Four Thousand Steps

My exercise app doesn't care how I feel.

I've called it a nag before.

It is.

At the end of the day it shows me a number, and that's all it has to say.

On a good day, that number can be as high as 24,000 steps.

On a bad day, when it's raining or my body just isn't cooperating, I might only get in 4,000 or 5,000.

It's easy to look at a 4,000-step day and call it a failure.

Put it next to 24,000 and it looks like I barely left the house.

But 4,000 steps is still 4,000 more than zero.

And zero is what you get when you let a bad day convince you it isn't worth starting.

Some days the number isn't steps at all.

The morning my knee was acting up, it was stretching and a little calisthenics instead.

The app didn't know what to do with that.

I did.

Business keeps the same kind of score.

Some days everything moves.

You write, you post, you answer every message, you fix the thing that's been bothering you for a week.

Other days you answer one email and fix one small thing.

Next to your best day, the small day looks like nothing.

That's usually when people start wondering whether they're cut out for this.

Nobody has a 24,000-step day every day.

Not in walking and not in business.

The people who get somewhere aren't the ones who never have a slow day.

They're the ones who don't let a slow day turn into a zero.

A small day keeps the habit alive.

And the habit is what's still there when a good day finally shows up.

So on the days when you don't have it, don't measure yourself against your best.

Measure yourself against nothing.

Did you do something?

Then it counts.

Take the four thousand.