In 2016 I joined a gym. I built the routine around the day I already had, work and school pickup, so 5:00 in the morning was when it fit. The alarm went off at 4:30. I was excited. And I went. Every morning. Thirty minutes on the treadmill, and I tested every machine they had in there. I'd walk out of there feeling accomplished. Like, okay. This is what doing it right feels like.
And it worked. I'm not going to pretend it didn't. For about three weeks, it worked.
Then one of the kids got sick. I was up two nights nursing a sick kid and missed two days at the gym. Two days.
On day three I went back, and it felt like I was starting from scratch. It was like the three weeks had not happened. The next morning I woke up late.
That was the end of it.
I've thought about that a lot since. If it felt that good, why did one sick kid end it?
When we've let our health slide for a long time, going easy feels almost irresponsible. Like we haven't earned easy yet. Like a walk around the block is what we do when we're not really serious.
Going big feels different. Up early, all in, sore the next day. That feels like we're finally doing enough to make up for lost time.
So we pick the big version. It's the responsible choice, right? Then a few weeks later it's gone, and we reach for the same explanation we always do. I didn't want it bad enough. I need more discipline. So the fix we pick is more effort. Get up earlier. Push harder. Make it count this time.
I get why. I reached for that one too. But if the problem was effort, the next routine gets bigger. A bigger routine needs an even better week to survive, so it breaks faster, and then we blame ourselves harder for it.
If you've been in that loop, I don't think you were short on effort. I think you were trying to skip stages. I know I was. I wanted the results of somebody who had been at it for years, and I wanted them starting on day one.
I want to ask something I wish somebody had asked me a long time ago. What if "responsible" has been pointing at the wrong thing?
My second heart attack came New Year's Eve going into New Year's Day. We had stayed up late. When I lay down, I started getting sharp pains in my chest, and I really thought it was heartburn. When I stood up, it eased off some. I lay back down, and it came right back.
While people were waking up to a new year and making resolutions, I was thinking about whether I was going to make it through the night. That date matters to me.
Here's what I eventually learned from it: a wake-up call can give you urgency, but it does not automatically give you a sustainable way to live differently.
After that the doctor told me I needed to move every day. So I committed. Day one, I walked around the block. Day two, same thing. Day three, same thing. Day four, it rained, and I skipped.
And you know what I thought? Here I go again. Can't even be consistent when my life depended on it. I was ready to quit because I broke the perfect streak.
But on day five, instead of starting over, I just began again. Same block, same place, same pace.
Put that next to the gym for a second. At the gym, two missed days and I was back at scratch. On the block, one missed day and I picked it right back up. So what was different?
I've heard people say you have to crawl before you walk. I understand where that comes from, but I think it gets misread. When a baby is born, he already knows how to eat. But crawling is not the first thing he learns. He learns to open his eyes. He learns to hold his head up. There's a whole stretch before crawling that we skip right over, and I think that is where most restarts fall apart.
Open your eyes
When my youngest was born, nobody expected him to get up and walk that day. We were thrilled he opened his eyes. That was the win for that day, and it was a real one.
In 2016, when that 4:30 alarm went off, I was excited, and the excitement was real. But I built the plan like I could already run, and I had not even opened my eyes yet.
Opening our eyes is just starting where we actually are, and not where we think we should be by now. Day one has to be small enough to count as a win. Maybe a ten-minute walk.
Hold your head up
A baby holding his head up isn't going anywhere yet. But everything after depends on it.
I had one version of that gym routine, the 5:00 a.m., thirty minutes, every machine version, and when that one couldn't happen, nothing happened. There was nothing underneath it for the week somebody gets sick, and that week shows up for all of us sooner or later.
I needed a worst-week version. It's the floor under everything else. It's the thing I would still do with a sick kid in the house, after a late night, or at the end of a long day that took everything I had. Looking back, the walk around the block was my floor. It was small enough. Rain couldn't take it all the way back to zero.
The good weeks mostly take care of themselves. It is the bad week that decides whether we're starting over or just continuing. Picture your own sick-kid week. Whatever you'd still do in it is your floor.
Crawl
I remember watching my youngest go from one end of the sofa to the other in the living room, over and over. Same sofa, same trip.
I had watched three boys do this before him, and I never connected it to anything. I can be a little slow sometimes. With the older three we had carpet, and a fall was no big deal. With him we had hardwood floors. If he lost his balance, he could end up with a bump or a bruise, or hit his head hard. I noticed every fall, every struggle. And somewhere in all that back and forth, I finally saw it. That trip across the living room was the walking. It just didn't look like walking yet.
Crawling, for us, is doing that small version over and over until it's boring. And we keep doing it on the good days too, when it feels like we could do a lot more. Most of us coming back from a long stretch of letting things slide skip that part. I skipped it too. The gym assumed a foundation I didn't have yet.
Walk
Watching my youngest on that hardwood floor, I realized something else. Before you can even think about walking, you have to learn how to fall safely, how to steady yourself, how to lift your head and see clearly.
For years, walking came and went for me. I'd start, it would fade, and I'd start again.
In February 2024 I took on a 90-day challenge built around 10,000 steps a day. My doctor never gave me that number, and I'm not holding it up as the goal. That time I picked up the steps in pieces all through the day instead of carving out one big, hard walk. The walking fit inside my life and quit fighting with it. It turned into a streak of over 300 days.
I didn't touch the goal for the rest of that year. The next year I nudged it up a little, to about 11,000. What you add next, and when, is your call. I would hold off. First the floor has to make it through a week that included a bad day.
The Newborn Test
Start with your worst-week version. The almost embarrassing one. If your doctor has given you limits, those come first. This is about getting the size right.
Do that version for seven days. Even on a day you feel great, that's the one.
At least one of those seven days needs to go sideways. Honestly, it probably will on its own. A late night, a sick kid, rain. If the week somehow goes smooth, pick your busiest day and count that one. On that day the only job is finding a way to still do it. Even if it's smaller than small.
Pay attention to the day after. That's the one that matters most. Notice whether you came back, and how your body and your mood felt when you did. Remember my walks around the block. Day four, it rained. Day five was the one that counted.
Compare it to the last time you went all in on a restart. When you hit a bump, did the next day feel like starting from scratch? For me it did. Day three felt like the three weeks never happened. What I'm hoping you notice this time is the day after the bump feeling more like picking up where you left off.
The sideways day tells you the size. If it didn't get done that day, it was too big. Shrink it and run the week again. If it never cost you a thing, good. Only add something once there are seven days you could repeat, and add one thing, not five.
If there's one thing to do tonight, write down the worst-week version of your routine. One sentence is enough.
For me, "responsible" was never pointing at the 5:00 a.m. gym. It was pointing at a walk around the block, the kind of thing that feels like what we do when we're not really serious. That one was still there on day five.
What's the worst-week version of your routine? Hit reply and tell me about it. And if this was useful, you can subscribe below to get the weekly letter, a small nudge each week to keep crawling.