Do Cool Stuff or Sleep
Dear Collective,
As we move through August, our main focus is simplicity. Some people constantly trying to make everything complicated, cluttered, and stressful, we are choosing to strip away the fluff.
If you boil a great life down to its absolute simplest, it comes down to two basic buckets:
Do cool stuff, or sleep.
That’s it.
The first bucket, sleep is as straightforward as it gets, but it is the one high-performers love to ignore. In our community, we are constantly working to get stronger, build capability, and push our limits. But you cannot go 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even the smartest kinesiology researchers and exercise scientists will tell you that grinding hard seven days a week isn't just unnecessary, it is actively detrimental to your goals.
If you don't find rest, your body will eventually force you to find it through overtraining, burnout, or injury. Rest is not a reward for doing the work; rest is an active part of the system that allows you to do the work in the first place. When you rest, rest fully.
The second bucket is where people like to overthink: doing cool stuff.
Immediately, people ask, "Well, what counts as cool?"
Whatever you decide is cool. That’s the magic of it. It is entirely based on your own perception. If you wake up in the morning and your favorite thing in the entire world is to sit quietly and write a thesis paper, go do it. That’s cool. If it's lifting heavy plates, making music, painting, or spending time with people you care about, that’s cool too.
When people say, "Well, I have to go to work, and work isn't cool," I challenge them to look a little deeper.
First, work can actually be pretty cool. It gives you a chance to solve problems, engage your mind, and interact with human beings (hopefully people who don't suck). But even if your job is just a standard gig, it still serves a cool purpose: it is the vehicle that fuels your life.
If you want to be a painter, but you work at a fast-food counter, the job itself might not be your life's passion. But that job affords you the money to go buy your canvas and paint supplies. The work becomes cool because it is the means that allows you to do the cool things you love.
We live in a culture that loves to over-complicate simple truths. People will look for crazy edge cases or spin up hypothetical arguments just to prove a simple rule wrong. "Well, what about this one hyper-specific scenario where that doesn't work?!"
This isn't one of those conversations. Don't spiral into the noise.
When you are awake, focus your energy on doing cool stuff. Challenge yourself, be cool to the people around you, do things that make you feel good about yourself, and build things you are proud of. And when you are done, get off the stage and go to sleep.
Keep it simple.
With Strength and Simplicity,
Charlie
We, The Collective Fitness