Happy Friday everybody. It is crazy to me the amount that can change in a week. Maybe it is just me, but I seem to have different goals at the end of the week than I did at the start. It is like each day I learn more about myself and what I am truly after.
Anyways, I’ve noticed that my 3-minute post, the original idea for these Friday posts, per the name, have gotten to be a bit lengthy and not quite a 3-minute read. So I will try and keep it short and sweet today.
VO2 Max
VO2 max has a direct correlation to physical fitness and health. the V is volume and the O2 is oxygen. VO2 max refers to and measures how much oxygen your body consumes while exercising.
Oxygen, as we all know, is very important for our health (if you can’t breath you probably aren’t healthy). It is the first component in a complex process your body undergoes to produce fuel for your muscles and power your body.
Over the next month, and likely far into the future, I am focusing on increasing my VO2 max. I think this is extremely important to not only increase my fitness, but also to reduce risk of heart disease, cancer, and stroke. I am putting in the work now to invest in a healthier future. Plus I enjoy being active.
Read this article from Harvard Medical School to better understand it.
Enjoyment: Now vs Later
I stumbled across an article talking about investing for retirement and finding the balance to live an enjoyable life now and in the future. It is the common advice of figuring out what really matters to you and how you should spend your money. Do you need a new car or would you rather spend that money on a vacation?
While the advice is the same as pretty much everywhere on the internet, including here, it is not wrong, you do need to make sacrifices somewhere. I took this advice and applied it to my life rather than my finances. What are the most important things in my life, in what order are they a priority, and what do I need to sacrifice to achieve them?
A few things stand out immediately: 1. Long distance hiking, 2. Financial Freedom and 3. Living in a tiny house in the woods, in that order. In order to do long distance hikes, I need to sacrifice time away from work, which means money. That will then hurt my success at financial freedom. Which then will make owning land to build a tiny house harder, but, long distance hiking is at the top of the list. So, where is the balance?
What does the balance look like in your life?
Look out for a post soon that will go into greater detail on this.
Risk Taking
I bruised my rib last weekend. Lucky for me, it is just a bruise and nothing broken. I thought about that as I painfully laid in bed that night, nothing was broken. If I had been ten years older, it probably would have been broken, and that led me to my next point: Take risks while you are young.
That may seem a bit convoluted. Let me try to explain a bit more. I am young enough where this injury isn’t all that serious, leading me to think I should do all the stupid stuff now, while my body can take the hit. This then led me to think about how young people, me included, have much more time to bounce back if something goes wrong, like trying to start a business or betting on stupid stocks.
A continuation from the section above on enjoyment, I realized that I need to do the long distance hiking now and stop worrying so much about the future. There will never be a perfect time to go and hike.
I am worried that I will be missing valuable time to make money and invest, after all investing early is the best way to increase the value (historically), but if my goal is to start a business and I think I can be successful at that, then I can make much more money later in life. Plus, the trail is such a powerful teacher, it might push me in a whole different direction in my life (not that I believe in anything metaphysical).
Like all good things however, there is a balance to it. I need to save money and while saving, I will be investing as well. Time is ticking however, and I would like to get hiking soon, I am not sure I will be able to wait another year or two.
Hopefully that was closer to a 3-minute read. I begin writing with very little to say and slowly the words just keep pouring out and onto the page. Like many things in life, the hardest part is starting. Enjoy the weekend my friends!
