I have been remarkably untouched by tragedy and unwelcome struggle in my life. When I was a teenager my dad went through some health issues that culminated in open heart surgery, but I don’t think I was mature enough to truly appreciate the gravity. That is to the best of my recollection as bad as I’ve ever had it. Really there have been surprisingly few deaths and serious illnesses in people closest to me. I’m incredibly, unspeakably thankful for this.

As a result, by and large I’ve been able to do the work I want to do for my whole life, unhindered by the kinds of things that knock you back on your ass and leave you feeling like it’s an accomplishment just to make it through the day doing basic tasks.

And when I say the work, I’m not talking about the labor you do for a paycheck to pay your bills.

The work might be self-improvement, pursuit of a hobby or skill, playing a sport, daily life tasks like cooking, creative endeavors, getting stronger or any other number of the zillion things the modern human can choose to do. The work is the stuff that matters. Filing your TPS reports or not isn’t the work, that’s bullshit that doesn’t matter. Writing your book, making your art, raising your kids, healing your body, that’s the work.

I’ve been so lucky that I’ve pretty much always gotten to choose the work.

And so, it was quite the punch in the gut when on the same day that one of my very best friends started chemo for an aggressive cancer – one of my dogs, Franklin, became completely paralyzed in all 4 limbs by a sudden neuromuscular disease of unknown origin.

The work that my friend wanted to do for the next several months is not to go through chemotherapy and various other treatments, while spending every waking moment thinking about cancer, learning about cancer, waiting for forks in the road, and making tough decisions.

But it’s the work now.

The work I wanted to do for the next several months is not to carry my dog around the house because he can’t walk, and to put diapers on him because he can’t stand to pee, to say nothing of the possibility of having to say goodbye. If he has a chance at running around wagging his tail again it sounds like lots of physical therapy will be a part of it. It’s not the #project I planned for the summer.

But it’s the work now.

The other day, as I was going to the store to buy some PVC parts to make Franklin a cart, I got a message from someone who had read my deadlift book, Off The Floor. He gave me permission to share a screenshot, but I’ll paraphrase instead for brevity. “David, I herniated S1 and L5 and things were terrible. I’m a paramedic so my job was harder. I stopped lifting and doing jiu-jitsu, my hobby, completely. I heard about your book, bought it, and learned about how to test things. I started doing that and it is fixing me. I’ve found certain deadlifts are the only ones that test well, and how to modify my squat for it to test well. I have days where I forget I have a problem. Soon I’m going to start BJJ again. You’ve completely changed my quality of life, and I don’t even think about drugs or surgery anymore.”

Being in back pain is terrible, I’ve been there. And the impetus is to do nothing. It’s the leading cause of disability worldwide for good reason. You just don’t want to do anything when you’re in that kind of pain. But as best as we can tell doing the right type of movement is one of the few things that is correlated with resolving back pain, and from all of my experience what I can tell is using biofeedback testing is the best way to figure out what the right movement is.

The thing to me that’s remarkable about his story is that he did the work. He did the work, I’m going to do the work, and my friend is going to do the work.

There are two sides of this coin I call the work. It’s like a 2×2 matrix of choice. It can choose you or you can choose it, and you can choose to do it or not to do it. Man, when you can, do as much of the work you choose as you possibly can. Make your time count. Don’t waste it.

When the work chooses you, well, you don’t have to do it. You can choose not to.

But, you can be sure of one thing, there’s nothing on the other side.

Doing things, taking action, moving forward is important if you want to accomplish and create things, no doubt about it. And I think it’s worthwhile and important to talk about all the things that might hold someone back like fear of failure, not knowing where to start, or not knowing what steps to take.

But what about the other side of the coin?

What about not doing things?

Everyone has things they find themselves having to do that don’t feel worth it, maybe don’t feel ethical, or are actually making you worse.

What if you just… didn’t?

Job makes you produce a lot of TPS reports?

What if you didn’t?

School making you learn something you know is whitewashed ethnocentric​ bullshit?

What if you didn’t?

Gym makes you do a part of the programming you know will leave you hurting?

What if you didn’t?

Certainly not doing some things has a greater cost than others. Maybe if you don’t produce all your TPS reports on time you’ll lose your job. Then again, maybe you won’t and the value of those reports will be questioned and you’ll be a catalyst for change.

But often times not doing one thing is what you have to do to make room for doing something else. Quitting and not doing things never gets any of the glory though. Nobody makes memes about not persevering.

Personally I think what you don’t do might be, in some ways, more important than what you do.

It might be worth thinking about what if you just… didn’t?

Here are a list of things you can do so that you’ll never be truly, truly exceptional or standout at anything, but you’ll be mediocre to decent at a lot of things:

First, don’t stick with anything for too long. Dive into it enough to learn the fundamentals, but don’t spend any more time than you need to to get a solid grasp. Then jump to something else.

Find an expert mentor to speed up the learning curve, but definitely don’t seek out more than one. This way you’ll be able to take advantage of all the expertise they’ve accumulated over the years, but you won’t have to undertake synthesizing multiple opinions and experiences into your own approach.

Jump from one domain into a completely diverse and different domain, that is as unrelated as possible. In that way you won’t be able to directly connect dots that are similar in adjacent domains. Of course, subconsciously your brain will probably do some lateral thinking to connect it anyway, but you won’t have to spend any energy on it.

Practice the least you can get away with to develop and maintain the skill, but no more. Definitely set aside the skill entirely for periods of time. You won’t have that razor sharp edge when you come back to it, but then again you’ll find that you’ve maintained the majority of the ability.

Seek out and purchase books or programs created by experts. Any (good) program will necessarily be a limited view and subset of an expert’s total experience that leaves lots of things out. Borrowing their approach means you’ll be able to get results that are usually pretty close to what they can do at least in that limited scope, but you probably won’t understand how you got there and be able to widen that approach – at least not at first.

Don’t attach your identity to any one particular thing. Even though it can be energetically and mentally costly, identifying as someone who is an exceptional athlete or say painter can further drive that desire to improve and act in accordance with your identity. So if you don’t want to focus on only one thing, don’t attach yourself rigidly to that identity. Of course that leaves you with the flexibility to change directions without having struggles about identity…

If you follow these general principles you will very likely be able to succeed at not becoming the very best in the world at any one single thing.

On the other hand, you’d be able to build an incredibly wide variety of skills to a level where you could apply them productively and usefully. You’d also probably come up with your own ingenious approaches and solutions to things because of the breadth of your skills and abilities and the ability to connect disparate things.

Maybe there’s actually something to that.