video of it and I said, this is gonna be really fun to look back on six months from now, . 

Cody: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Did you have more to add? I feel like wrapping it up. Yeah.

Cody: Okay. Thanks for being on this adventure with us every. And we'll see you next week.

Tali: This episode was produced by T Zari and Cody Limbaugh. Check out our writing, coaching services and home studying adventures at live all your life.com. For show notes, resources mentioned, or to submit a question or contribution, click on the podcast tab.