PFL: H-Man, Your Personal Supervillain
Welcome to PFL, this is a weekly newsletter that is focused on three topics. Productivity, Fitness, and Life in general. This is the newsletter that I wanted but could not find. I hope you enjoy.
Productivity
H-man is my name for the little hedonic voice in my head who tries to sabotage my productivity. H standing for hedonism.
H-man is a master negotiator, “we'll start in five mins' ' or “ you earned a break that's enough for today' '. Your ability to negotiate with others is a great asset, unfortunately it is one of the major reasons you are holding yourself back.
The negotiations or conversations about getting up and starting the task are rarely beneficial. The less negotiating you do with yourself and the more you turn decisions into a binary yes or no the quicker you can bypass the hedonic pull towards mediocrity and inefficacy .
Fitness:
Don't fool yourself into thinking that just because you are in the gym working out, that means you are doing something hard.
Don't try to fix your feelings of inadequacy or anxiety around your performance in your sport by becoming a weight room hero. This is another form of hedonism. Indulging by lying to yourself that you are doing something difficult and gaining pleasure from said lie.
Go out and do the things that you suck at and aren’t fun instead of masking it with something you're already good at so you can feel good. The weight room is not a replacement for the field.
I struggled with this myself in my short lived D3 lacrosse career. I was feeling anxious about my performance so I dove head first into the weightroom. I ended up with the heaviest squat on the team as a freshman but that didn't transfer over into anything meaningful on the field.
Get good by practicing what you are bad at and you won't be anxious about being bad.
Life:
Is the voice in your head actually you?
Take a moment and try this thought exercise. Try to not think, don't think about not thinking, don't think about nothing, don't think about the concept of not thinking, just do not have a thought.
If you can pull this off please email me. I have many questions to ask you.
If you are like everyone else the chances are you can't do this. So if you are not in control of the voice in your head.
If you cannot control that voice then it must not be you.
This voice is H-man. He is in your head telling you to take it easy, that can wait, give into the immediate pleasures. Once you personify your own supervillain you now have a target to aim at and fight back against. Don't let something that isn't you determine how you operate.
Cool Guy From History:
The mighty atom AKA Joseph Greenstein was born in Poland in 1893. He was a sickly child who was not expected to survive much less become a professional strongman who performed feats that are unbelievably badass. He joined the circus as a teen and learned about eastern meditation practices and exercise and diet from the strongmen he was around. He left Poland in the few years leading up to WWI for the USA as being a Jew in Poland at the time was not a pleasant experience. He began to make a name for himself by performing incredible feats of strength. My personal favorites were unbending horseshoes with his bare hands, stopping a plane from taking off tied to his hair, and driving a 6 inch nail through wood with his forehead. He did all of this at a staggering 5’4 140lbs. There is a good documentary about him on amazon if you are interested.