The best fitness advice I’ve gotten is also the simplest: do the things that you like. Right now, that means weightlifting. I love lifting heavy—it makes me feel strong, and that feeling is what pulls me back to the gym. This isn’t about forcing discipline or grinding through something that doesn’t interest me. It’s about recognizing that Workout for Yourself is fundamentally different from working out because you think you should. When you’re pulled toward something rather than pushing yourself through it, the whole experience changes.
I used to do cardio because I understood it was “important,” but I never actually enjoyed it. The conventional wisdom says you need discipline to push through the boring parts, that real fitness requires suffering through what doesn’t feel good. But that’s backwards. Exercise isn’t selfish—it’s an act of self-compassion, and part of that compassion is choosing activities that genuinely interest you. I’m a pull guy, not a force guy. The difference between someone who sticks with fitness and someone who quits is often just whether they’re drawn to it or resisting it.
I heard this idea from Morgan Housel, who said something similar about his own work—that he writes about things that interest him rather than forcing himself to cover what he thinks he should. Research backs this up: matching your exercise to your personality actually improves commitment. That shifted how I think about Enjoying Exercise vs Expectations of Others. It’s not weakness to skip the cardio you hate. It’s smart design—you’re building a system around what actually works for you, not around some external ideal.
If I fully commit to this idea, it means getting creative about the things I actually need to do. Instead of abandoning cardio entirely, I’d find ways to make it interesting—maybe it’s a sport, maybe it’s something social, maybe it’s just a different framing. Sometimes exercise is selfish, and sometimes it should be. The real work isn’t pushing harder—it’s building a fitness life around what you’re naturally drawn to, then solving for the gaps with creativity rather than willpower. That’s when The Efficiency Paradox: Work Less, Achieve More actually becomes true.